Feeling funny?

Maybe it is as simple as the people around you are very conscious of not
talking about a woman's weight?

I know how you feel though. In the past, I went from 165 to 145 and no one
in my immediate environment seemed to notice. It was a slow and gradual
thing, though. Then going from 145 to 140, suddenly you would have thought
I had lost 100 pounds. I do remember one year when we were looking at Xmas
pictures of the prior year and several people were stunned by the
difference. The thing is at the time, I worked for a large company and was
with the same people most every day. I also had the perk of traveling
intermittently to other offices. Those folks, who saw me once a quarter or
so, were very impressed.

I am vain and eternally optimistic. I like to think that my friends and
colleagues would love me no matter what I weighed and thus, they don't pay
close attention. Oh, these rose colored glasses are a burden

Like alcoholics, people who want to lose weight give up something. For the
alcoholic, it is obviously booze. For the weight loss crowd, it is excess
calories and a sedentary way of life. In both cases, the food and the booze
served as reasons to socialize and feel connected. So now you have given
something up that was important to you at one time. What have you put in
it's place to meet the social needs?

j
Anyone but me actually feel funny and out of place having lost weight?

My sister, my lead at work, my best friend, and it seems like most of
the
people in my office building are overweight -- or more. I've been
feeling
downright sheepish and weird, like my existence as a relatively thin
person is
itself is a slap in the face when I'm around them. Where most people
here
seemed to have been ducking inappropriate compliments ("you look
great"...when
you haven't done a dang thing different), I lost 70 pounds and hardly
anyone
around me even commented. It Was a Real Change...right?

Dunno. I don't fit in with the folks I associate with because I've
gotten
diet(WOE, if you prefer)-and-weight conscious. I don't fit in with the
outside
world's concept of "thin and good looking" because I have the stretch
marks and
the tummy bulges that fall outside THAT ideal. I'm certainly not aiming
for the
same fitness ideal as many of the folks here are..........

I'm feeling weird, out of place, and outside-of-the-ordinary-looking no
matter
where I go. It's getting to me.

I know. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But it's damn
hard when
you don't have anyone to support you. I'd give a lot for a few "You're
looking
good"s........sad, eh? I should be able to provide my own positive
strokes, and
except for some low points, I'm able to do so. But, well.........low
point.
Right now. Definitely.

beeswing

I understand what you're saying. Not once have my colleagues mentioned my
weight loss, and I've lost 23 pounds since I've been at this job.

I'm the most fit in the office. I'm not the thinnest, there are two Asian
women who are very thin, yet have no muscle tone and never work out save the
occassional stroll around the shopping mall. They are constantly
complimented on their looks. Go figure. Thin is in, no matter how healthy.

But, I don't care much. I like being in shape.

Martha


Anyone but me actually feel funny and out of place having lost weight?

My sister, my lead at work, my best friend, and it seems like most of
the
people in my office building are overweight -- or more. I've been
feeling
downright sheepish and weird, like my existence as a relatively thin
person is
itself is a slap in the face when I'm around them. Where most people
here
seemed to have been ducking inappropriate compliments ("you look
great"...when
you haven't done a dang thing different), I lost 70 pounds and hardly
anyone
around me even commented. It Was a Real Change...right?

Dunno. I don't fit in with the folks I associate with because I've
gotten
diet(WOE, if you prefer)-and-weight conscious. I don't fit in with the
outside
world's concept of "thin and good looking" because I have the stretch
marks and
the tummy bulges that fall outside THAT ideal. I'm certainly not
aiming
for the
same fitness ideal as many of the folks here are..........

I'm feeling weird, out of place, and outside-of-the-ordinary-looking
no
matter
where I go. It's getting to me.

I know. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But it's damn
hard when
you don't have anyone to support you. I'd give a lot for a few "You're
looking
good"s........sad, eh? I should be able to provide my own positive
strokes, and
except for some low points, I'm able to do so. But, well.........low
point.
Right now. Definitely.

beeswing

Beeswing wrote:
And as well meaning as my husband is, I'd
like to trade just one of his "You've always looked great to me" for a
"Congratulations on the weight loss! I know you've been working hard on it, and
you're looking great."

