Food is the Bitch We Love to Hate.
The conversation that started with this article has been a little salve to my vanity wound of the last year. Stress not withstanding (um, we had one of those years.) I loved and hated the attention I got from losing all the weight to begin with and then loved to hate myself even more when I starting putting it back on.
Seeing that there are other women out there who struggle, too, makes me feel like this isn’t the end. It’s my beginning to a better place.
Notice how I didn’t say “new me” because I like me, actually. If we’re telling secrets I might as well get that one out of the way. I like who I am. I’m trustworthy and honest and have enough naiveté to get us all through crisis. Someone once told me that I sparkle and if we’re pretending to be the Power Puffs in this paragraph, I’m totally using that analogy. I think they were right. So I own it.
But let’s back up to the roller coaster of weight management. I lost a lot of weight in a 12-month period. Towards the end of that year it was very noticeable and here’s where it get’s tricky.
When you’re teetering the over-weight BMI charts at your doctors office the only thing you can think of is how AWESOME you’ll feel on the other side. Skinny jeans! Self Confidence! No more ugly comments from your PA who hasn’t been laid in 12 years. (That matters, I checked.)
Yet getting there changed me. I went from being a happy (somewhat aware) consumer of my calories to someone who had GOALS! on the scale. I’d obsess about a plateau thinking this must be it. The first few compliments about weight loss were a fuel to keep going, I was paranoid that someone would see me eating “something bad” so I kept a constant mental check list of where I could eat, what I could order and how offensive that might look.
Because everyone apparently cared?
This might be where someone with fancy letters behind their name would lead me to believe I had an eating disorder. This is also where I’d like to point out that WE ALL HAVE EATING DISORDERS when our eating is in disorder.
Honestly I don’t have the answers. I found something that worked for me, put me back on to the healthy side of pre-diabetes and kept my A1Cs in check. But getting there wasn’t the ride on the merry-go-round I was hoping for.
I started having friends’ husbands notice my weight loss and here’s where the other insecurities come to feast. I’m a comfort person. Habits. Security. Familiar faces and places. Getting outside of those emotional erogenous-zones and I’m swimming in a sea with no life preserver.
I’d rather stay on the heavy side and not get attention (from anyone) than lose the weight and have to confront someone else’s expectations of me again.
I started dreading going to coffee with friends – always hearing “You lost weight!” before “Hey Jodi, how are you?” made it all-to-clear how centered we are on looks. And if I fucked it up I’d be below their bar once again.
I’ve work damn hard to be above the bar in every-single-other-way than physical … so taking that away from me is not an option.
Apparently sacrificing my self image is.
How about you? Are you a “happy-Loser”? Do you crawl in a hole, like I do, at this first mention of your physical appearance? It’s not “you look nice!” that matters, those I can take. It’s the surprised expression on someone’s face when they confront their vision of you has just changed. Do they not know we can see it all over their faces? Oh! She’s thin now! Let me file that one away. Throw away the “plump” adverb – and while we’re at it, let’s give her husband a mental notch for maintaining such a lovely wife. (STICK MY FINGER DOWN MY MOTHERFUCKING THROAT.)
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Jodi lives naked on paper writing through her Life List and all that is being married to a serial entrepreneur. A mother to two, Jodi has a passion to inspire women to live outside of titles. She chronicles lists and links of Things To Do, takes way too many photos and dreams of living in one place for longer than 12 months. 
I really dislike the “Wow! You’ve lost so much weight! You look amazing!” comments. If I look so great now, did I look hideous before? Were you embarrassed to be seen with me? If I stop losing weight will you all wonder why I haven’t lost more?
When someone else I know has lost a significant amount of weight, I usually let them dictate how much they want to discuss the situation. I find that something like “You look good… how is life treating you?” generally works because it allows the individual to elaborate on weight loss if s/he so chooses, but it can also cover just getting a good night’s sleep, a new hair color, a sunkissed glow after a vacation, etc.
My husband has lost over a hundred pounds over the last two years. He has an outlook on this that I have to share. He says that people are always commenting, “Wow, you’re a different person (or substitute whatever inane things people say when they haven’t seen him in a long time)!” These comments don’t bug him… He’s an attention whore. It’s the one after that bugs the crap out of him is the “How did you do it?” Because as soon as he tells them he worked hard, got up early, ate less, etc. , They immediately lose interest. It’s not some magic formula so it’s not worth listening to. He says they are looking at him evaluating their own lives and habits and weighing whether it’s worth it to them to do the same. You see? At this point the conversation isn’t even about him. It’s about the person who asked the question….
My coworker keeps telling me that I look like I’ve lost weight since I began this job. She’s told me this repeatedly. It makes me self-conscious around her. I’m the only one in my office who isn’t straight up and down thin (I’m an hourglass and would like to lose 10 or so), but I eat healthy and work out when I can get away from work! It never makes me feel good, although I try to take it as a compliment and move on. I just don’t want attention drawn to my weight – thank you very much!
