My next door neighbor and I were discussing this today. She was telling me how she and her co-workers agreed that if a person was thin as a youngster and then got heavier as an adult that they still perceive themself as thin. (ie: still believes they can fit into those small clothes,etc.) But, that if a person was overweight when young, and lose weight as adult it is more difficult for them to ever see themself as thin . What does everyone else think?

I told her that for me it was quite the opposite. I was thin as a young person and with the added weight in adulthood, I felt absolutely huge. Now that I have lost a lot of weight, I still perceive myself as larger than I actually am.
She said that since she was thin as a young person, that she picks up a size 8 now and thinks she can wear them, only to find that "no, they are too small" and it surprises her.

I am sure that everyone perceives this differently but thought it was a thought provoking discussion. Sorry this made sense when we were discussing it, but it sounds kind of confusing to me now.

I was an overweight child and have always percieved myself as heavy. But I think I ended up with the "I'm not THAT big" syndrome when I was at my heaviest. I think denial played a part in that. And now, I have an incredibly difficult time not thinking I look MUCH heavier than I actually am. For example, my aunt is a size 18, and I always don't believe my mom when she says that, because I think there's no way that I wear a smaller size than she does. I always look at her and say, "I've got to be bigger than that, it's impossible." But I don't think my childhood weight has a part in that; I believe it's poor body image and low self-esteem. I'm bordering on BDD.

I think we're blueprinted as children: no one forgets what it's like to live in a thin body and no one forgets what it's like to live in a heavy body. It's probably hard to shake those blueprints. I always look at thin people and wonder what it's like to live in a thin body since I never have, even as a child.

This thread struck a chord with me. I was very thin, too thin, before my children were born (I weighed 120 when I became pregnant with my son) and it really did skew my perception of my size...until I saw photos of me at 160 I really didn't have any concept of how large I was (and let me say, 160 is a fine weight for some people my height, but I did NOT carry it well). I definately pictured myself as being thinner than I was.

Now I have the opposite problem; I'm down to 135 but when I look in the mirror I still see the same person that was in those photographs, I think the image is burned into my retinas. I *know* that 135 is a good weight for me, it's the weight I was at before my second child was born and looking at photographs I know I looked my best at that weight, but I can't reconcile that with the image I see in the mirror.

Tanya

Lily I hear ya! This is a rant I posted on my livejournal about stuff like that about a week ago.

Does anyone else ever notice that no matter what you weigh, it seems someone always weighs less than you and you feel humongous? When I look back at my life and my pics it is the same story. I noticed a huge difference after having one of my kids as to the previous one. At the time I felt the same though. HUGE. But when I look at the pics, we are talking about like a 40 pound difference!! Then I look at pics of when I was a kid. I always thought I was the fat kid. Once in a while I was a bit chunky. But the times when I thought I was HUGE. I wasn't. The times when I was HUGE. I just didn't give a "care" by then. I am glad I care now and am getting back on the train towards losing again. I lost 25 pounds last year. I have lost about 25 pounds this year too. I still have a ways to go before I am happy with my weight but I am getting there. Oh and I figured out exactly WHY we women feel that way. Because no matter what size you are, there is always someone smaller than you. If you are a 20, there is someone who is a 16. If you are a 16, there is someone who is a 12. If you are a 12, there is someone who is an 8. If you are an 8, there is someone who is a 5. If you are a size 5, here is someone who is a size 2! I am not kidding! It is rediculous!! Not to mention the fact some people do have smaller bone structures than others. *sigh* I have decided to "heck" with all that. I am going to love how I look and myself no matter what size I am. Yet not be complacent to just be lazy and not change it. I am going to work toward losing and while I am doing it, just be happy with the success I have had and look forward to more of the same. Not look at the woman who is a size 5 and feel fat. Does anyone else ever feel that way?

Interesting question!

I was a very thin person (though never thin enough). At the time I knew I was thin but at the same time I thought I was fat.....go figure! So, the pictures of me at that time (and there are precious few) I was probably a size 6 dressing in size 14 clothes. Literally.

Then I gained weight, and gained and gained and now I am 173 and believe me, I know what I look like! In a weird way, I probably have a healthier body image now at an unhealthy weight then I did when I was thin.

