I appreciate all of the different opinions on this topic. No, the person who needs to only lose 20 lbs won't have to work as hard or face the mountain of losing 100+ lbs, but I have to respect the fact that she is facing this battle. Eating healthy isn't a natural instinct (in most people, IMO), so anyone that has weight to lose, no matter how much, has to train themselves to think and eat differently or they'll be right back where they started. So it is a lifestyle change no matter how much you have to lose because if you're overweight at all, then obviously you're prone to bad eating choice and weight gain (unless it's a medical issue). It just made me so angry when my roommate tried to tell me I didn't understand being fat because I was only 340 lbs while she was 380 (which she still acts like that sometimes). We're both morbidly obese, how is my struggle less than her's? So I realized that for me to keep on my aunt and tell her she didn't need to lose weigth and roll my eyes at her when she talked about how hard it is to lose 15 lbs, was wrong. We're talking strictly emotional and mental stress here, not the physical restraints that come from being so overweight. So no, my aunt is not morbidly obese, but she is in the overweight range and struggles to keep from gaining more weight, much less losing the little bit that she needs to lose.

I agree, uber, with everything you're saying! :) This is a very complex issue with a lot of different angles.

Although, I do think someone that wants to lose 10 or so pounds will have to do the same things I have to to lose weight, and I think the "fat" feeling could have similarities emotionally. The journey is simply not the same. My normal sized friend have no idea of my struggles, they don't know they feeling of constant pain, constant heartburn, being winded from walking a few blocks. They don't really have a real concept of feeling out of control with food. Flat out it's just. not. the same.

Of course at this point if any of them want to join me in eating healthy and working out they are welcome to, I'm sure we can find something in common :D

Although, I do think someone that wants to lose 10 or so pounds will have to do the same things I have to to lose weight, and I think the "fat" feeling could have similarities emotionally. The journey is simply not the same. My normal sized friend have no idea of my struggles, they don't know they feeling of constant pain, constant heartburn, being winded from walking a few blocks. They don't really have a real concept of feeling out of control with food. Flat out it's just. not. the same.

Of course at this point if any of them want to join me in eating healthy and working out they are welcome to, I'm sure we can find something in common :D

Originally Posted by ubergirl:
I'm glad to find this thread, because it's something that I think about a lot in relation to myself.

I'm one of those people who suffered and worried about being fat from the time I was really young-- I had a TERRIBLE self image. But in truth, I was not fat. I was tall, matured early, was booby, and was an athlete in an era when most girls weren't. I weighed somewhere between 155 and 170 until the end of my twenties. For how much I suffered about my weight, I could have weighed a hundred pounds more. I felt like a BLIMP.

I really think this bad attitude is a big part of why I ballooned eventually to almost 300 lbs. It's easy to let yourself become morbidly obese when you have such a distorted body image.

So, when I see girls on 3FC who are my height and weigh maybe 160 or 170 and they're setting goal weights of 130 and talking about how they are way fat to wear jeans, I feel kind of bad, and sometimes I really feel like saying "honey, don't be so hard on yourself..."

I'm pretty convinced that if I had never dieted back when I weighed 160, I never would have developed all the binge eating problems that eventually led me to weigh 295.

So really, no. I don't think needing to lose 100 pounds and needing to lose 10 pounds is the same.

ESPECIALLY if the person is already an essentially normal weight but just wants to be on the skinnier end of normal.

And frankly, I DO think it's insensitive for a normal weight person to equate her weight struggles with those of a person who is trying to lose 100 lbs.

There may be some commonalities, but the differences outweigh the commonalities.

Wow. I think except for the athletic part, we were living parallel lives. And I agree with you.

There's a lot to consider on this subject and every post has offered some valuable insight. Hope I can add my two cents as well . . .

What I try to keep in mind is that it's all relative. One of my friends was a very skinny girl growing up, to the point of getting teased for being poor (which she wasn't) and even being pulled aside by teachers to ask if she was getting enough to eat at home. When she got to high school, the teasing shifted from being poor to being an airhead or slut due to her small size, none of which had anything to do with who she was. And in the meantime, I was heavily teased for being a big girl. In fact I can't even remember what it was like to be at a healthy, "normal" weight. But it's clear we all have our own troubles and issues when it comes to our body images.

After hearing about my weight issues, she's been quick to remind me that there are stereotypes all over the place after the way she herself had been teased. She's gained maybe 30 pounds in the past few years due to the prescription meds she has to be on, which aggravates her to no end. I can sympathize with her, although sometimes it's a struggle for me because I'd love to "only" be 30 pounds overweight (although I'd wager she's still in a healthy BMI); first she complained about being too skinny and she now complains that she misses wearing those size 0 jeans (and no longer complains about anyone teasing her about her size).

Fast-forward many years later when one of my co-workers was complaining about how fat she supposedly was . . .

5' 8", 150 lb. co-worker: "OMG, I'm so fat!!!"

5' 8", 360 lb. me: "..."

5' 8", 150 lb. co-worker: "Oh, but it works on you and you look great for your size, I actually used to be skinny!"

* * *

I honestly don't think she meant anything by it, in fact I think she realized she said something offensive in the first line and did her best to cover it up with the second one.

But I think that she basically showed that, unlike how she saw herself, she didn't think I needed any higher expectations. She'd always known me as being that size which was "normal" and accepted my size as simply being a part of who I was. On the other hand, she'd known herself at a smaller, more attractive weight that she wanted to get back to and no longer felt she was at her personal "normal."

Which makes me wonder . . . how many people have that mindset? Not that it's relative, but that everyone maintains different standards of "normalcy?" Is that part of why people don't often root for their larger friends to lose weight, since they're already comfortable with the way things are? :?: