Did you ever have an experience where what you saw in the mirror was not true to your weight loss efforts? It's terrible... I worked so hard to lose all the weight, and just kept telling myself that once I lost the weight, I would be perfect, I would have no more worries about my body image. And then, when I hit my original goal, (which I later lowered because I was unhappy with the results), I looked in the mirror and STILL thought, "Fat. Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat."
At first, I just decided that I wasn't skinny enough, that I had to keep losing. A few things have altered this frame of mind for me. The first: I was out shopping with my mom and saw an overweight woman wearing shorts, and I looked at my figure in a store mirror, (I was also wearing shorts), and tried to figure out if I was skinnier than her (I know, this is a really sick practice, but I still do it). My mom caught me doing it, and I asked her, "do you think I look better than her?" because I really couldn't tell. My mom just gaped at me. "I would estimate that that woman weighs 300 pounds," she told me. At the time that I asked, I probably weighed 140, and I'm 5'5".
The point is, what I saw in the mirror was drastically different from the reality. I have come to the conclusion that weight loss is not just a physical transformation... it's a mental one as well. Your brain and your self-confidence has to catch up with your body to register how much you have lost before you can really know how good you look.
Another thing that made this a reality for me was seeing picture's from my best friend's 18th birthday party... I wore a classic "little black dress," and I just remember standing in front of the mirror in her bedroom the night of the party, wearing the dress with heels and my hair done, and thinking I looked fat. When I later saw pictures, I was astounded... I looked gorgeous. In fact, I looked REALLY skinny. This almost scares me, because it leads me to believe that I have absolutley no control over my weight loss if I can't even really SEE myself, you know?
Can anyone relate to this type of distorted body image?
I can totally understand how you are feeling....I am now 119lbs and my goal weight was 125 or so....Often times I feel like I am still 190lbs...when I was FAT I thought "I just want people to look at me and not think I look pregnant, or not to know I have 3 kids..."...But now I KNOW I look good....I have yet to have a bad pic taken and when I think I look bad I look pretty good still......Yet now I feel like I dont want people to look at me and if they do I wonder why....I thought once I hit this weight all my confidence would be here and I'd feel great...and LOVE people (guys) looking at me....BUT, my hubby is constantly saying "you look hot" and for some reason I know I am, but I dont want others to look at me...lol...I think sometimes our brains need to catch up to our bodies eh??
I have a distorted body image as well. Mine is strange. It's like sometimes I don't realize how fat I am. Yet I have self esteem issues about my weight It's a twisted mess that I'm trying to sort out along the way....
I can relate to all of this. I have to take progress pictures because I can't ever tell I've lost weight by looking at myself in the mirror. Even when my clothes are looser, or I drop a size I still appear the same to myself.
However, I also am sometimes shocked when I see pictures to see how fat I am/was because I never thought of myself as being That Big.
I feel the same way . . . I know I am smaller, and sometimes I can feel that I am getting thinner, but just today I was thinking "wow, if I'm this fat now, I must have been REALLY fat when I started!"
I have this one dress, which I bought a couple years ago when I weighed around 150 after a crash diet. But when I put it on now, I still feel like I am not thin enough to wear it. My stomach sticks out and it is just unflattering. I have to wonder what I was thinking when I bought it, because I did wear it back then, and I know I am smaller now than I was then. I wonder when I will feel comfortable wearing that dress again.
I have the same issues...I am almost to goal but keep thinking "well just a little more and I'll fit into a size 4" and while that may be true I don't know that I NEED to be a size 4. And I continue to wear my clothes that have gotten too big for me. To the point that yesterday I wore a pair of new shorts that were the right size and kept asking my boyfriend "do i look fat in these? i feel like my thighs are busting out of them" and he just looked at me like i was ridiculous. he said no that's just how shorts are supposed to look not all baggy and showing off your underwear. And even though I am pretty comfortable in a bikini now there are still times I find myself "positioning" on the beach chairs so not to look "fat". I don't know if these feelings will ever go away...but hopefully they won't matter as much.
I deffinately have a distorted body image. I've lost 25 pounds but don't "see" it in the mirror. I've gone from a size 14/16 to a size *8*, a size I've never ever been before in my life, and a size I thought I'd finally be "happy" to be, and I'm already trying to see if I can get down to a size 6 or even a size *4*. Instead of fantisizing about being a size 10 or 8 like I did when I was a size 16, I fantasize about being a size 6 and "finally happy." It's really sad.
And I too look at larger people when I'm at the mall and compare their body to my own. It's the only way I'm able to convince myself that I am actually "thin".
i agree, it IS a mental transformation, probably more than anything. if you don't accept yourself and love yourself, you are going to keep saying "oh i only i was a size 4... a size 2.... a size 0... a size 00" and that is definitely not a path to happiness. not everyone is built to be a size 2, i think that needs to be realized and accepted. even if you do get to that elusive size, are you really going to be happier?
i have body image issues sometimes too but i know that its stupid to define myself by my weight or size, because i am so much more than that. sounds cheesy, but is true.
