I can understand where you are coming from. Not to the extent that you are going through it, but for me, i'm really embarassed by my body and hoping that I can get it back to normal. Not only did I gain weight, but I also had a baby, and while that is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me, it made me have basically a deflated tire around my stomach. I hate looking in the mirror and sometimes i want to break the mirror! But my husband still thinks i'm beautiful, and so will your guy :-)

I feel for you, hon. I truly do. This is one of my greatest fears, despite the fact I KNOW it is vain. But, a fear none the less.

Think of it as battle scars. Look just what YOU accomplished!!! How many people have done that?! You are amazing! And your BF likely thinks so too. Once I started loosing weight, the skin started appearing. My wonderful husband grabs it (imagine my shocked horror!) and caresses it, telling me just how beautiful it is, because it is a part of me, and because he knows that the skin being there is because I am getting healthier, day by day.

I want to share something with you, at this point everyone else here too by default, that was very private to me and my husband, but I think it may help...Maybe? I am a writer of sorts, I try to keep my head down and not announce it. Everything I write is very private to me, I do NOT share it. Several years back, when I met my husband, he had severe self esteem issues. He was very hard on himself. And where as what I am about to share was directed to him, but I think you might find relevance in it. Afterall, if you were perfect, you would be boring. It is our imperfections that truly make us perfect as a species and a race.

Unconditional

I know you are not perfect,
Especially in the eyes of many,
But mostly to yourself,
You see more flaws than any.
Yet it amazes me,
Sends me into awe,
That I can truly do it,
That I can see past any flaw.
And so I stand here,
Right before your very eyes,
Just waiting for it to happen,
Just waiting for you to realize.
That I am here to stay,
No, I will never flee,
Because it goes without saying,
I love you unconditionally.

That's really sweet, Zoesmom. What a good thing to write for your husband! We should all hope to be loved so unconditionally.

Kristen,

Congratulations on your amazing weight loss! That is truly a great success. When I read your story I couldn't help but think about how similar my body issues are. I've been struggling with my weight since the age of 14. I'm now 29 yrs old. I too at one point lost a significant amount of weight 100 pounds. I went from 250 lbs to 150 lbs. I was very proud of my accomplishment and my new slimmer figure. However when the clothes came off it was a very different story. The many years of obesity had taken a serious toll on my body. I would stand in the mirror and stare at every imperfection. I felt disgusted by the sight of all my stretch marks, cellulite, and excess skin. My stomach was the worst area for me. I gave birth to my beautiful daughter (now 8 yrs old) when I was 20. During my final 2 months of pregnancy I developed stretch marks on my stomach. Some of my stretch marks were a half an inch in width.

My stomach will never be the same again. The skin is very loose and always hangs over my pants. My stomach is also very wrinkled looking. Like you I always envy bikini clad women with taut flat smooth stomachs. I know that will never be me. My boobs also look almost deflated and have a wrinkled appearance. This has also took a serious toll on my dating life because I'm was so fiercely insecure about my body. I met my current boyfriend in 2009. He is a great guy and I love him dearly. But because of my low self esteem intimacy has been a long hard road for me. But he was always loving and very patient. It took me a very long time to feel comfortable being naked with him. But he always reassured me that I was beautiful and that I was wanted.

You seem like you have a man that loves you and really cares about you. But it takes time to become comfortable in your own skin. But when you finally learn to truly accept your body and know that yes you are beautiful inside and out it a beautiful thing. For me I had to stop criticising myself and accept my body and be proud of my accomplishments. I wish you the best of luck in your relationship. Remember you are beautiful

Zoesmom and dreamer1217, your posts make me want to cry. Thank you for posting here.

I have a similar situation. I didn't lose as much as you but, still I have wrecked my body. I don't think I will ever get that body I wanted.. even after getting to the low weight and I just can't go through surgery.

I guess I just have to say... I work with a lot of macho guys and the overwhelming feeling I get is that they are just seriously less picky then we are about our bodies. That is kind of a pejorative term. They just see us through kind of a hazy lens... so while we see puckers and stretch marks... they just see a woman.