LOL, I know what you mean. My husband inadvertantly slipped up the other
day and said something exclamatory about how I'm going to be a real babe
soon. I let him off the hook for the contradiction. :-)

Seriously, he is VERY well trained to not make any comment. It's the
inscrutible female thing: if he says, "those pants look good on you" I'm
likely to say, "oh, do the other ones make me look fat?" I imagine your
husband is equally adept at avoiding Husband Hell. :-)

Wendy

Ignoramus4027 wrote:
My advice is, unless you are a sugarfree mary m from ohio, do not make
an ass out of yourself with wedding cakes or birthday cakes. Get a
small plate, take a few bites, compliment it, and move on.

I agree with Igor. Our WOE has to work for us on many levels, and one
level is that it has to make a reasonable effort not to **** off our loved
ones. I wouldn't down 4000 calories just to make my obese family feel
comfortable with their choices, but I wouldn't decline a ceremonial piece
of cake. In the unlikely event that someone chastices me for only having
a nibble I'd probably say, "I've lost my taste for cake after being so
long without it" or some other non-judgmental thing.

Wendy

On 15 Oct 2003 12:51:39 -0400, Wendy wrote:

Beeswing wrote:
And as well meaning as my husband is, I'd
like to trade just one of his "You've always looked great to me" for a
"Congratulations on the weight loss! I know you've been working hard on it, and
you're looking great."

LOL, I know what you mean. My husband inadvertantly slipped up the other
day and said something exclamatory about how I'm going to be a real babe
soon. I let him off the hook for the contradiction. :-)

Seriously, he is VERY well trained to not make any comment. It's the
inscrutible female thing: if he says, "those pants look good on you" I'm
likely to say, "oh, do the other ones make me look fat?" I imagine your
husband is equally adept at avoiding Husband Hell. :-)

Wendy

Oh, those wonderful backhanded comments. Like BF telling me that
there are some women that when you see them in
highschool/college/early adulthood they were gorgeous, but as the
years go on, they lose their looks and look really worn out and old by
their mid 30's. But me, on the other hand, I just keep getting
better looking the older I get. (those being his words). So, on one
hand its nice to be 32 yrs old, still getting carded and looking young
and good. On the other hand, what does that say for how I looked
when I met him 6 yrs ago. :-)

Beeswing wrote:
I don't fit in with the outside
world's concept of "thin and good looking" because I have the stretch
marks and the tummy bulges that fall outside THAT ideal.

I know this bothers you a lot, and it bothers me, too. I said elsewhere
that I feel gypped because I've been doing BFL for a year and the motto is
"Look Good Naked" and I don't.

But I think we've got to come to terms with a number of facts: we're aging
is one. Older skin just isn't as dewy and resilient.

It's a fact of life that child-bearing stretches out abdominal skin. Some
women recover from it and they win the genetic lotto and get to be naked
covergirls on magazines holding their babies. But many (if not most) of
us do not. There's a great line in "Steal Magnolias" about how real
women wear girdles. I think we need to struggle with how to come to
terms with the roadmap shown all over our body. Find a way to honor it
for what it has done rather than berate it for what it has not done.

The other thing is the insidious image of unattainable beauty. Not only
must you be blond, you must be multi-tonal blond. Not only must you have
an orthodontically correct smile, but the teeth must be abnormally bright
white. Not only must you have unblemished skin, but you must keep in
tanned at the risk of skin cancer. Not only must you have shoulder and
calf muscle definition but the insertion points of the muscles have to be
just right so you don't have thick ankles. Not only must you have
abnormally low body fat but you must have abnormally large breasts. A
flat belly after child-bearing just seems like one more of those
unattainable hurdles.

Nina the Slackmistress lives in LaLaland and we discussed this once: she
pointed out that everyone who goes to LA has already WON the genetic
lotto, and THEN they start spending all their time and money on improving
their product. It's only after that long surgical process that we see
them and are somehow led to think that this is what women are supposed to
look like.

Well, I don't. So I have to find some way to funnel my high-achieving
drive from "improve my looks to these standards" to "improve my looks to
be the best version of me that I can be."

One way I can do this is to wear clothes. Because even though I don't
look good naked, I look a whole lot better clothed in a size 16 on a
muscular body than I did in a size 22 on a blowsy body. (It turns out
that I wear clothes nearly every day so I've been able to integrate this
strategy into my life pretty well.) :-)

I won't ever wear a bikini on the beach. I also won't ever jump out of an
airplane. For solace I listen to the "Bare Naked Ladies" sing, "sometimes
never is enough."