I completely agree with everything that all or you are saying. I've lost 40lbs since the start of the year, and while i do see and feel the difference in my body, it seems like the areas i don't like stand out even more. I know my belly is smaller than it used to be, but it seems to be just as big as ever. I know i've got less cellulite than i used to have, but what's still there just glares at me and says "you're fat." I'm the smallest i've been since middle school and granted, i've still got a ways to go, i wish i could enjoy what i've accomplished up to this point more.
Christine
i completely know the feeling, especially about getting to that 'perfect size'...one thing i know that helps is to look at older pictures of myself and ones i take now...sounds funny but it really helps to look at them covering up my head and just look at the body...kind of just see it as though it is not me, but someone else's body
once you look at yourself in an objective way, or de-personalized, you kind of can get a better view of how people see you....for me i see myself as that 85lb frame and just see how sick i must have really looked..looking at pictures now i just feel so much better...
its kind of like a mental trick, just see the body in the picture as not you, and try and gauge how you 'really' look
I would totally look at old pictures of myself to compare, except that I avoided having pictures taken of me when I was at my highest weight, so I have like no "before" pictures. All the pictures of myself I keep around are good ones from when I weighed less!
What's weird is how totally random it seems whether I think I look good or whether I feel fat. Yesterday, I was wearing a new T-shirt I got (in a size M, no less), and right when I put it on and looked in the mirror, my first thought was "Hey! I look pretty good!" My bf agreed. A few hours later, I looked in the mirror again, and thought "Wow, my tummy is really sticking out, I looks pretty fat." ??? Nothing had changed in those few hours. Why did I look at myself one time and think I looked good, and the second time I thought I looked fat?
I'm trying to realize when I'm doing stuff like that, and think "well, if I thought I looked good earlier, there must have been a reason." I also do what a bunch of you said you do, where every single time I see a larger woman, I compare myself to her to reassure myself that I'm actually thinner. Like "at least I'm not as big as she is."
I had the realization the other day at the mall that I'm actually a few sizes too small to shop at Lane Bryant! I have never really fit in their clothes, but I was usually on the borderline of being able to shop there, and it's surprising to me that I'm not a size 14 (AFAIK, the smallest they carry), or a 12, but I actually fit into size 8 jeans the other day. To be honest, even though I am very happy about fitting in an 8, my first thought when I pulled those jeans on was "they must have made their sizes bigger, or I wouldn't fit."
Everyone is talking about their feelings after actually loosing weight (or gaining) and I have to say that it is totally a day to day thing. It happens shortly after I get up in the morning. I get out of bed (and I can't see, I wear contacts and am almost totally blind with out them), go pee, go to the sink - wash my hands then I wash my face (usually with cold water) and then I put my contacts in. What I see in those first few seconds of clear vision dictates how I feel for the rest of the day. One day I can see puffy face and then my eyes will move down the mirror and I will see saggy cellulite belly and boobs that see to say "Look Krista!! There is the floor! you really need to scrub that....." anyway - for the rest of the day I feel fat. The very next day I can look in the mirror and be pleased with what I see. I look at my body and only see all of the progress I have made and the wonderful things my body has accopmlished. I ran 3 miles the day before and my saggy boobs arn't taunting me, they are reminding me that they provided the primary food source for MONTHS for my son. My belly isn't stretched out and disgusting, the stretch marks are battle scars and I see my belly as on it's way back into shape.
My point is - body image is 99.9% psychological! The difference between those days is 0 pounds. The only other main factor is my exercise level from the day before. If I had exercised the day prior I have a greater chance of seeing myself as a sexy ***** that day.
The best thing I ever did for myself and my body image was to "reformat" how my brain processes what my eyes see when I look in the mirror. I try my best to see what my body has done and accomplished, and see my body as seperate from other people's bodies. It is like my "mental airbrush".
McCrew - when you said that your weight never bothered you until other kids at school told you that you were. I had a very similar experience. I was at a sleep over with about 10 other girls and we were doing impressions of the other kids at school. Two girls got up an went into the open kitchen (we all could see it from the living room) and got a plate and just piled it high with food, I was sitting there thinking, "what are they doing?", and all of the other girls laughed and yelled out my name as an answer. I was totally shocked and embarassed. I think I just laughed and prayed that we would move on, but I (obviously) never forgot it and how mortified I felt. That was the begining of a lovely eating disorder. I pretty much stopped eating in public and would never order my food for myself. When I was at home I would totally binge and then try to purge, but because I have no gag reflex I was a purge failure, which was a good thing - in a way.
Anyway, I think that I have been totally rambleing on here so I am going to shut-up.
Later Ladies ---
Last edited by BrunetteChic_2000; 06-20-2005 at 12:53 PM.
Distorted Body Image
It's a twisted mess that I'm trying to sort out along the way....
