More Venus Williams than Venus de Milo

I am learning to accept that I am what might be called a “big girl.”
I am 5’7”. Tall, or at least tall-ish.
I have been on various diets over the past two years. They’ve been effective, to say the least…this morning I put on a size 10 dress I haven’t been able to wear in years. No slimming garments required and it doesn’t resemble a sausage casing in any way. It fits loosely.
However, I never seem to lose poundage anymore. In fact, the harder I try, the heavier I become. And I mean heavier, not larger. If anything, my clothes fit better and better. Despite weighing far more than a woman my height should. We’re talking maybe NFL rookie running back.
But, I think I’m learning to be okay with it and be proud of what I am.
I’m no longer claiming every scale must be broken. I am feeling better and better about my decision, when joining Weight Watchers, not to go to the meetings for weekly weigh-ins and having my progress defined by a number on a scale. Rather, defining it by seeing a pooch disappear. Defining it by shrinking the sizes of my clothes. Defining it by seeing bone structure and sinew reappear.
I am not at my goal yet. My goal is to have the fit physique I had back in the days I’d join Marines for PT --only older and more ‘lived in’. I still consider myself over-fat, but inching closer and closer to where I wish to be. Which is apparently “brick outhouse.”
That being said, I’ve noticed a strange side effect of the War on Obesity.
Obsession with ‘being heavy’ as the cause of all problems and ‘heaviness’ as the result of a diet of bad food.
I first noticed it when I was pregnant. I had gained a lot of weight by partying a little hard before having children. Mea culpa. I didn’t really gain much real weight during my pregnancy. There was the weight of the pregnancy itself and the MASSIVE amount of edema. In one week alone, I gained 17 lbs of water. I had myself on a strict diet during my pregnancy (once the sickness wore off) where I wrote down everything I ate and measured out calories and other nutritional information. I would not let myself eat pizza or other junk foods because I was trying to keep down how much I actually gained during the pregnancy. My OB? Told me I needed to lay off the ice cream because I was becoming a fatty. It’s no wonder I’ve changed practices.
I noticed it again more recently. I went to my GP for a sinus infection. Innocuous enough, right? Nope. As soon as he looked at my chart he told me it was because I was overweight. That what I needed was to lower my cholesterol (it’s 120) and blood pressure (it’s 60/40…apparently ‘none’ is a better measure?) to feel better and that being ‘too heavy’ was apparently a before undiscovered cause of a fever, vomiting, mucus, pain, and high white-cell count. Only because I pushed did I actually get appropriate treatment and consideration. I’m considering changing from there as well.
I do not like where this is going. A world were what a scale says is the sum total of a person’s worth.