Best compliment ever: who are you?

Although I received a few compliments here and there about my weight loss along the way, it wasn't until I lost about 95 lbs. that people started to really notice.  Suddenly I no longer heard, "Have you lost some weight?" and instead started hearing, "How much have you lost?!"  The reactions since have been even greater, from amazing to unbelievable.

From my perspective, it's been a slow process (sometimes excruciatingly so) that's taken me almost three years to get to this point, and although I notice the changes in my face and body, it's been gradual for me.  But I realized recently that for people who don't see me often, the changes in my appearance seem drastic.  The most surprising compliment has been when people just don't recognize me!  It never occurred to me this would happen, let alone for it to happen as often as it has.

I recently took Mitzi (my mother's dog) on a long walk and when I returned to her house, my mother was outside talking to a couple of her neighbors - women I've known for more than 20 years.  We all exchanged hellos, but I noticed the two ladies were cordial with me but not too friendly.  I dropped Mitzi off, said good-bye, got in my car, and left the three of them to their conversation.  It wasn't until later that my mother told me that the ladies had not recognized me until I drove off and only then because they knew my car.  They both told my mother that when I walked up, they each wondered to themselves, "Who's that woman, and why does she have Mitzi?"

About a month ago I was walking Mitzi and ran into a very good friend of my mother's who was walking home.  She had been one of the first people months ago who noticed I was losing weight.  On this particular day, I was across the street and when I called out to her, she just stared at me with a blank look.  I could tell she had no idea who I was and only when I crossed the street towards her with Mitzi in tow did she recognize me.

All I can say is good thing Mitzi still recognizes me!

At the gym I've met several ladies I chat with but our schedules are different so we don't see each other regularly.  On two separate occasions, two of these ladies recently didn't recognize me at all and walked right by me.  When I called out their names, they just stared at me with the same blank look I got from my mother's friend on the street.

This kind of reaction has been happening to me more frequently.  I really didn't understand it because I still look the same, just smaller.  How could they not recognize me?  I'm still the same person!  

Yesterday I decided to take some self-timer photos of myself to post on my blog and I suddenly realized just how much my face has actually changed.  What's interesting is that as my weight ballooned years ago, I no longer recognized my face in the mirror or in photos, but since I lived in obesity for so long, eventually I got used to my "new" face.  So to me, I'm finally looking like my old self while the obese face was a stranger all along.

I'm including here a comparison of my face from before my journey began and now.  It's incredible how obesity changes our entire being in every sense.

Left photo:              11/01/2015 (185 lbs.)

Upper right photo:   06/2011 (about 300 lbs.)

Lower right photo:   09/2012 (about 300 lbs.) and 3 months 
before I started my journey with absolutely no hopes I'd 
ever succeed.