They do think you sexy no matter what. I swear. Sometimes I talk to them about a woman that I think is just horrible and the have this look on there face like...um.. but she is a woman. Like they have no idea what I am saying.

So please please please... if he says you are sexy believe you are sexy to him. Because in my experience... they wouldn't be there if they didn't think that.

First of all..



Huge hugs to everyone who replied!! I am so sorry I didn't reply sooner. I was in a bad place when I posted this thread. It happens to me several times a month honestly where I get so down and depressed about my "situation", and then I end up feeling even worse for allowing myself to feel so defeated over something as ridiculous as skin because I strive to be much stronger than that. Your responses were truly uplifting and warmed my heart so much. You all have either made me smile or brought some tears to my eyes. Really, I want to reply to every response individually but this would turn out to be one lengthy post so for now I'll just say thank you once more for taking the time to post such thoughtful responses. And zoesmom, your poem was absolutely beautiful and made me tear up. Thank you so much for sharing that.

I'll just explain a little more about where I'm coming from and a little more about my relationship with my boyfriend. First off, low self-esteem has been a lifelong battle with me. I remember going all the way back to pre-school and kindergarten and feeling fat and ugly and awkward and thinking all of the other girls my age were much prettier than I was. I remember staring at my naked reflection in the mirror and poking my stomach and feeling fat and gross. Reminder, I was about 5 years old, and at that time I was nowhere near being fat or even chubby. I had great loving parents and am an only child so I never even had siblings bullying me. Bullying was never an issue for me in school either. I don't know where my issues stem from or why for as long as I can remember I've felt so awkward and ugly. I know that my biggest issues have always been in my mind and as a result they manifested in other ways (mainly, my weight) All the anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, and general disgust and unhappiness I felt towards myself took it's toll on me and I became more and more depressed over time (and in turn, more and more overweight.) It was through weight loss that I finally realized just how capable of a person I am and always have been. I began to slowly build myself up and allow myself to feel good about small achievements and to push myself past my comfort zone. I finally started actually feeling attractive and felt that I could hold my head high when I stepped outside.

That high lasted only as long as my weight loss journey though. The maintenance world has been difficult for me. Once the thrill of seeing the numbers on the scale go lower and lower, the clothes getting looser and looser, and the tape measure getting smaller and smaller, I was faced with the reality of my "new" body. Strong and healthy yes. Beautiful? (aesthetically speaking at least) Not so much. Don't get me wrong. I saw the loose drapey skin rearing it's ugly head about mid-way through my weight loss journey. And the more weight I lost, the more pronounced it's appearance became. But I was still riding that weight loss high so although I cared and was concerned, it wasn't at the forefront of my mind. It became more worrisome as I approached my goal weight range and I realized "Oh no..I'm almost at the finish line and this is what I'm left with? Now what?" With excess skin there's only so much you can do. I lost weight slowly. I did it the "right" way. I exercised (plenty of strength training with weights) I drank a lot of water. I ate healthy. But my genetics didn't allow for more desirable results. Not to mention I was obese for such a long time. After 5 years, I have come to terms with the fact that my skin will never bounce back and this is something I have no choice but to learn to live with until the time comes when I can afford surgery (and yes to answer any questions I WILL absolutely have surgery whenever I can come up with the funds for it)

Because of that I was always concerned with dating. It used to be my weight that held me back from dating, and now my skin. In some ways my current situation is harder for me because I could never hide my fat so if someone wanted to date me, well they knew what they were getting themselves involved with. But now for the most part I look like any other normal girl with clothes on. But when the time comes for any intimate situation, it's like a horror show (in my eyes) when my clothes come off. I never knew how to put myself out there or how to accept any guys advances. As flattering and nice as it was, I never allowed myself to get too swept up in an y of it because in my mind all I could think is "they won't feel the same way once they know your "secret." So long story short, I've been very lonely and sad about my love life (or lack thereof) for as long as I could remember. I'm a romantic at heart and all I've ever really wanted was someone to love who could love me as well. I got to the point where I felt it just wasn't in the cards for me in this lifetime.

