I don't think you are oversensitive. But you take it in/react differently than I do.
If the person is seeming down, I try to be supportive. But if the person is chronically down like this... that's deeper than internet people could do for each other. The person needs different kind of level support than I can give.
I also don't have patience for hate talk like "I am disgusting blubber unfit to live!" or something. Never have. I don't see how listening to that toxic talk helps me maintain my own mental health, so I avoid listening to toxic talk, and I avoid getting pulled into it. Bad day is one thing "I feel frumpy today." Serious self esteem/body image problems is another. "I am disgusting blubber unfit to live!"
So I keep my distance when I realize the poster has more baggage than merely a bad day. I just think "Whoa... issues! Got my own baggage, thanks!" and move on. I always hope the person can go find help and eventually some peace. But I don't care to be a part of their process. It wouldn't be healthy for ME.
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I feel hot--yes, at my current weight [snip] Am I delusional for feeling sexy as **** in my current incarnation? Is my husband blind?
Great! I'm one sexy honey bunny too! Enjoy it and don't worry about it. You've merely blinded your DH with your astounding loveliness! Keep that inner voice plugged in for sure!
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--and get a little peevish at reading about someone's horrible fate for being trapped in a body as small or smaller than mine. If you are describing yourself as a whale at X00 or X50 pounds, what have you just said about the person who is Y00 or Y50?
I'd just gently suggest unplugging that voice. The "If you think you are awful at X, what does that say about ME at Y?" because that's often one of the slippery slopes to body image bashing. When you start to compare to others and pick at yourself.
Remember when you read these things from other posters. It's not about you. And just because someone has overloaded body image baggage... it doesn't mean YOU have to go pick it up and tote it around.
I do not think you are being overly sensitive. You have a right to your feelings just as much as they do. I also don't think that most of the people who post things like that have any intention of making anyone else feel bad and would probably be horrified to know that they had done so. I just try to remember that part when I see those posts. I also don't really respond to them much because I don't know those issues.
You are also not delusional and your hubby is not blind. I know this because I know I'm not delusional and my hubby has better than 20/20 vision, just ask his doc! We are the same height and I'm not that far below you in the weight department, and have been where you are. I have my fat days, most people do. For the most part though, I know that I am hottness and if the world doesn't like it they can kiss my somewhat larger than average, but still hot, butt!
When I weighed 125 lbs and had measurements of 36-26-36..my father had me convinced I was fat.....I had terrible self esteem issues and I truly believed I was disgusting...
Add a little over 100 pounds to that figure and I find myself definitely wanting to lose the weight...but most days I dont have my fathers words in my head telling me how disgusting I am. Two wonderful children who love me no matter what size I am silences the thoughts.
Others words can really distort someones body image. Those people though smaller may genuinely feel that way, it doesn't discount those feelings and I am definitely not trying to discount your feelings of aggravation towards those posters...just trying to give you a different perspective.
Thanks, folks; I appreciate all the different perspectives, and they've certainly helped restore my equilibrium.
I hope I didn't come off as a bit of an insensitive boob myself. I spent years weighing 135 pounds in high school and feeling wretched at that weight, so I definitely understand how much of this is our own self-perception and not objective facts about what's a "bad" size and what's not.
It's kind of silly in retrospect, but I wrote this post because there was ONE thread that made me feel snarly, yet I now feel a little sheepish and hope I didn't throw shade on the thinner ladies here. It was never my intent, especially as the thread that triggered my grouchiness wasn't even from someone smaller than me.
I apologize if I was a little bit of a jerk. I'm feeling decidedly less jerky now, especially after this discussion. Y'all know I love ya no matter what our respective sizes are.
oh Nola...those frustrated feelings dont make you a jerk...we all have our moments and I love the support found on this site. We all can empathize with each other during this battle with our weights...
There are a lot of people who read these boards. Some are way smaller than others. Some are way bigger than others. Mostly we all cohabit pretty nicely, but every once in a while, there are posts about how disgusting and vile and insupportably ugly the poster feels at X00 or X50 pounds, how the original poster can't even bear to leave the house or look down at herself while bathing or whatever because she's just so torn up about how hideous an X00-pound body is.
When I see these posts and realize that the person posting them is my size or smaller, I kind of want to pull someone's hair out (mine or the poster's, I don't know which). Even when the person posting is larger than me, I think about all the beautiful, lively, happy women who are the poster's size who've just been insulted by proxy and indirectly told that they should feel too ashamed to leave home.
