Self Image
 

Something I've thought alot about is self image. I rarely let anyone take a full body picture and up until this diet rarely weighed myself, instead going by how I felt and my clothes fit. Just prior to starting this diet I saw a picture of me and was "shocked" :o at how I looked. I was way heavier looking then I thought.
Its interesting now that I'm losing weight how confused I still am as to how I look, I see other women and can't determine if we are similar in size or not. I admit I often see myself as thinner then I am.
Is this something the rest of you have experienced?
How are you adjusting to the rapid weight loss and how you see yourself?

I experience this all the time. I look at my self in the mirror and think holy I'm 10 pounds lighter then I actually am then when I step on the scale, so I ignore the scale because what I see is different. Then there are days I think I'm back up to 180 when I'm still the same weight I was when I felt thin. It's all about your mind and how it can play tricks on you. I think I look good on the camera now and have no problem with the weight I'm at to take pictures then when I was up 10 pounds before. I say if one day you wake up and you think you look amazing go with it and don't worry about thinking, you think you are "thinner" then you really are.

(I'm not doing Ideal Protein but this popped up in the latest post section and was interesting to me.)

I feel like when I was young, I had a sense of my size. I thought I was fat, but I revised that opinion. I was big and stocky though. And I think I went through life comparing myself to other woman, and had a pretty good sense of where I fit in. Bigger than this one, smaller than that. (I wish I wasn't size conscious, but I am.) Once I got to a certain size, however, I had no idea. I still do this. I'm at the grocery store and wonder, Is that how big my butt is? Do I look like that? I just don't know anymore. I had a friend a couple years ago, and I was pretty sure I wasn't as big as her, but just didn't quite know. Turns out she out-weighed me by 100 lbs!

Wow a 100 pound difference, amazing that it can be hard for us to tell a difference like that. Body shapes are all so different too, and clothing sizes. I know I have somewhat of a muscular frame, especially after working out with a trainer for months but I find I weigh almost 20 pounds more then used to wearing the same size clothes...if that makes any sense.

I have the same problem. I don't feel skinny, but I feel curvy. Sometimes when I see photos, I think "that is not me"! Stepping on scales is a reality check,as are photos. If I saw myself my actual weight, I probably would have done something sooner!

when i was heavier, i always thought i was smaller than i actually was. now that i am at a normal weight, i tend to think i am much larger than i actually am. because the weight comes off so quickly on IP, you mind has a really hard time adjusting to your rapidly changing body. at 163 i feel like i'm still 235. i have a hard time seeing the utterly amazing progress that i have made and tend to only see the bad areas that still need improvement. the other day i tried on size 6 jeans, but i felt like i was wearing a 14. it's tough, but i hear that you mid will catch up to your body at some point. hang in there!!!

I agree 100% with laura.

When I was heavier I too thought I was smaller. I would look in the mirror and see someone who was a size 14, not a 18-20. When I saw pictures of myself I just told myself that the camera adds weight.

Now that I am losing weight I am the opposite. I will see a picture and think holy cow I look great! but in the mirror I actually look bigger than how I thought I looked when I was 50lbs heavier!

The mind is a powerful thing! Too bad it can play tricks.

I agree with both Laura and Sandra, I too when I was bigger thought I was a lot smaller, now I look in the mirror and I see a different face, but to me my body looks the same. I am forcing myself to have someone take progress pictures of me. I look at people now and wonder how much do they weigh and did I look like that. I still look at the progress pictures and see my rolls and my chest being way too big but I know it will take a while for my mind to catch up with my body. I know I am now wearing 14s and 12s but still feel like I am wearing 20 and 18s. I think we are always so much more hard on ourselves when we are trying to improve ourselves. I think this is a very common thing and it was a great topic to bring up. Thank you.

