Originally Posted by mkendrick (Post 3237279)

And the one that really bugs me is my knees on each other when I'm laying on my side. To fall asleep, I have to have a pillow between my legs.

Originally Posted by juliastl27 (Post 3239502)

i can relate to this one big time. my husband coined the term "fat girl syndrome". that is to say, i still feel like the fat girl no matter how much people tell me how great i look. in every picture, i have to immediately focus on my trouble spots (upper arms and lower belly), or compare myself to the girl standing next to me. even if she is clearly larger than me i still think that she carries it well and looks better.

also, even though i weigh less now than since before i had my son for the first time in 8 years, my body doesn't look the same. everything has rearranged itself. my hips are bigger than before i had my son, there are a lot of stretch marks/loose skin/saggy areas. i feel like i completely ruined my body by gaining so much weight. i had to accept that it will never look the same as a woman who stayed the same weight.

Originally Posted by MeowMix (Post 3240237)

This is me, if fact it's crazy how much it's me. I can't seem to be happy with the 'good' parts of me and always focus on my trouble spots. I still feel a lot like 210 pound me and it's incredibly frustrating because I want to be enjoying 125 pound me!

I feel good about myself then go out and see some woman who's thinner, looks 10000 times better than me and I'm 210 pounds again feeling ashamed and awful.

I feel the same way, I think I completely ruined my body by letting it get so bad, if I'd just been smarter with my eating I could have avoided a lot of this skin and these stretch marks. But I can't change that now.

Does this feeling ever go away? Will we ever get to fully enjoy our new bodies or will we always feel a little like our bigger self's?

Originally Posted by kaplods (Post 3237300)

I've never been cold when losing weight, even after losing a lot - until this time. Now I'm almost always freezing - and when I'm not freezing I'm too hot.

There's a lot I don't like about weight loss, but there's also a lot I do (and it's not all about the scale, or even about feeling healthier and stronger).

I don't like the routine of weight loss, the "have to do it every day forever," but then I remind myself of toothbrushing. I don't brush my teeth because it's fun, and it's just as pointless to wish I didn't have to watch my weight as it would be to wish I didn't have to brush my teeth. If I want the result, I have to put forth the effort.

However, I also find it a lot more enjoyable to get the result by incorporating as much fun as I can into the effort. When I focus on the deprivation, I feel deprived. When I look for alternatives, it isn't always comfortable but "different" is an odd feeling, but it's a better feeling than "loss/deprivation."


For example, I'm trying very hard to eliminate wheat entirely from my diet (it's likely that I'm intolerant, if not actually allergic or celiac. I knew the connection was real when my husband could tell when I'd eaten wheat by the looking at my face. I get a scaley rash within two days of eating more than a trace of wheat).

At first it seemed like wheat was in absolutely everything, and it was hard to keep from focusing on what I couldn't have - but there really are a lot of foods out there that aren't wheat. And a lot of them taste very good.

I tend to avoid exercise unless I plan it in. And I tend to do more if I plan it in a form that I enjoy (roughly in order of preference): swimming, geocaching, dancing to music (when no one is watching) and bicycling.