Having photos taken
 

I have mentioned before that the turning point for me, weight wise, was seeing me in a photo. It was hideous and I was shocked/appalled. Some how in my head, though I knew the scale read higher than it used to, I wasn't fat. I was maybe a little "fluffy" but not bad. But it was bad. It was awful. I was so embarrassed.

The problem is that now, I am hyper-sensitive to having my photo taken. Even though I have lost weight (and regained, and lost again) I haaaaaate having my photo taken now. I fear seeing another hideous shock photo again. When I do get my photo taken I often take the first opportunity to delete it off the digital media. Once in awhile I get a photo that I'm like "whew that one is ok." But that's rather rare.

It's kind of sad really because we have all these lovely photos of places we've been and my DH, and friends and family etc...and I am rarely in them. I don't like that, but I feel so unattractive. I usually shrug it off and say "I'm the photographer!"

Am I alone in this? Can anyone offer any advice on how you got over something like this? Do I just need to bite the bullet so to speak and accept that there will be photos of me looking however I look whether I like it or not?

No you are not alone at all. I don't like having my picture taken either. It makes you face what you really look like and it hasn't been what I wanted to see. I'm hoping that it gets better as more weight comes off.

Well I don't like photos of myself either. I am not photogenic and look better in person really. The thing that I've realized though, is how extra hard on myself I am. I recently reviewed some old pictures from several years ago, when I was thinner. At the time, I wasn't pleased with how I looked in real life or in photos- I still thought I needed to lose about 15 more pounds and I dwelled excessively on "problem" areas (legs/arms especially looked chubby to me).

Now when I see those photos I can't believe how pretty I looked: fit and "glowy." I look like a whole different person. But then, like I said, I zeroed in on the fact that I am not photogenic, need to lose a few, etc. In current pictures of course I can see all the added weight and how tired and drained I am because of it, but I think too, once again I am being my own harshest critic.

So maybe just give yourself a lot more love. Other people who see those pictures probably aren't going to be anywhere near as critical as you are!! Just remember that. It has helped me go from being completely camera phobic (since 5th grade when I had a REALLY bad school pic) to being more meh about the whole thing. In 20, 30, 40 + years I guarantee you will not think, "Ew I looked so awful." Instead you will recall fondly your youth and vigor!

I am the same way. I've been using the same facebook profile picture for 5 years because I think I look half-way decent in it and I avoid cameras like the plague. Whenever i feel obligated to take a picture, I end up looking even worse in them because Im not genuinely smiling and I'm dreading the fact that my picture is being taken and it shows.

I always feel disappointed when I take "progress photos" and despite having lost weight, I feel like I look proportionately the same as I did when I first started, just smaller if that makes sense. I still have a big stomach in relation to my butt and boobs which just makes me still look fat in photos.
I still have fat arms and thighs in relation to everything else. The only difference is that I appear taller, but I still look fat versus before I looked fat and shorter than I really was in pictures.

The only other thing that has changed for me is that I no longer look like I have severely chubby cheeks and a double chin, so I am able to take face photos and be okay with them, but God forbid that I actually smile in them, that makes my cheeks look just as puffy as they did when I was fatter!

I wasn't always so self conscious. I had accepted myself and that I wouldn't look great in pictures, but I looked happy and most of the time they weren't too terrible so it was ok. As long as I looked decent and not very revealing or cheap, I was fine with being the fat one. But a few months I had gone on a trip to a beach resort with three of my girlfriends and one of their boyfriends who had come along (we're all good friends, though I've only met the boyfriend a couple of times). There was a picture of me, one of my other overweight friends and the guy which was put on facebook. We were in swimsuits since we had just come out of the ocean. It wasn't a totally terrible picture, certainly not flattering either, but I was still ok with it. One day later I happened to be flipping through the album, and one of this guy's random friends (note, I don't know any of this guy's friends and they don't know me) had commented saying something along the lines of, "How are you going to manage them both, man? They're HUGE!" and there was a string of comments from his friends saying lol and haha, etc etc.

I untagged myself immediately and removed it from my timeline. That was totally humiliating, knowing that absolute strangers were looking at my picture and making fun of my weight. I always keep my pictures private so they're only veiwable by my immediate friends, and none of my friends have ever made fun my of weight that way.

Now I'm so worried about who will see my pictures. I overanalyze every bump and as a result I hate the way I look in pictures (not just my body but my face too), but I love travelling and I adore looking at pictures of the places I've been, so usually I just bite the bullet, suck in my stomach, try to stand half behind someone and get the pictures taken. I usually take LOADS of pictures when I'm travelling. Then when I return home load them all on my computer and go through them with a fine toothed comb. Only the ones that I deem viewable will go onto social media. Normally this ends up being 7-8 out of about 150 (on a good day) of me, and the rest will be scenery or other people.

My profile pictures and cover picture on facebook are usually of me from a bit of a distance.

Sorry, I didn't mean to make the post into a sob story, but it's sad how much something small like that can affect someone so much that their entire attitude towards pictures changes.

We are our own worst critics! We are conditioned to automatically look for our flaws, which is such a shame.

Take a moment to think about what you see whenever you look at photos of a friend or a loved one. Do you focus in on their balding head? Do you scrutinize every little bump or wrinkle on their face? Do you criticize their outfits or scrutinize their body shapes? No? Do you expect any of your friends and family to do the same to you? Why do we even do this to ourselves?

Loved ones see the real you whenever they see you in person. Any photo taken of you is literally just a two-dimensional snapshot in time of the you that they love. They're not internally comparing that snapshot to who you used to be or who you think you should be. What they do notice is your smile, the way your eyes light up, the way your personality comes through.

My mother was one of those that was ashamed of her weight and constantly hid from the camera because of it. She passed away not long after I turned 20. Where does that leave me now? I barely have any photos of her, let alone photos of her and I together, and it's sad. Which is why I'm making sure I take plenty of photos of my son and I together; regardless of how I feel about myself, he deserves to get some of these memories preserved.

Same here. I have maybe 3 of my father from my lifetime. Everything else is way before I was born. Getting my mom to let me take her picture is like pulling teeth too.

If you click on my profile, you will see what I think is a beautiful photo of me and my nephew. It was taken at over 400 pounds. I didn't want my picture taken at all that day, but you have no idea how glad I am that the moment was captured. And no one that looks at it is focusing on my weight.

That's a nice picture

Looking at photos of myself recently is what's spurred me into dieting now... It was a real shocker to see just how much differently I look now than what I look like in my head!! And now I find myself avoiding pictures too.

But like someone else said, I too find that looking back at past photos can be enlightening. I look back at pictures from years ago and think wow, I was so beautiful, and thin! And what's even more than that, I love the memories associated. But I PRECISELY remember looking at those exact same pictures when they were taken and being absolutely disgusted with how fat I looked...it's like I'm not even seeing the same picture! So that's something I try to keep in mind.