Interesting CNN article about life after losing weight
I found this article and thought it was really interesting about a girl who lost weight and noticed a drastic change in how people treated her after she was slimmer. It's unfortunate that society feels they can treat overweight individuals any type of way. I guess I use that as a motivation. I can definitely relate to what she was saying about meeting nice guys only to find out they had a fetish for bigger girls. So dissapointing at times Makes me second guess my interactions with guys a lot more. Especially after finding articles on askmen.com where some guys admitted to approaching bigger women because of the myths about them being "easier" due to low self-esteem, or being better lovers. I try not to let those ignorant comments affect me and hearing success stories from the other females on here about finding love makes me feel a lot better. Nonetheless, for those of you getting closer to your goal weight or have achieved it, are you finding a difference in how other people treat you and interact with you? It sounds like a no brainer, but I think it's still interesting to hear about and giving me something to look forward to.
Apparently I can't post links yet since I'm a newbie so I'll just copy and paste...
I come from a small-ish town in Oklahoma where we've never met a vegetable we couldn't fry and the only things more super-sized than our portions are the huge church complexes that alternate with fast-food restaurants along our roads.
So it maybe isn't such a big surprise that by the time I graduated from high school, I weighed 260 pounds. My prom dress was a size 24, and my mother had to help me zip it up, a five-minute ordeal during which we grunted and cursed at one another.
My aunt had to custom-make my graduation gown, a huge white tent in which I resembled the Stay-Puft marshmallow man.
Still, I left for college in New York City feeling relatively confident. After all, I wasn't just fat. I was also stylish, managing to alter and combine pieces in a way where they overcame their origins as shapeless sacks designed by people with the gall to decorate plus-size garments with ice-cream cones and slices of pizza.
And I was hilarious and sexually brash, defense mechanisms mastered by fat women and gay men everywhere.
I wasn't immune -- hurtful things would happen on occasion. Groups of rowdy teenagers sometimes yelled insults at me from car windows. I gave my phone number to a nice guy, only to find out when he called that he had a fetish for overweight women, shamelessly telling me that he likes "something to grab onto." Or someone would approach me out of nowhere on the street and tell me not to worry about how I look; someday -- when I'm ready -- I'll lose the weight.
And of course, I compared myself endlessly to the impossibly thin women in magazines, just like the average-weight women I knew, to whom I also, by the way, compared myself.
Despite these blows to your self-esteem, for the most part nobody close to you really tells you to your face what they think about your weight. As a result, a fat girl's worldview is missing vital pieces of information. When you don't get invited on your friends' man-catching all-girl outings, or when men who enjoy sleeping with you over and over again fail to want to date you, you can't quite comprehend that all this is really caused by the way you look.
But then, the summer before my junior year of college, something changed. I made a promise to myself to diet just for one summer, and for the first time I saw results. On a low-carb plan, I started melting away, shrinking inwards. I began to grow collarbones and hipbones, sprouting bony, sharp spots all over my body. By the end of the summer, I was 50 pounds lighter, and within a year I was down to 160 pounds on my 5'11" frame, a solid size 10.
It's been six years now that I've maintained that weight loss, and it is far and away the best thing I've ever done for myself. Not because I'm healthier and will probably live longer, but because I now reap the benefits of a society set up to punish fat people for the unforgivable crime of eating too much.
I hear the fat jokes right out loud now, instead of just a whispering breeze brushing past my ear. Men who used to let the door swing shut in my face now hold it open for me politely and look me up and down as I step past.
My own boyfriend, a man I began dating a few months after reaching my goal weight, sees the picture on my driver's license and admits he probably wouldn't have gone out with me when I looked like that. I appreciate his honesty. It's better than the good-intentioned people who gush upon seeing the new me, "You're so pretty now!" before stammeringly adding, "Not that you weren't, uh, pretty before."
Finding yourself suddenly thin after a lifetime of being fat is a bit like stepping into that "Saturday Night Live" sketch where Eddie Murphy goes undercover as a white guy and discovers that white people act completely differently when there are no black people around.
With no outward sign of my former body type, I became a renegade spy for Team F.A.T.
Of course, I didn't discover that thin people drink cocktails and dance when fat people get off the bus. But when I lost weight, I was rewarded with membership in a club I never knew existed, where the benefits included better treatment, greater professional success and, above all, a new status as qualified participant in the social world including romantic relationships.
Of course, I lost weight to reap these benefits. But it doesn't stop me from being angry that I had to lose weight to reap these benefits. Of those who are nice to me now, who would have been rude to me before? Which ones made the cruel jokes? Who can be trusted?