I think I learned my lesson, though. When I get to my goal I do plan on dressing in the right size this time

I was a heavy child and when I lost weight in HS I still felt HUGE, but of course that probably had a lot to do with most of the girls at my HS were puny! (Except for the friends I hung out with) Now as I'm older and a lot FATTER I can now say I was not too bad when I was in HS, after the WL. BUT how many of you here even after you have lost some weight and you thought you were doing good, your drs still tell you, you are overweight?

I know they have to go by their height and weight thingys but I think sometimes they should see if the person has lost a lot of weight and maybe they aren't ever going to be "thin" according to the height and weight charts?

Because I honestly can never see myself getting down to where I am "Supposed to be". I have a bigger body frame. But maybe I just never have tried hard enough? In HS I lost 50 lbs and got down to 170 lbs. Now to some that is still too big. But for my body frame and all, I looked pretty good. But my drs still considered me "overweight". At the time I wanted to lose 20 more lbs and that was good enough for me, even though according to the height and weight charts I am supposed to be about 130-135? (I'm 5'4") Well I looked it up and according to the chart I found, with a "large frame" I should weigh between 131 - 151? Isn't that a BIG gap????? So I guess I would be "normal" at 151? I dunno those charts confuse me!!!!!!!!

Sassy, I know what you mean about the Dr's. Mine was adamant that I lose the weight. When I started I was 234lbs. and he totally made me feel lazy and ashamed. My next appointment was 4 months later and I had lost 35lbs. and was down from a size 20 to a 14 and I was very happy with my progress. At this time time he made reference to my still "double chin" which I thought had improved a lot. It did hurt my feelings. 4 months later, I saw him again, I was down 30 more lbs. to 169. I was wearing a size 8 and feeling Darn good. He told me at this time that I needed to get to 150. This was upsetting for me, but I thought "to heck with him, I'll go for 145 so he can't ever say another thing about my weight again. Sure enough 4 months later for my scheduled appt. I was down to 147(wearing a size 4) and he says "Only about 10% of my patients ever lose the weight that I want them to lose". I thought "OMG, I didn't think I had a choice". Then he looks at his BMI chart and says "So, You're 5'4 right" and I say "NO, I"m 5'7". So all in all he was trying to keep pushing me to lose more and didn't even know my heighth or my BMI. This was aggravating to say the least. I can't change dr's because he is my appointed Hepatologist through my insurance company. I thank him that he got me started to lose the weight, but I didn't like the pressure or feeling that no matter how much I lost that it wasn't good enough. My next appt. with him is the end of December and I'm trying so hard to maintain, that I keep losing more. I'm 138lbs. as of this morning. But, with holidays coming up, I'm sure I'll probably be around my goal when I see him again.

You can refuse to be weighed at the doctor's office. They can't make you do it. And if they don't know your weight, that pretty much cuts off any discussion of whether or not you're losing enough.

Hi Lilybelle,

First off for what your dr said, but I'm glad it motivated you!

Now see reading your post made me realize that I do have a larger body frame. Because in HS I weighed 170 (1 lb more than you did when you went back to see your dr. the 2nd time) and you wore a size 8. When I was 170, I wore a size 14 comfortably and had to SQUEEZE into my cousin's size 13's! So I think it does proove that I do have a larger body frame and even if I do by some miracle get down to 130 (what the "charts" say I should weigh), I think I will still be wearing a larger size than others that same weight. But I'm okay with it. I learned long ago that I will never ever be teeny tiny like my parents are. I get my size from my grandmothers (short and stocky).

You know what though? I can't remember my drs ever telling me what I "Should" weigh, only that I need to lose weight. My current family dr is awesome and I am never even weighed there anymore. I keep forgetting because I actually do want to keep track of my weight, even though @ times it can be painful.

I even cried once after getting weighed at a drs office and I had only gained like 5 lbs or something but I was so depressed then I just had a breakdown right then and there! The bad part was it was the very 1st time I had seen this dr! I totally broke down and he was so great and said, "don't worry, we will help you!" That dr is in NY now but like I said I do have an awesome family dr now. (he even looks like Matthew Broderick!) lol. He is very sweet and kind and where he agrees with me that I would be better off if I lost some weight, he doesn't "harp" on me about it.