Self Image
 

This a very interesting topic to me. As a teenager, and young woman I always thought I was fat, which was totally unrealistic. I look back at yearbooks and pictures and think "oh to look like that again". However I know that thinking came from my childhood and partly from the way I was raised. My mom was always on a diet, always restricting food, probably more for herself than for us kids. My sis and I have had many a discussion about how we would sneak oreos, or my favorite, peanut butter on a spoon. If we were caught we were reprimanded and we remember being told the number of calories we had consumed by eating those 3 cookies, or that spoonful of peanut butter. I even have a memory of drinking hershey's syrup out of the can and my mom catching and making me finish the can (it was a litttle one.... but still a lot). Consequently we both had a lot of warped perceptions about eating and body image. Interestingly we have both fought our weight although I was way more out of control than she ever was. I find myself doing a lot of thinking about how that has affected me as an adult. I have been a food sneaker even til this point in my life, even though it is my food in my house. Sad stuff but part of what I am working to think through and come to terms with now.

I hope as I lose this weight, I am able to appreciate my body for what it is and with my love of working out, build a healthy new one to last me the rest of my days.

Isn't life strange?? :wave::joker:

I too can only see what I haven't lost and still feel as large as I did before I started. Its a shock to me when I put on some clothes and they fit, its like my mind hasn't caught up like Laura said. Then I'll be running down the stairs and feel the difference in how my body feels as I move down them, or how much easier it is to walk up them haha.
Crawfishmonica...I can relate to how your felt growing up and that you thought you were heavy, I'm so suprised to look at old pictures and see I looked great! My mother pushed diets on my sister and I too and I also think it was her own issue and not ours. I am also guilty of eating secretively. Hiding from my own shame I suppose more then anything. NO More though...Its about finding ways to deal with things that don't involve food :)

When i was bigger I was kidding myself to HOW big
& now im losing im just confused.
With the Mirror im see im fatter than i am, But then in pics im DISGUSTED im still that big :(
Other People def see me as thiinner than i am......Which is confusing for me.

I really like www.mybodygallery.com, You can put in your height and weight info and it shows pictures of real women who are the same as you! Its interesting to see someone the same weight as you, but they appear so slim or maybe they appear to be larger. Some people carry weight really well and its nice to see that.

I will chime in here.

When I was 246 and my height....I avoided pictures and the scale...how nice...I could live right where I wanted....DENIAL!

this is weird to see this thread because my daughter and I had a huge conversation about this today. I always thought I wasn't too big...but come on....when you weigh over 200 pounds....you are not small by any means.

My daughter got to 300 pounds and she still feels like she did at 175. She was disappointed that not many people noticed her loss at around 250, but she is only 5'3".....she really needs to get below 200 for it to be noticed and that can be so discouraging.

I really didn't get a ton of compliments until around 190...(there were some before that and plenty), but they really came in at around 190 and now.


So I how do I feel now at a better weight....big! End of story.

I have been taking a ton of pictures of myself just so I can start to catch up with the change. My self-image is very distorted. (my cousin recommended the picture idea).

It is weird because in my mirrors at home....I don't feel too different, but if I catch my image in a public mirror....I won't even know it is me.

Wow ladies we have a life-tme of re-training our minds ahead of us.

But remember we are all worth it.

All this makes me think I need to start taking progress pictures. How often did you all take the progress pictures?

Take them as often as possible

This is a really powerful and significant thread. I've struggled with self image all my life. I was always the fat kid and it didn't help that I had 2 very slim and attractive older sisters. I was miserable, I've always been miserable about my weight. Now that I have lost almost 30lbs, I can see and feel the difference and I want to be happy...but that miserable feeling I had is like a security blanket that I just don't want to let go of...because I honestly don't know how to feel happy about my body...because I've never experienced it.

This thread has given me a lot of food for thought. I feel a sense of relief just being able to talk about it, I have wanted to post here about it but feel guilty sometimes because there are a lot of people on this forum who would give anything to have the results that I have had

Thanks for starting and contributing to this thread everyone!