As the years pass, it is easy to forget. I have even, on a few occasions, found myself looking at an overweight person with faint disdain, forgetting those years I struggled with the very same issue. I hope never to gain back the weight I lost. But I have seen another side of people that I cannot forget. And with any luck, I never will.
What I've found is that people do treat me differently - but I honestly believe that its a reflection on how I carry myself, not because I was formerly really overweight (and now just slightly overweight). I'm not saying that society doesn't treat overweight people differently, but I think it does have a lot to do with how you treat/carry yourself, as well.
My own boyfriend, a man I began dating a few months after reaching my goal weight, sees the picture on my driver's license and admits he probably wouldn't have gone out with me when I looked like that. I appreciate his honesty.
I started dating someone about 9 months ago, at my lowest weight or close to it. We have a pretty good relationship and I feel like it's going places. We have started talking about our individual struggles around weightloss. He didn't know that I was any other size than this one until I started slowly mentioning more and more things about how I am working towards a better body. Last week I finally faced my fears and showed him a picture at my heaviest - *the* picture, the one that started my journey.
He said the same thing, and at first I was a little pissed, but after reflecting on it a while I feel the same way as the writer. I'm glad he said it instead of lying about it. He did add the qualifier that he may not have asked me out based on my physical appearance but once he got to know me that would be a different story.
Still, it was a weird clash of emotions for a while. But still, if I'm honest with myself, I may not have gone out with him at HIS heaviest, either.
@ Stellarose27: What you said makes sense. I think conrfidence is such an important factor when interacting with people and dictates how they treat you so that's a good thing for me to keep in mind. My cousin actually told me something really interesting the other day. She mentioned how confident I was when we went out for my birthday a few weeks ago because I dressed up nice and felt good. As a result a lot of guys came up to me that night. Which is kind of true now that I look back on it. It's so funny how the little things like that make a difference.
@ Lucky DVL: I can imagine the odd mix of emotions after hearing that. It's kind of scary to think that your weight might have gotten in the way of being with a great guy. Luckily your hard work payed off and you're able to experience that. I too hope with determination and getting all the other things in my life such as career goals and getting fit, that things will fall into place and perhaps a great guy will come along.
@ Foodobsessed: Keep up the good work! I too am just gettin started on this journey. We got this!
naijachica09---Thanks for posting this article, it really highlights how much of the weight struggle goes beyond just a number on the scale. Oddly, knowing that others have experienced similar treatment, makes it feel way less personal. It's really not me but them.
I haven't lost enough weight to be considered completely different looking, but I've lost a bit. Already I've noticed differences. When I was at my heaviest (207) I didn't get any LOOKS from guys. Then I dropped 30 lbs and I've been getting them more often. Not as much as I'd like, but still.
I also think some other things that seem different now could be due to how I carry myself. I don't dress differently really, but I do allow myself to be seen more.
Hummm, I can sort of relate to this story but from the other side. When I was younger (like until i was 23), I was a size 6-8 with a pretty big chest. Men would fall all over themselves to talk to me, it was really ridiculous sometimes. But then, when I gained weight, its like I became invisible. I think my husband liked it because, he didn't like the attention I would get from men before. I dont think I would like to get back to the level of attention I used to get from men, but I would definitely like to leave this invisibility cloak behind...
Hummm, I can sort of relate to this story but from the other side. When I was younger (like until i was 23), I was a size 6-8 with a pretty big chest. Men would fall all over themselves to talk to me, it was really ridiculous sometimes. But then, when I gained weight, its like I became invisible. I think my husband liked it because, he didn't like the attention I would get from men before. I dont think I would like to get back to the level of attention I used to get from men, but I would definitely like to leave this invisibility cloak behind...
I can relate to this in some ways because I too have huge boobs (44GG). So I'm used to getting attention for the wrong reasons and jaws dropping. Therefore I'm looking forward to getting the "right" kind of attention after they have shrunk a bit and people can focus more on me and my personality rather than the evil twins.
Interesting CNN article about life after losing weight
Makes me second guess my interactions with guys a lot more. Especially after finding articles on askmen.com where some guys admitted to approaching bigger women because of the myths about them being "easier" due to low self-esteem, or being better lovers. I try not to let those ignorant comments affect me and hearing success stories from the other females on here about finding love makes me feel a lot better. Nonetheless, for those of you getting closer to your goal weight or have achieved it, are you finding a difference in how other people treat you and interact with you? It sounds like a no brainer, but I think it's still interesting to hear about and giving me something to look forward to. 
