So as I have finally lost enough weight that people are starting to take notice, I began thinking... can I delete my FB page, all pictures of me fat, and start over from scratch? I don't want new people I meet to look at my old pictures and make assumptions about my character based on my having been overweight. Have any of you guys thought about this? Any of you planning on doing it?

If anyone makes assumptions about your character because you were heavier, they're probably not worth having as friends.

I'm not deleting any of my old pictures. It's not like I can erase my life and it would be a shame to attempt to do so just because I was obese for the majority of my life! I have wonderful experiences and friends that weren't diminished simply because I weighed too much.

I think it would be a major pain to delete an active Facebook account and start another one. You'll have to completely reconstruct your friends list and it will be confusing for your friends. If you really want to remove all the old photos of yourself, you could just detag yourself in your friends' photos and remove all your photo albums.

I don't think you should do that, though. I look at it like sontaikle does - my Facebook account reflects my life and I have a lot of accumulated memories there. I wouldn't want to lose them just because I don't look my best in the pictures.

Also, if I found out someone used to be overweight but was maintaining a normal weight, I would have on balance more positive thoughts about her character than negative.

Also, I don't want to be a downer, but... the chances of relapse for all of us are quite high. Would you want to purge your Facebook/photos every time you think of your past self as overweight? You might lose memories from great swaths of your life if you don't maintain perfectly.

If you were on my friends list and did that, I'd be annoyed to have to add you again.

Worried about people's assumptions if they see you bigger? I
f people see pics of when you were heavy and then see you aren't anymore, chances are their assumptions are gonna be something like, "Holy crap, she's a really strong and devoted person to have come so far! IMPRESSIVE!"

Agreed with the above posters that I have no intentions of deleting all photographic records of my life while fat. I took amazing trips and had wonderful nights with friends that I'd hate to pretend just didn't happen because I was fat. If you are that concerned about it though, just untag the photos up currently. Otherwise, when you friend people from the new account, they're just going to tag you in those photos again, now on the new account.

In my experience, FB is a social networking site used for people who know each other to connect. Unless you're friending a bunch of total strangers, people likely know you IRL and know that you've been overweight. I agree with everyone else, I wouldn't delete photographic evidence of my past simply because I don't like the way I look. Trips, friends, events... none of the joy and fun in those memories are diminished because of my weight.

Well, I'll be finishing graduating around the time I get to my goal weight and moving to an entirely different city where I don't know anybody. I make friends really easily, even heavy, so I anticipate meeting a bunch of new people.

If any of my friends are annoyed by having to click their mouse twice to re-add me as a friend, they probably aren't the kind of people I want to be friends with anyway.

I don't allow people to see my tagged photos anyway, as too many of them are incriminating, so I am only thinking of photos on my own page, photos I have independently of FB regardless. I have wayyy too many "friends" on FB, though, and I only really care about <5% of them.

I'm not concerned about relapse. All I have to do is NOT relapse, and I have pretty stellar willpower. May sound naive, but if you knew me, you'd probably not feel that way.

I personally judge people who used to be fat differently than people who have always been in shape. Not necessarily judge them negatively, but I base some of my perceptions of them on the fact they used to be fat and are now not. I don't want my new life to be polluted by my previous poor decisions.

Meh, guess I'm crazy.

^^^ THIS ^^^


It's a hard step to take to decide to just decide to weed out the *******s, but you'll be much happier you did in the long run. Who wants to associate with people who they always have to be on edge around/worry whether they're being negatively judged by? Life's too short for that middleschool crap.

No one is perfect, and if your worst crime in life is at one point having eaten too many krispy kremes, then none of those people really have any right to pass judgement on you.

Can I ask why? Why does it matter if a person is heavy or skinny or if they were heavy at one point? Being thin or fat doesn't make someone a better person than someone else.

Here's the thing. I have documented my weight loss from start to now on Facebook. Friends have been UBER supportive.

I too thought of deleting all of my old pictures at one point and then my bootcamp coach said "If you do that, you are forgetting where you came from and what you went through to get here, you are deleting half of your life". and it's kind of true.

You can delete all the pictures you want from Facebook, but if you're anything like me and you get on it at least once a day, you should probably keep them. They remind me of where I was and how far I've come. I wouldn't want to be fake about that. In fact, I'm PROUD of how far I've come and have realized by keeping those pictures up, it has made so many new friends I've made see that they can lose weight too!

Yeah, i gotta say, I agree with you. That post on judging folks who used to be fat and are no longer....that is just...weird to me.

Well, for starters, I think that in order to become very overweight, you have to at some point and on some level, not care enough about yourself to prevent it from happening. Also, I haven't been fat my whole life, certainly not for half of it. I know I went through some depression/self-worth issues and gained weight. I know other friends who just cared MORE about eating/drinking in excess. No real depression, but still put value on things before themselves. That is an assumption I make about everyone who has been extremely overweight. I am sure there are exceptions, but that doesn't change my perception of it being true for 99% of overweight people or people who were overweight. I don't think badly of them because of it, but it still in SOME way changes my perception of that person. I think that you guys are lying to yourselves or to me if you say that you don't make assumptions about people based on similar things.

I get on FB like twice a month to accept/deny friend requests, but I've also had my account for just over 7 years.

Couldn't disagree more. I was obese, I grew up overweight. At 5, 6, 7 years old it has nothing to do with caring about yourself. You're just following in someone's footsteps. I learned very quickly that food was a quick-fix for emotional pain. There are a MILLION reasons why people gain weight- I would say that for VERY few people it is as simple as caring more about eating then about themselves. I'm sure that some people find themselves in situations similar to yours, but I would argue that the majority have different stories. It's unfair to assume people are just like you and then judge them for it.

When I find out that someone has lost a bunch of weight, I see them as a strong, powerful, capable individual. It takes courage and a significant amount of inner strength to lose weight- you know this, you've done it! We have enough people who judge us, we shouldn't be doing it to each other!

I don't like having myself tagged in pictures on FB for anyone to see... so I deleted all the tags. Doesn't mean that the pictures still aren't up there, but someone would have to look through my friends albums to find them.

I do the same thing. Well actually people can tag me but only my family and a handful of friends can see the tagged photos (a setting in photo sharing). I also made all of my albums private and I have the pictures but not for everyone to see. I understand not wanting people to see your fat pictures. I looked bad and it is embarrassing. It is not that I deleted any pics, I just don't want to share them with the world. This is one thing that people did not have to deal with a decade ago. It kind of stinks.