I can't stand drs that do that as it does the opposite for me. My dad was a "harper" from the 1st day I started gaining weight when I was a child and it never worked. My mom however didn't harp on me and helped me with it (reading ingredients, taking walks, etc) , only when I wanted too, she never forced me and that is when I lost weight. I don't do well with people "harping" on me about anything, instead it will backfire.

Anyways. I am rambling here. lol. Sorry about that............

I hope you all are doing well!

I know what you mean! I was "fat" in school, but in reality I wasn't really. I think I grew into my fat label when I went to secondary school. Then I starved myself for a while and while I was slimmer, I was never thin. I still couldn't shop at the trendy clothes shops and I still couldn't "pull" a boyfriend

Now, I am a reasonable size (UK14 - US12 I think) and I'm pretty tall and muscular and I WANT to be this size, I think being any thinner and I'd lose my girls and my hips and my muscles But I half of me still thinks that because some size 14s are a squeeze and my HUGE legs don't fit into some types of trousers then I must be as big as I ever was. Sometimes I'm surprised when I fit into the next size down because I see 12 as "skinny". My wedding dress is a 12 (they know how to flatter you into spending money ) and I feel so skinny in it! It's just a label and a number, but I feel better in my size 12 dress than I do in my size 16 trousers!

Sassy, this doctor did make me cry on that first visit. As a specialist he was telling that he couldn't consider putting me on the liver transplant list due to my wt. and the health problems that were being affected by it. I understood this. They can't possibly transplant a healthy liver into someone that is so short of breath they can't hardly move, severely hypertensive , diabetes out of control. These things can all be drastically improved by weight loss. Otherwise, the procedure itself and recovery would kill the patient. Plus the fact that the procedure is very expensive and they wouldn't want to "waste" it on someone that had little chance of long-term survival. He was very direct and to the point about this. It's extremely hard to hear that "if you don't get yourself under control and take this weight off, there's nothing I can do for you". "I want to help you, but you have to be willing to help yourself". His cold-hearted advice, did save my life. Just wanted to clarify all this as the reasons he was so adamant that I lose the weight, it was killing me. I am happy to say now, that I'm at the very bottom of the list for who needs this procedure the worst. I feel so good right now, that I hope everyone that needs a new liver gets one before me. I can wait.

I had to finally look at it as basically the same thing as someone needing a heart or lung transplant and the doctor saying they can't get one if they still smoke. Yes, it hurts, but the truth isn't always what we want to hear.

Some of those docs are just flat out jerks!!

I was thin up until college and that's when I started to gain weight....I never realized how out of control it was, I knew I was heavy but I never thought I was "that" heavy even though at 5'3 215 was way too much for me. I recently got back to 150 before getting pregnant and even now pregnant, I'm only at 162. I look at myself and think, wow I'm so big compared to just 6 months ago but I'm happy knowing I'm not unhealthy like I was in college. I couldn't go back to being that big! Unfortunately, having been that size now makes me look at myself and think I'm still too big.......I'm not sure when that feeling/perception will go away. My postpartum goal is to get back to 135 but I'm not sure if even then I'll stop thinking of myself as big or a bit too heavy.

Lillybelle. I'm so sorry for what you have went through, but like you said, maybe its what you needed. I am glad you are on the list and I do understand what you mean.

Ditto, 2Frus. I always thought I was heavy. Literally ALWAYS. I never remember feeling "normal." EVER. Even though I WAS a normal weight up until about age 18. I look at my senior prom pictures NOW and think "Wow! I was thin." Yet, I spent my entire senior prom night walking around feeling like a humungous, teal-green hippopatumus with big hair (it was the end of the '80s).

And I'm quite happily going the "blame someone else route" and blaming (a) my anorexic mother who had a note on the fridge for 13 years that read, "One orange = 30 calories = FAT, FAT, FAT!!" and (b) my dorky pediatrician who told me I was fat in 5th grade (when I was what today would be considered a normal BMI -- 5'4", 140 lbs) and then sent me home to my anorexic mother .

I will always FEEL fat. Always. I put on a 34D bra, size 8 skirt, and a size medium sweater for work today. Before my weight loss, it would have been a 38DD bra (too small), a size 18 skirt (too small), and an XL sweater (yep, too small). And yet, before I left the house today, I looked in my full-length mirror and saw "fat."

Sorry for the depressing post. I guess you hear something often enough -- or believe something long enough -- and it just gets tattoed on your brain.