I feel hot--yes, at my current weight--and get a little peevish at reading about someone's horrible fate for being trapped in a body as small or smaller than mine. If you are describing yourself as a whale at X00 or X50 pounds, what have you just said about the person who is Y00 or Y50? Am I delusional for feeling sexy as **** in my current incarnation? Is my husband blind?
On the other hand, I know we're all different. Someone who's comfortable at X50 might feel great at X00 while another might have to shed more before she feels okay about herself. It's good that people can come here and express their thoughts freely and without censure. Maybe I'm just being hypersensitive to that kind of thing.
And of course I don't have to read or respond to posts I dislike. I don't like to pass up the "Help me!" type posts, but when I open one and it's a litany of how disgusting and miserable the poster is at half my weight, well...I can't really help with that, considering the poster apparently feels that I should be pelted with rotten vegetables until I drag my vast bulk back into the house and away from decent people's view. Yeesh, sorry I even tried to help. :P
Whew, I feel better just for venting a little. Like a lot of us, I'm guilty of negative self-talk occasionally, but sometimes it gets under my skin a little to see the same phrases written out on these boards, y'know? I think that's my problem and not other posters' problems, maybe, but it wouldn't hurt to be cognizant of how that stuff affects others, too.
lol..that is why I hated living at home with two skinny sisters and mom. I needed to lose like 50lbs at the time, and they didn't need to lose any, yet they would whine about imaginary weight and how fat they felt. I wanted to deck them so many times, it wasn't funny.
If they thought they were gross and fat, what did they think about me? Funny thing is, when I moved out and later moved to Cali and got married, my body issues slowy started going away. Weird how that works..
A lot of people are much harder on themselves than on other people! In a bad mood I can look in the mirror and say "Ewww" and completely discount the positive. I know women who cry about being fat but they look fine. I think it's a self-esteem thing. Having to be perfect just to be okay.
On the other hand (hate that other hand!) when I was young my sis (who was anorexic for a time) almost opened a vein when she found out we wore the same size jeans! I had lost a ton and wore a size 8, which is tiny for me. She cried and cried. Really hurt my feelings. Twenty years later? She's a size four and knows she's too thin. I was a 22/24 and fit in my 18/20s again and PROUD OF IT!
I often feel the same way, when someone is saying horrible things about themselves at half my size. My first impulse isn't always sympathetic. However, I've had much slimmer friends and even close family who've had a harder time with weight and body issues and self esteem than I have.
Many times over the years, I've wanted my mom to go swimming with me (which I love) and even at more than 150 lbs smaller than I, she just wouldn't do it. She says he just can't do it, but admires my "courage," but the way she says it, I think at least a small part of her is thinking "insanity" when she says courage.
When I think about it, I do feel very sorry (to the point of pity) for smaller women who loathe themselves. I've never deeply loathed myself (I've tried at times with some success, because I knew I was "supposed to" but I never managed to really despise myself like I was taught to do. It just never completely sunk in. I was lucky, even as a small child not to see the point. I didn't see how hating myself was supposed to help).
I remember somewhere around first or second grade having a fat P.E. teacher torment me about my weight (and he'd actually encourage the other kids to tease me). It got to the point I hated to go to school on P.E. days. My mom went to speak to the teacher, and he said he was trying to inspire me to lose weight, by getting me mad enough to fight back, to "show him" by losing weight. Sadly my mom thought it was a pretty good rationale - or at least it was worth a shot (I was already a veteran dieter by then as i was put on my first diet in kindergarten and was a card-carrying member of Weight Watcher's by 8). Even at 7 or 8, I knew that it wasn't an effective strategy - it only made me want to eat more to feel better.
While I can objectively feel sorry for someone who judges themselves far more harshly than I judge myself. I can't hang around and spend a lot of time chatting with those people, because it gets me thinking I should be harsher on myself (and in my experience that's a very dangerous path for me to go down. I cannot hate myself thin. That's never worked. I can only love and pamper myself thinner).
When I joined Weight Watchers in graduate school, I was so relieved to see they had a meeting only for people who at their starting weight had at least 100 lbs to lose. People with less to lose weren't exactly banned from the meeting, but the meeting was definitely geared towards the concerns and issues of people with large amounts to lose. Every once in a while some featherweight would attend the meeting because it was the only meeting that fit in their schedule, one such person came to the meeting and talked about how "lucky" we all were to have so much to lose, because we'd see results sooner, and that there wasn't as much social expectations on us to look our best... I don't remember her whole rant, but she's rather lucky the group didn't lynch her. I (being a graduate student in psychology) recognized her as probably having a personality disorder that prevented her from being sympathetic, she probably always assumes life is harder than everyone else's (only because she can only perceive her feelings).
