I had a strange experience at the gym today. I am trying to get down to a "tiny" size right now because I like tiny. I do. I wish I didn't. I wish I could embrace the fact that I have boobs. But I can't. Today at the gym I marveled at how well my best friend has done with weight loss. We've both lost 80 pounds, though I believe she's over that now. She's still 30 pounds heavier than I am and she's the same height. I looked at her and thought, "Wow, she's beautiful. I wish I had her small little body."
I make no sense. She's wearing a 14. (I'm so proud of her!) I'm wearing a 6/8. So what planet am I on that I think she's smaller?
Does anyone else do this when making awful comparisons we know we shouldn't be making?
YES!!! I have terrible body image/size issues. I have a really tough time trying to NOT compare myself to every-single-woman I see! I hate the fact that I am like this. I will pick myself apart. I am trying really hard to work on this issue, but I'm not doing a very good job of it at all. Maybe someone here has some advice for this awful, thing we do.
I'm with you. I wanted to be tiny. And I also wish I could WANT to just be average. (Although, now that I am fairly tiny...I must say that it's worth it, lol).
But anyways, I've had those experiences too. I have a good friend who is absolutely tiiiiiiiiiiiiiny. She's my height exactly, but she just has a tiny delicate frame. I've always been amazed by her tiny-ness, lol. Well it turns out, she's a 5/7 or 4/6. I'm a 0/2. What gives!? It's strange to me that she's that tiny, and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that I could compare to her size, and I'm that much smaller.
I have had an image problem for years now. I see myself as very large. I wear a 14, but in the mirror i see the 24 i used to wear. Even my therapist said i would see that forever even if i got to a size 2 unless i really try to work at it. She told me it was the anorexic syndrome but we see larger.
I totally know what you mean, i do the exact same thing! I wish i could step outside of my body for 5 minutes to see what others see i'm so distorted now.
I don't have that happen quite yet, because I am in no way, shape or form small, but I do look at someone and think, "Yep, I'm about her size," and feel very confident about it.
Like, I was shopping the other day and a girl and her friend walked by me. I looked at the girl and was pretty sure I was about her size, give or take a little. Then in the dressing rooms, I walked by them and the girl told her friend she needed a larger size and could the friend go grab her a 20 in those jeans? I was shocked. I've never even been a 20, and I still thought I was that girl's size now. She didn't look like a 20 to me at all. Just reminded me that I have no idea what I look like. Ugh.
But yeah, I'd like to be tiny as well. I really, really love the look. I'd love to be really slender. I've never been anything close, though. Never. I agree, it'd be nice if I liked average, but I don't. I want to be as small as I can healthily be. I want to feel small, too. It's something I've always been envious of. ~sigh~
I'm the same way. I was talking to a woman on Saturday. She's a friend of a friend. She was asking me about how I lost all the weight. She's pretty small. I just assumed that she was smaller than me, but then she said that she is at her highest weight, 185. That's 10 lbs more than me and she's much shorter than I am. I was in shock. I just kept thinking "I'm smaller than her? I'm smaller than her!"
I just had lunch with a girl friend who has been doing awesome with the Weight Watchers program. She's lost over 50lbs and going strong. We were talking about this same issue, how we have such a hard time knowing how we look through others' eyes. I look at myself in the mirror everyday, but I still don't know what size I look compared to other people.
We came up with a "solution," or at least an experiment that we'd like to try, lol. (Not that we will actually execute, but it would be neat.) We want to take pictures of dozens and dozens of women of all different shapes and sizes indcluding ourselves. We'd have them all wear the same black type of leotard or something, so clothing fit wasn't a variable. Then we'd black out all the faces, so you would just have dozens of photos of women wearing the same thing without being able to see their faces. We would see if we would recognize our own bodies. Also, what would our reaction be if we saw our own bodies without recognizing that it was our body...would we be surprised by how we perceived it? Maybe give us 10 different photos without knowing that the photo of our body is one of them and order them from smallest to largest...would we be surprised by where we put ourselves without knowing it was us?