I have recently lost about 30 lbs over the past year and I hate how people (especially relatives, in-laws) come up to me and say, “WOW! You look amazing since you lost all of that weight.” I mean really?! I thought I looked pretty damn amazing before even with the extra weight. When my MiL found out how much weight I lost she even made the comment that it was ridiculous that I had that much extra weight on me. Umm..if I remember correctly she also lost about the same amount of weight a couple of years ago. I just hate how my in-laws are all about weight and how people look. I actually think that is why my husband refuses to lose any weight. It is almost like he is rebelling. I am happy with him just the way he is. As long as we are both healthy that is all that matters.
Loving all the comments so far – you get it! (unfortunate as that may be …)
Oh, I get it. Not about the weight, which, while not super great in my case, is at least mostly consistent and something I can live with. But, in my late teens and early twenties, the normal teenage acne I’d always had turned into a raging beast of adult cystic acne that was (and I say this looking back on decade-old pictures) disfiguring. It was awful. And I worked and worked and tried everything over the counter and prescription you can think of, including scary stuff that does bad things to your liver.
For a while it was a yo-yo process. Sometimes it was better and sometimes there was nothing to be done. People said absolutely stupid shit about it. Point it out like I didn’t know I had acne. Ask me what I was doing about it like maybe I was just too lazy to try or didn’t know it was a problem. But the worst was people, nearly always men, who would say something when I got better that left no doubt that I had looked like a freak, but now I didn’t. What I heard was “congratulations on not frightening the children anymore; it’s about time you did something about that.” Some of these people were well-meaning, but some of them meant exactly this.
Thanks to five prescriptions, two different washes, and a religious avoidance of non-organic dairy products, I’ve got in under control now, but it took a decade. There are scars. And part of me still can’t think that my skin might be pretty, or that attention isn’t of the “gee, it’s about time you dealt with that” variety. So I hear you. Hang in there.
Holy @($&@!$)$@@&$?$@!!! I cannot understand what kind of person would say shit like that to you. That’s just not cool. I’m sorry that you had such a hard time with morons while dealing with a difficult and I’m sure rather painful and very visible issue.
Been there, done that, more than once.
Down 75, up 60, down 90, up 80. It’s the story of my life. But wherever you are, you gotta try to love yourself at least a little or life seriously sucks.
I hate the attention I get when I lose weight. Seriously, I don’t want it so I just say that it’s the clothes or the lighting must be good.
I went from being “circus fat” to be normal. I too have come to loathe the attention that my weight loss has garnered. I guess if I was being honest I would say the attention is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it does in fact help check me from gaining the weight back. I am now known as “that girl that lost the weight”….since I was fat my entire life from ages 2 on. It’s a curse because it can be very confusing for me. I hate to say this but I think it wouldn’t be so hard on me if i was average or even plain. I am 5’8 and I’ve always thought I had a good face and good personality. I was just fat. Now I get SO much attention and So many looks that its sometimes unnerving. My weight loss has strangely become just as big a part of my identity as my being heavy used to be. I thank God everyday I have my husband who loved me either way and wonderful kids to keep me grounded. Society is sure strange when it comes to weight….
When I was 19 I lost over 100 lbs. Not only was I in the midst of coming to terms with the idea that I was now an adult and all the craziness that comes with that stage of life, but the way that people looked at me changed dramatically. I understand that none of it was conscious on anyone’s part, but for the first time in my life, people actually looked at me instead of through me. I wasn’t immediately discounted or ignored. I didn’t feel like I had to wear my personality on the outside because people actually gave me the opportunity to demonstrate who I was naturally. It was trippy and weird and messed with my head in bad ways. I’ve now gained a lot of that weight back and almost prefer myself this way.
When I was 22 I lost quite a lot of wieght over the summer and also had my hair dyed. For the first and only time in my life, I was a cute, skinny blonde. And you know what? I hated it. It freaked me out that people – read men – who had ignored me until then were suddenly groveling at my feet. It didn’t only make me very cynical about those people, it also made me wary of my body because that body was suddenly like a loaded weapon. It got a great deal of bad attention that I didn’t know how to deal with, and it ultimately did hurt others and myself. I think that in a society with stick-insect beauty ideals, curvy women internalize the idea that we are something other than really beautiful women, and then when we are told that now that we have slimmed down we are something other than we used to be, we regard all the new attention as BS. Maybe.
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I never fully understood what my own roadblock for never being able to lose all the weight until I read what you wrote about not truly being comfortable with the new attention.
Wham! You nailed it right on the head!
I like to imagine myself as “that woman” that turns heads…but when it actually happens, I feel like I want to shrivel up underneath a rock (with plenty of baggy clothes)!
So…thank you for sharing and for opening my eyes to why those 20-30 lbs just seem to sit there. I am realizing how much more mental health actually affects your physical health.
When I was younger, I lost about 30 pounds. I’ve since gained that and more back, but that is a moot point.
I had a friend who would say, “Wow… You’ve lost a ton of weight!”. I would respond and say “Well, not that much, but thanks”, and he would consistently follow it up with “Seriously! You lost so so much weight! Like, 50 pounds!!”. He always thought he was complimenting me on my newly svelte body, but I always felt he was not only drawing attention to how much I had weighed before, but was also exaggerating it greatly. I was always mortified as he used it as an introduction to new friends. I never understood why it bothered me so much until reading your article. Thank you for helping me clear one more skeleton from my closet!