I know i'm really big, but for the most part it stays somewhere in the back of my mind for the most part... till i see a picture of me. I dont usually let my pic get taken, but recently it was my birthday and pics were taken. Omg. Shocked doesnt even begin to describe what i felt the other day when i saw the pics. Im not just big... I'm humongous. that is what lit the fire under my tail to finally lose some if not all of this extra weight. It's really sad that so much weight can be gained and i didnt even quite realize how much till i saw those pics. Has this or something similar ever happened to any of you?

I'm not fat in my dreams, although lately I have been dreaming about amazing weigh ins where I'm 20 lbs lighter overnight.

Most of the time I don't think about being fat, no, but sometimes physical challenges like stairs or narrow pathways remind me.

not for a second, it haunts me

Yes, I forget all the time!
But pictures definitely don't lie, and I am very surprised when I see particularly bad pics of me, or pics of me at a heavier weight.

In fact, it was because I saw a picture of me at 299 pounds last year, that I decided to lose weight again. I couldn't believe that that was what I really looked like

Before I started this time, my size almost never left my mind. Thinking about how fat I was and how much sooner I was going to die, and how much my DH probably hated my fat [he never said anything], and how ugly I was was constantly on my mind.

Although I don't look any different after loosing 27 pounds, I feel much better. I am exercising and I don't feel so ugly. I am not short of breath anymore.

I had a cough that went away almost instantly - I think maybe I eliminated something from my diet that I was allergic to. I hadn't lost but two or three pounds and I hadn't done any exercise at all, so it can't be that.

Since I am not coughing, I am not having so much stress incontinence, and that is a huge relief.

So...I am feeling more optimistic these days.

I guess not letting my picture be taken for so long wasnt a good thing. That was the catalyst that started me on this journey. I dont want to die, yet i feel like a ticking time bomb now after seeing those pics. i have really large breasts, so i never see my stomach... but in those pics, it was all hangin out. i look 50 months pregnant with quadruplets... oh well... later i can always use them for my 'before' pics

Lately, I have and I am so glad for that. I am starting to be more myself. I had lost weight and gained 1/2 back but now I am back on plan. The more I lose the more I gain back of me being me. So, when I am out with friends and I am being funny, charming and etc...fat is low on the list. When I wear my 3 -4 inch heels, a cute outfit and jazz up my hair and walk the walk, fat is low on my list. I am so happy to be getting over being fat. Don't get me wrong, it still gets me from time to time.

I hope that when I get down to me first goal of 199, I won't have that mindset at all. I mean yes I will be fat but so what, I am doing something about it. I am a healthy individual and I am so thankful for that beyond everything else.

I got a shock when I took "before" pictures at 210 pounds (and that wasn't even my heaviest). I couldn't believe that was me. I guess I had this picture in my head of what I looked like, even in the mirror, and yet it was a totally different person than was in the pictures.

It also happened every time I got back the pictures from the baby photo shoots when my daughter was a baby, and then right after my son was born this past december. When I got the email of the link to the pictures and I saw the cover of the photo album, I literally was like "who is that chubby chick on the cover of my album", like a second later I realized it was ME! I looked so much older than I thought, and not to mention much more heavy.

Pictures still kind of suck. I think, even though I perpetually think I'm fat, that I don't see myself as I really am. Weird.

I guess sometimes I do forget, but a lot of the time if I'm just sitting, I'll see my big arms and big legs and big belly and be discouraged and try to look thinner by re positioning.

I do forget I am fat and then, as you all say, I see a photograph of me and remember, or I try to put on my thinner clothes and cannot zip up.

Sometimes I lie in bed at night, before sleep, and feel that thin person inside me instead of the whale I am and it feels so familiar and good and I tell myself that I will be that person again. In the next breath I chastise myself ... I am still me, just with a bit of padding. I have not lost me, I have just gained lbs.

I never noticed, but never forgot I'm over wight either. Currently though I've been noticing a lot...

I'm merely "fluffy" and it's almost always on my mind, usually when I'm sitting down. It's been an on and off struggle to stay below 150p the last 15 years or so. I managed to get to 127p in 2000 and got pregnant in 2001 and it's been a real fight since then.

I've lived with it for so long that it's not always on my mind. However, when I'm achieving a great deal of weight loss, sometimes I feel "normal" for extended periods of time, without even realizing I'm still obese.

I really know what you mean here. It's funny how I feel like the "real" me is the normal sized woman, even though most of my life I have been overweight/obese.

Sometimes I forget.
The other day I was out with some friends, we were having a good time, lunch, mall, etc. They decided to go try on some clothes and we were all going to look for a new top. The store we went to though, they were all able to find something cute. There was nothing in my size.
Then I remembered