I know you're supposed to look to what's inside yourself and feel proud and happy with you vs. your body, but what do other people/strangers see?? The outside!! One thing that I find about myself is that when I'm on the phone (I'm in a hospital call centre), I'm very confident, friendly, funny and can be flirty, but when I'm face-to-face, I'm not any of those things. I just want to hide, crawl under the covers. I have many wonderful aspects of my life that seem to be constantly overshadowed by my body image.

Also, I agree with Annette when she states that when she loses weight she attracts uncomfortable attention. I believe that the root of my weight problem is that I was abused when I was a child and also that my father treated my mother and me and my sisters like we were inferior and that all women were only good for 2 things--house work and ***. So, maybe deep inside I feel that if I'm overweight people/men will have to pay attention and like ME--not my body--if I am overweight. It's a buffer/protection for me. It's terrifies me to think of not having it, but I'm going to do my best and, through LCing, have to "expose" myself. I hope this makes sense???