Dieting and Self Respect?

Okay, so here's my dilemma. I'm done with the whole fat thing, right? So I'm ready to lose the weight, move forward, etc. The problem is, I've done a LOT of work over the past 10 years or so to deal with the fact that I'm fat and to accept myself as I am and be as happy as I can about it. So now that I'm done with the fat thing, how can I get rid of the fat without destroying my painstakingly-constructed fat-accepting shell? Is it actually possible to lose weight and change the way you eat and exercise without simultaneously destroying the value you found in the way you were? Plus a big part of the whole fat acceptance thing was the idea that "diets don't work", and I believe that pretty strongly, but I can't just eat crap either, right? If I've spent the last 10 years of my life scoffing at women who were buying into the whole "I should be smaller to be more attractive to men, so I'm bad if I eat this cookie" idea, how do I then turn around and join them without losing respect for myself?

This is doubly hard because T and I made a lot of this journey through fat acceptance together, and of course we live together and more often than not we buy food together and eat together. So I have a hard time not feeling scrutinized, just a little bit, if I start making food choices that are different from what I/we have chosen in the past. Say I decide to have a salad or something instead of a burger at Wendy's. Simultaneously it feels like I am rejecting her, rejecting myself, and buying into the pathetic anti-feminist smaller=better thing. Why does food have to be so political? It's hard enough for me to just figure out what I would like to eat without having to worry about what implications it will have or what it will make someone think of me or how eating it will affect my body size. Life would be so much simpler if we were all just taking food pills for nourishment and it wasn't this big complicated mess.

Exercise is an issue too...it's a little easier to maintain the idea that I'm exercising to be stronger and run marathons and do more fun stuff, but the people at the gym still look at me like I'm the special olympics kid who just crossed the finish line. I can hear them saying "good for you!" in their heads. I hate that shit. That's why it's so tough to go to the gym...it's not about the actual working out, it's about the other people there. Though I know that the majority of my issues with the other people at the gym and, frankly, about other people's opinions of what I eat, are probably just in my head. Most of the people at the gym probably don't give a shit about what the big fat girl is doing on the treadmill, right? And most people are too busy with their own lunches to worry about what I'm eating, I'm sure. I just wish I could control the voices in my head that are paranoid about that shit.