You don't have to have a personality disorder to understand your own feelings better than someone else's. To some degree we're all hampered by that fact. We can't walk in another person's shoes, only our own.
When I first started losing weight over a year ago, it was because of an issue that was really similar to your current frustrations.
My girlfriend, who had put on weight, had a doctor's appointment. After, she texted me: "OMG, I weigh 180lbs! Its crisis mode!!!"
I thought I was at about 240lbs at the time and all i could think was "I have 60lbs on you and YOU think you're at crisis mode?!". Granted, I was actually at 260lbs and had 80lbs on her.
The thing was, for my girlfriend, this really WAS her crisis. She had never been a size 14 in her life, she had never seen a number higher than 170 on her scale before. She honestly felt just as awful at 180lbs as I did at 260.
I will never know why I didn't have my "crisis" moment at 180lbs or 220lbs or even 240lbs. But for those who manage to connect to the issue before I did, I try and just remember how freaked out my girlfriend was. For her, those extra 25lbs were just as upsetting at the 100lbs I had/have to lose.
As for the sexy, hot thing, I still thought I was hot at 260.....as did my partner.....just as I thought she was sexy at her "crisis" 180lbs. Attractiveness is more than just weight, imo
Nothing jerky at all about feeling that way. Nothing at all. It only makes sense to be annoyed and perplexed at how thinner people than us can go on about how "fat" they are.
Just a little observation that has probably already been made here - I think feeling fat and being fat are often quite different things. It really depends on which direction, up or down, on the scale you're going for a given number to have completely different implications. Everyone has fat days, bloated days, off-plan muckup days, even just plain dysmorphic days to speak of, regardless of size.
I do think it's extremely insensitive and downright jerk-y in real-life situations for someone who is much smaller than the person they're with to moan and complain about being "soooooo fat." I remember my freshman roommate throwing a fit about going from a size 0 to a 2 and just feeling like an invisible mound of garbage.
In a lot of cases, my reaction is also a sort of pity. It makes me really sad that these people are living their lives hidden away because they happen to be fat (or in some cases, barely overweight). When you do that, you're living life on other people's terms - and not only that, but the terms of a vicious societal ideal that is cruel to everyone.
Live life. Enjoy life. Love life. A happy, fulfilled life does not magically appear when you achieve a BMI of 25 or below; if it did, thin people wouldn't have any problems and would all be happy, which is clearly not the case.
I'm gonna have to ditto the people that mentioned how awesome the OP's confidence is though!
The mind is a powerful thing. How a person feels about themselves comes from many factors, upbringing, social setting, self confidence, etc. That is why there are super skinny models who eat nothing and still think they are "fat."
You saying you're hot doesn't make you wrong by any means! It means that other people think you are too, and that you have the confidence in yourself to post it on here and be comfortable in your own skin, something too many people lack.
I do think it's extremely insensitive and downright jerk-y in real-life situations for someone who is much smaller than the person they're with to moan and complain about being "soooooo fat." I remember my freshman roommate throwing a fit about going from a size 0 to a 2 and just feeling like an invisible mound of garbage.
Yes, that's the kind of thing I mean!
Sure, the size-2 chick's feelings of "crisis mode" are valid for her. I wouldn't ever want to play the "let's compare our pain" game. Someone can feel like crap at a size that's my dream weight and I can totally understand and offer support.
When I get crabby is when it's so overblown that it no longer rings true, when it seems more like fishing or drama than genuine pain. It's like the woman Kaplods was talking about at the WW meeting--there's no way she sincerely felt that women she assumed had lessened societal expectations placed on them were lucky. She was right, but not for why she thought; the other people in that meeting were lucky--they didn't have to turn an entire WW group into a reassurance generator just to feel all right about themselves.
I'm convinced that some people do it strictly to fish for assurances, and I do feel a bit sorry for people who need such assurance on a regular basis. A tiny mean part of me wants to say, "Ahmahgawd, you are SO right, you are such a big ol' house that you should fear a tornado picking you up and dropping you on a witch any day now!" My better nature (such as it is) has so far taken over, fortunately. I would never want to be cruel, but sometimes there's this temptation to teach a lesson that's almost irresistible.
"Ahmahgawd, you are SO right, you are such a big ol' house that you should fear a tornado picking you up and dropping you on a witch any day now!" My better nature (such as it is) has so far taken over, fortunately. I would never want to be cruel, but sometimes there's this temptation to teach a lesson that's almost irresistible.
I LIKE your mean streak, Nola!
Totally agreed with everything you've said. Social context is everything, and it's very, VERY rare for any situation to deem "histrionic whining" as "acceptable."