I find it so interesting how we are so similar in how we view ourselves. I think for me it will be very important to be self aware and honest with myself to maintain my weight loss once I'm done but obviously I'm easy to fool haha. Weighing myself and taking pictures seems to be the only real way to be self aware so that will be my future plans. Denial got me here thats for sure.
I've lost 50 pounds now and am noticing different things everyday. I'm not even half way to my goal which is a scary thought but for once I actually truly believe I will get there...that makes a huge difference!

I take my pics once a week. I know that in one weeks time not much has changed, but when I flip through each pic it is AMAZING how much I have changed in 10 weeks.

After years of yo-yo'ing and being anywhere from a size 5 (12 yrs ago) to a 20/22, I see myself as being around 170 in my head. I hate mirrors and avoid them as well as pictures. Do I know I don't look 170. Def. Denial is a powerful thing. If you can't see it, it's not there.

Having said that, I remember the last time I really lost weight before I was pregnant with my daughter. I thought I looked about 30lbs more than I did.

I've been having the same issue. It's funny I thought I looked ok before, then I saw pictures of myself and was horified. Now I think I don't look so good, I still have a long ways to go! In pictures now I think I look big. It's so weird. Hopefully the next 20lbs will make more of a difference in how I see myself.

Just checked out your progress pics and wrote you a note...Wow...great job

I took some "before" pictures when I first started this diet. Mostly, it was a promise to myself that this meant there were going to be "after" pictures. That this time, this diet would finally work.

A while later, after the diet started working, and I started seeing my own face in the mirror again (I could write a whole post here just about that), I went back and looked again, to see my progress.

I thought it was going to cheer me up and make me feel like I had accomplished something.

Really, it just made me sad. Still does. To look back at that trapped, miserable person who felt like she had no way out of this hole she dug for herself... just made me sad.

I haven't taken the real "after" pictures yet, because I'm still not done. Some days I wonder if I'll ever feel like I'm done. But I'm still hoping for the day when I look in the mirror and am completely happy with the person I see looking back.

bump
I can really relate to this thread. Having been thin most of my life, I had a real disconnect with how much weight I had gained. Somehow, part of my brain just refused to accept it, even though I saw it every day in the mirror. Now on IP, like others, I'm having trouble seeing myself thinner again. I will put on a pair of smaller pants and be surprised when they easily button and zip. Wow, we really mess with our own heads, don't we? :dizzy:

Oh my word this is totally me as well! Its terrible!

Hmmm....interesting. I have not really allowed pictures of myself in the last two years (that's when I put on an additional 30 pounds) unless my body was hidden behind something (i.e. kitchen island) AND I could pose so my double chin would not be as prominent.

I've struggled with my body image my entire life so I can relate to everything you are all saying.

For me losing weight is as much as mental mind set as anything else.

I can relate. Although not super over weight, 30-40 pounds I never saw myself as 'fat' until I saw myself in pictures and got totally discouraged. Right now I am at a normal weight for the first time in years, with only 9 pounds to go until I reach my goal. I have to take LOTS of pictures to remind myself that I am now this. Yes, I really am thin omg! Crazy.

I think I am thinner than I think I am. I saw my parents over the past weekend and I haven't seen them since I started IP. They kept gushing over how thin I am. I don't see it. All I see is what there is still left to lose.

My mom and I went shopping for some much needed pants (for me). I was easily fitting into 6's (curvy cut, because I am CURVY) and 8 Petite (Curvy) and we were so shocked. My mom kept saying how great it has to feel, but to be honest, it felt surreal. I don't see myself the same way as others do.

And here I am, 11 pounds from my declared goal, and all I can think is, is 11 pounds really enough??? Will my stomach and hips look the way I want in 11 short pounds from now?

The mind is truly incredible.

Funny... how we can never see ourselves as how truly pretty we are :(

I never ever saw myself as thin or fit even though in my twenties, I had a good muscular body, with to die for biceps and to dream about abs, but still, I felt fat! I saved some of my clothes items from back then, and one of my skorts I had is so tiny! I don't understand how I used to fit in such a tiny item of clothing and still think of myself as fat!!!