Anyways, I think it would be kind of neat. Some psychology grad student should do something like that to prove body distortion. Where would they put themselves in the order of smallest to largest when they knew it was their body and where would they put themselves without recognizing their own body.
I had a strange experience at the gym today. I am trying to get down to a "tiny" size right now because I like tiny. I do. I wish I didn't. I wish I could embrace the fact that I have boobs. But I can't. Today at the gym I marveled at how well my best friend has done with weight loss. We've both lost 80 pounds, though I believe she's over that now. She's still 30 pounds heavier than I am and she's the same height. I looked at her and thought, "Wow, she's beautiful. I wish I had her small little body."
I make no sense. She's wearing a 14. (I'm so proud of her!) I'm wearing a 6/8. So what planet am I on that I think she's smaller?
Does anyone else do this when making awful comparisons we know we shouldn't be making?
I compare myself with other women all the time. I have a coworker named Laurie. We're about the same height. I've lost 30 pounds. She's lost sixty. I started at 145 and now weigh 115. She started at 205 and now she weighs 145. She is the weight I was before I lost any weight and she is wearing a size ten, which was my before size. Yet I look at her and think, " Gee, she's tiny. I wish I were as small as her." And yet I'm in such small sizes that unless I want to travel thirty miles to the nearest shopping mall where I'm likely to find adult clothing that fits I have to shop in the childrens' department. I can see her weight loss but I cannot see my own.
I was walking into a store a couple of weeks ago. I saw a woman walking out so I held the door. Then I realized that the thin woman I saw was my reflection in the window. I totally didn't recognize myself! It was really cool to get a small glimpse of what others see.
I have some weird body image thing going on, too. I've lost a little over 100 pounds, and I swear when I look at the before and after pics, I don't see that much difference! All I can see is that I'm still really heavy. I should be feeling a lot better about my body, but I've been even more depressed lately. Go figure.
i had a hard time realizing i was as big as i was. i basically thought of myself as overweight. that's how i felt in my head. when i lost weight i felt like a normal weight person. now i'm in the just overweight category. i haven't felt obese in 20 pounds, but i was technically obese a few lbs ago.
now and since i've been under 200, on a good day, i feel close to goal weight/shape.
i have a hard time looking at my old pants. yup, those were mine.i'm keeping a 'special' pair of pants. the ones i wore when i was biggest. so later i can compare.
so it's still hard to tell which pants actually fit, by looking in the store. they look like they are all the same size. in the 12/14 range. they all look like they fit. so i just try them all on.
i was just thinking today. i've reached a new low, as of last night. 179. years since i've seen anything in 170's or 80's. my son was in preschool. he's a 4th grader now! yet, i feel like i got to the 70's so much faster than i thought i would, if at all.
anyway, so i was thinking. i don't think it's really sunk in yet. how much i've lost, in my head. how much smaller i am. and when i see out of town family...oi what a shock it will be lol!
Last edited by katy trail; 12-06-2010 at 07:44 PM.
I keep thinking I'm smaller than I am, which while nice for my ego ends up being more damaging when I realize what's up. I wish I had the opposite problem - it's always better to be pleasantly surprised than the alternative. The first time I lost a considerable amount of weight, in high school, I thought I was bigger than I was and it took months to figure out my actual size. Then as I gained a bunch back, my mental perception of my size stayed at 130. Whoops!
It is kind of nice to go out shopping to a Japanese juniors' store and find that my size - the biggest size in the store, approx. a US 4/6 - is the one that's been most picked over. Being almost Japanese-average is fine by me, given the average female BMI here is 20.8. Unfortunately though, when I go out shopping or to a big city, most women my age I see are a US 00-2 and I feel like Moby Dick all over again.
Weird body image experience at the gym
But I can't. Today at the gym I marveled at how well my best friend has done with weight loss. We've both lost 80 pounds, though I believe she's over that now. She's still 30 pounds heavier than I am and she's the same height. I looked at her and thought, "Wow, she's beautiful. I wish I had her small little body." 
Going for your masters any time soon, Megan? 