I don't know if this was much help to you, but it helped me to write it!

Wendy

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:04:38 -0700, "determined"
wrote:

She was quite
overweight, and she asked how I did it. I hate getting into these
conversations, but I told her that I basically ate less, made better food
choices and exercised alot. She said that she didn't have TIME to
exercise... This irritates me when people make excuses. I told her that it
takes making it a priority in your life, and determination, and diligence
and effort. Well, she didn't want to hear that of course.


That's when you just shrug your shoulders and walk away. Maybe a
final not of "It works" or "It worked for me".

I hear it alot from a woman I work with. Empty nester. All her kids
are grown. SHe's constantly going on about having been a size 4 or a
size 6etc when she was younger. She's been heavy since I started
here and has gained weight, although she jumps on every fat diet
bandwagon out there for about ... 3 days, then gives up. She's
always asking me in an almost derogatory way, if I've lost weight or
if I'm dieting again, or what... and when I talk about exercise,
etc... she's always like "oh, I just don't have time for that."

WTF - you say you get up at 5:30am (don't have to be to work till 8am
- does strict 8 - 5 as she the receptionist.) Spends her lunch hours
napping in a quiet office. She lives less than 1 mile from work, and
the complex has a really nice gym with lots of nice, high quality
equipment. SHe gets home from work at 5pm, cooks dinner and her
husband works a 2nd job in the evenings so she's home alone. What's
stopping her from getting off her lazy but either early morning, at
lunch or in the evening to get her butt down to that gym and workout -
or even just use the treadmill. Or since her condo is on the 9th
hole of the golf course - walk the golfcart trails, or even one of the
many pedestrian trails in this neighborhood. It was built to be VERY
pedestrian/outdoor activity/fitness friendly.

For people like that, when they ask, I answer and they make excuses, I
just walk away with "well, it works if you do it"...


side note:... 2 guys outside my office at the moment - both have
lost alot of weight on low carb and they are discussing their weight
loss at the moment. One guy was just eating some m&m's and the other
is asking about his weight loss. THe respons was "what the hell, I
treat myself every once in a while"... then the conversation just
turned to "are you still working out"... etc. Well, since I"m
typing this as they are gabbing, I didn't catch the whole thing, just
thought it was humorous exspecially since I'm replying to this thread
right now.

On 15 Oct 2003 13:12:59 -0400, Wendy wrote:


I know this bothers you a lot, and it bothers me, too. I said elsewhere
that I feel gypped because I've been doing BFL for a year and the motto is
"Look Good Naked" and I don't.


OK - Wendy - time for some reality. :-)

If I followed BFL for a year, I'd have a body to die for. But, I had
a body that almost looked good nekid before... Now it looks good, and
my goal is to make it look really good to even my most critical critic
- myself.

You, on the other hand - had alot more weight to lose. 1 yr won't get
perfection. How many years did it take to put that weight on and get
to the size you were? And because of that time it took to get large,
it takes time to bring the body back down. ANd the excess skin
thing. well...

No offense - but I hate to see you so frustrated. I think you have
some unreal expectations. But, ya know we love you anyway. :-)

determined wrote:
I told her that it
takes making it a priority in your life, and determination, and diligence
and effort. Well, she didn't want to hear that of course.

I've learned to say it differently. I make a little joke, "Oh, it turns
out if you eat less and exercise more it works - who knew?" Then if more
is required (if they explain why they can't, for example) I say, "I just
haven't been able to make it a priority until now. This is just when I am
able to do it. You'll be able to do it when you can make it a priority,
too."

I'm trying to point out that I'm not *better* for having lost weight, I'm
just choosing to put my efforts into this arena now, but I hadn't before
and I wouldn't be now if I weren't in a particular place in my life where
I could get around to it. It really lets them off the hook and it's
honest, too, because in the end people are fat because they choose to be
and I think they know this deep down inside. That's what the guilt is
about: that they haven't chosen to address it.

I also think it's why Beeswing's friends are avoiding mentioning her
weight. They just aren't in a place where they can talk about weight yet.

Wendy

"Wendy" wrote in message
...
Beeswing wrote:
I don't fit in with the outside
world's concept of "thin and good looking" because I have the stretch
marks and the tummy bulges that fall outside THAT ideal.