Now I guess, at my age (38), I got more mature, I did get more realistic about my weight, and more aware that if I can fit in a small size dress it means that I am a small size indeed.

Still, I do not like my pictures, not 100% satisfied, it's not only my body, mainly it's my face! I feel my face is so big, I cannot find my beauty within it :( but will I happy be when I get to my target weight? I really hope that this time I will.

Looks like we are the same height and I have the same goals as far as weight loss and bottom line weight. However, I'm just starting and don't really have the belief that I could actually lose 50 pds! I've always lost 23-25 on every diet I try then start creeping back up until I do the next diet.

You are a great encouragement to me and someone I can relate to - thank yoU!

Corrie

Well pretty much all that all of you have said is how I feel - I don't even need to repeat it! The funny thing is when I do have those ridiculous moments of imagining a fat roll that doesn't even exist I am like wow I can't imagine what it would be like if it was before I lost the weight.

Of course, in reality we all know that we look better just have fleeting moments because we are paying attention to our bodies now We didn't see how overweight we were because we weren't paying attention to our bodies then.

Same here. I've noticed.. the perception has to do to some degree with the place/people you're surrounded by. I used to be in the 130's and felt incredibly fat, at that time I was living in a city where everyone is 100 lbs. Then I moved and I was 140 and felt normal. After that I got married, moved again, and ballooned up to my hw of 175, but it was so quickly (in a matter of a year) that I didn't notice! (I wore yoga pants for a while, because it was cold and people were very casual in that city) until I moved again, saw pictures of myself and it was as if I were looking at someone else. In fact, I decided to go see my Dr. about my weight when I had to go take a passport picture and I honestly could not believe that was me.
Now that I've lost some of the extra weight.. I don't see the difference from where I started, so I wear some of my old clothes to try to gauge really what I look like. As others have said, when you are in the process of losing weight, you tend to focus on the flaws, because after all that's what you're trying to get rid of, so they seem bigger than what they really are.

Through all the ups and downs though, I think that at least I can say that I've learned to accept that there are things I cannot change about my body. I have the widest hips in the world, and no matter what I weigh, I will never be able to fit into a size 0. I have a wide rib cage as well, so there are things/fits that are just not for me. What I'm trying to say is that I'm no longer trying to achieve the unachievable, which should be just common sense, but somehow it isn't always so. I guess this at least counts as progress in the whole self-image department. But yeap, it's a battle.

I have a little different experience.

I grew up with a sister (2 years older) who suffered from a life threatening eating disorder (anorexia and/or bulimia depending on the year) for more than 25 years (she's healthy now). As a result I decided I would give no power whatsoever to food, and so ate what I wanted (including tons of junk food). I was a normal weight until the last few years, and never worried about it.

My weight has crept up, and seeing my other sister (who has always been heavy) lose 45 pounds on the Matol plan which is IP based motivated me to go on my first diet ever.

I've been scared to diet, scared I'll end up sick like my sister or that I'll send the wrong message to my teenage girls about their bodies. I decided that I was already sending them messages (unhealthy ones) by regularly eating junk food and not being conscious of my health.

I have been surprised by the issues around my sister's illness that have been raised by this though.

The other day I was trying on dresses that used to be too tight and now fit nicely. I showed them off to my husband, who told me, "You look like a model!". (Sweet...I don't) I couldn't help thinking that its a shame we can't see ourselves thru the eyes of those who truly love us. If we could, this thread may not be necessary...

I avoid the mirror and I hate pictures with me in them. So I tend to be the one always with a camera in hand. That being said, I never felt as fat as I looked. I am super healthy (except for the weight) and active so being heavy never slowed me down. But I did hate the way I looked and when i did see a picture or caught a reflection in the mirror.
I have lost about 23 pounds and I get lots of compliments but I am not where I want so I don't see the weight loss yet! Sure, I can feel it in clothing and do feel better about myself but visually, I don't see it.