Out of the blue without looking for it, I got a very sweet message from a very sweet guy on another weight loss website. I had a weight loss ticker showing that I wanted to lose about 15 lbs. He saw my pic on a thread I posted a response to and he sent me a message simply saying "you've accomplished so much and you should be proud of what you've done..although you're crazy for wanting to lose any more because you're beautiful exactly how you are right now" And that began it all. Since he lives so far away I never expected anything more than some flirting and friendly conversations, but they turned into much more very quickly. We told each other our life stories, saw how much we had in common and how we pretty much wanted the exact same things in a relationship and sent novels basically every day for months to each other. I decided to be honest with him about my skin issue early on before I got too attached, and I have never felt so panicked in all my life than after I clicked the "send" button to that email. I actually cried because I fully expected the rejection and judgment I always imagined I would received once I divulged my "secret". Instead he thanked me for telling him and he told me it changed nothing and he still thought I was just as beautiful even knowing that. Fast forward a year and a half and we're still together. He's a really good man. He's so patient with me and reassures me to the end of time. He's very touchy feely so yes I'd say he knows the extent of my skin, although he's never actually seen it because I always stay covered up. He encourages me to just take more of my clothes off but tells me he'll wait as long as it's going to take because he thinks I'm truly worth it and he says no matter what my body looks like he knows he will not lose interest or leave me. He makes it a point to grab my flabby stomach and my jiggly butt and my squishy thighs while kissing me and telling me he loves me so much and thinks all of me is beautiful and sexy and perfect. He tells me until I show him, I'll never truly know how much he loves me because he knows I'll only think of what he's saying as just being words without meaning. He wants to prove to me that once he sees me without my clothes on he'll still love me and want me and tell me I'm beautiful. He says he knows my heart and he loves my personality and how good I am to him and nothing I can show him will change that at this point. He says I may think of myself as being deformed, but he sees me as being unique. The skin doesnt disgust him. "It's just skin..who cares" Are his words. He blows my mind sometimes. I love him truly and I'm still so afraid that he will somehow see me differently after I show him or he'll lose interest and want someone with a more aesthetically appealing body. When something good happens or I have something amazing, an immediate afterthought is fear of losing it unexpectedly. I don't want to lose him because of my body or for any other reason for that matter. But he's right, until I show him, I'll probably never fully understand/accept all of the wonderful things he tells me.

This was a ridiculously long post and I could have condensed this a lot but for whatever reason I felt the need to share all of this with anyone who wants to read it. I know that I am not the only person who deals with these excess skin issues after drastic weight loss, but I know I'm not handling it as well as a good majority of the rest of the population (at least from what I can tell) But I know there must be other people out there who may find this forum, and might even come across this thread who are as depressed and lost as I was/sometimes am. I kept all of this here just for the sake of helping at least one person to feel less alone and to give hope to someone out there who feels they're unlovable or undesirable with either excess weight or excess skin. The truth is we're all beautiful in our own unique ways. I'm very quick to see the good in everyone else and I do lose sight of my own good traits/features because I'm too busy picking apart what I hate and deem undesirable. I'm still a work in progress. I was very introspective throughout my entire weight loss journey and tried to figure out myself and my issues as well as work on healing myself, and believe it or not, I have come very far from where I used to be (trust me..I was a hot mess for a long time) I have a long way to go though. It does help being able to share some of this with a community of people who might understand some of what I'm going though.

Thanks for whoever took the time to read this. And thanks for your support and words of wisdom too

B2B, is your avatar a picture of you? If so, you're seriously gorgeous -- as in movie-star gorgeous.

F.

B2B - absolutely beautiful, intorspective and full of emotion. Your guy, absolutely amazing. You have got a wonderful gem! I have nothing I can say or add...you said it yourself, you know he'll still be there. Sometimes though, it is hard to set aside our fears. But when that time comes, you will find it was completely worth it. You have all my support. You...you are so amazinginly inspirational!