I know this bothers you a lot, and it bothers me, too. I said elsewhere
that I feel gypped because I've been doing BFL for a year and the motto is
"Look Good Naked" and I don't.

But I think we've got to come to terms with a number of facts: we're aging
is one. Older skin just isn't as dewy and resilient.

It's a fact of life that child-bearing stretches out abdominal skin. Some
women recover from it and they win the genetic lotto and get to be naked
covergirls on magazines holding their babies. But many (if not most) of
us do not. There's a great line in "Steal Magnolias" about how real
women wear girdles. I think we need to struggle with how to come to
terms with the roadmap shown all over our body. Find a way to honor it
for what it has done rather than berate it for what it has not done.

The other thing is the insidious image of unattainable beauty. Not only
must you be blond, you must be multi-tonal blond. Not only must you have
an orthodontically correct smile, but the teeth must be abnormally bright
white. Not only must you have unblemished skin, but you must keep in
tanned at the risk of skin cancer. Not only must you have shoulder and
calf muscle definition but the insertion points of the muscles have to be
just right so you don't have thick ankles. Not only must you have
abnormally low body fat but you must have abnormally large breasts. A
flat belly after child-bearing just seems like one more of those
unattainable hurdles.

Nina the Slackmistress lives in LaLaland and we discussed this once: she
pointed out that everyone who goes to LA has already WON the genetic
lotto, and THEN they start spending all their time and money on improving
their product. It's only after that long surgical process that we see
them and are somehow led to think that this is what women are supposed to
look like.

Well, I don't. So I have to find some way to funnel my high-achieving
drive from "improve my looks to these standards" to "improve my looks to
be the best version of me that I can be."

One way I can do this is to wear clothes. Because even though I don't
look good naked, I look a whole lot better clothed in a size 16 on a
muscular body than I did in a size 22 on a blowsy body. (It turns out
that I wear clothes nearly every day so I've been able to integrate this
strategy into my life pretty well.) :-)

I won't ever wear a bikini on the beach. I also won't ever jump out of an
airplane. For solace I listen to the "Bare Naked Ladies" sing, "sometimes
never is enough."

I don't know if this was much help to you, but it helped me to write it!

Wendy

My son is 18 and he has these pretty little things coming in and out of the
house to visit him or his friends. They are precious and yet, everyone of
them thinks she is fat or ugly or her smile isn't right, etc. The odd thing
is that the young men never seem to notice. As a matter of fact, the only
time I have ever heard my son complain about one of the girl's is when they
start playing girl games - trying to start something - is how he refers to
it.

My BF was in Hawaii at the Four Seasons a couple of years ago. Tons of
gorgeous women hung out by the pool and in the lounge scantily attired. He
was so unimpressed and didn't understand why. I asked him how very
conscious they were of their looks and he didn't know. Later, he went to
Mexico or some other dive location and the light came on. It seems that the
Swedish Bikini team is so worried about the most minute details of their
appearance and they are so self absorbed and they cannot tolerate the least
imperfection to the extent that they cannot engage in the world around them.

I am not trashing thin beautiful women who look good in bikinis and not
every one of them is a member of the so called Swedish Bikini team but it
does go to prove that it is rare that women are happy with their bodies but
when they are, they are so much more attractive regardless of size or shape.

As far as looking good naked, trust me. I am a nurse. I have had to see
lots and lots of nekkid bodies. You would be surprised what lurks under
well cut clothing, even in the younger crowd.Stretch marks are common. Many
people have decidedly lopsided breasts. A butt that sags when not supported
by tight denim. Loose skin, scars, excess fat in really odd areas and ribs
and hip bones that look like lethal weapons in the 'you can't be too thin'
crowd. Furthermore, assuming you limit your audience when you are naked
to your husband, it is likely that he sees something entirely different than
loose skin or a few extra pounds. Men are so indiscriminate that way.

I am not always comfortable with my body but as I age, my comfort level is
highly dependent on my physical ability. Am I strong enough to do what I
want to do? Can I enjoy playing tennis? Am I too worn out at the end of
the day for date night? Do I sleep well? Can I wear clothes that I really
like? Can I take on a magnificent work related challenge and not feel like
I have been run over by a train (as happened last night when a client called
with an emergency at 5:00). One of my psych professors once told us, no
matter what you look like, there is always someone in the world who uses you
as the standard for comparison.

j