diemde: that is a really cool idea, the age prgression thing, i wish i had the software to do that.. i played with the virtual model trying diffrent weights on it but it was so off! even at 140 a large framed 6' was fat lol

Wenzday: it is nice to know i am not the only one


Crysania

I don't visualize myself at my goal weight. I concentrate on a daily basis sticking to this WOE. I think in time the weight will drop off. That is the rational side of me.

My concern (as goofy as it sounds) is the question: what will I do once I lose the weight? I don't have the social skills to interact with people. I've learned to "act" fat and to take the "fat" social position. I guess I'm a little scared of losing weight.

Marty, i know where you are coming from, once i reach my goal its going to be so weird. I have never been social (heck i have talked more on this board then i have talked to anyone RL or online in ages!) in fact i most call me anti-social - but then i have a book in my hand 90% of the time. i know i will be treated diffrent by alot of people and that itself is kinda scary i think

Crysania

WOW Crysania … You must indeed carry your weight well! I bought some non-stretch pants on sale in size 22-24 (they were gorgeous and cost $6!!) and while it wasn’t quite sausage casing, it was uncomfortably close. I’m 26-28 currently. So … just using you for an example, you’ve lost 6 (or 3, depending on how you count) Women’s sizes in ~ 50 lbs. At 250 I could roughly estimate needing a 20-22. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s true for me. Thanks for letting me use you as a psychic model!

Diana ~ I love the hourglass look! I was getting distinctly ‘barrel’ like, all ’apple’ fat, but I’m looking forward to being curvier again soon.


No kidding, Quest. I think it’s our ‘thin at any cost’ culture that’s affecting younger and younger girls. Have you noticed that there are far fewer kids in the middle? More are either very thin or pretty plump. I firmly believe that our society’s focus on thinness (rather than a healthy weight) is creating fatter kids and eating disorders - not to mention all that wasted energy spent on trying to achieve an impossible ideal. Sigh. I guess it’s just the cycle that will keep this sub forum going for a new generation.

Hi Ilovemykid ~ Ah… another girl like me who has a hard time imagining what slender would look like. Have you ever tried the Virtual Model program at Crysania mentioned? It’s fun to play around with, even though who knows if it reflects how we’d actually appear at any given weight.

Hey! We could ‘cut and paste’ a motivational picture by using Virtual Model and a current pix! (That age progression is a great idea, BTW, Diemde!)

Hi Marty! Not only not goofy, but so right on. I think it’s an issue for a lot of us. I have definitely played the ‘fat girl’ role. I wonder how I would react to different attention from the world? Would becoming less visible (freaky) really be a relief? Conversely, how would I deal with more sexual attention? What if people who have always been rude suddenly want to be friendly? Would I smack them over the head with a frying pan and go to jail for 80 years?? All these questions float through my head from time to time (okay, not the frying pan thing! ) I think if we process these changes, and are aware that they don’t happen overnight, but slowly during our weight loss, we’ll do fine. Or so I hope!

I was a large kid (looking at pictures I wouldn't say fat, but I was definitely large -- I remember being 5'7" and 155 pounds in 5th grade and I was about 5'9" and 170 or 180 pounds in high school and I always felt huge next to the girls who were 5'2" and 100 pounds), but I sort of grew into my weight. By the time I was in my mid-20s, I liked the way I looked at 5'9" and 180 pounds. I certainly didn't look petite, but I looked strong and fit (I was quite physically active -- swimming and biking and playing tennis). I went up to about 225 briefly two times, once around age 19 and once in my early 20s (for a variety of reasons), but lost that weight in a couple of months each time and then stayed at around 180 without much effort until I got pregnant with my first child at age 27. Therefore, I think of 180 as being sort of my "normal" weight.

The problem is, when I try to visualizing myself at that weight (my goal weight) I think of myself as looking like I did when I was 26 or 27 years old. I'm going to turn 46 in a couple of months and, at the rate I am losing, the earliest I can imagine myself getting under 200 is at the age of 48. I will not look like I did at 26 or 27 and I have trouble imagining what I will look like. I also know that my shape will be different than it was then. My waist used to be the smallest part of me and my hips and thighs were the largest (pear shaped). After having gone through two pregnancies, plus having gained almost 200 pounds, I don't think my waist will ever be as small as it once was.

I have been trying to visualize what I will look like when I weigh below 200 pounds. Much as I keep telling myself that I am doing this for my health, not my looks, I cannot help focusing on what I look like -- it is important to me even if the health issue is even more important. However, I don't think I have been doing a very successful job of that visualizing.

This really seems to vary by region and neighborhood. I have gone places where I have been shocked at how fat the kids are. However, in my neighborhood, most of the kids look pretty much like I remember kids looking when I was that age. I remember sitting at the honors assembly at my daughter's middle school last year and thinking that looking at those kids, you would not think there was a weight crisis among American adolescents. There were a few fat kids, but there have always been a few fat kids. I've tried to figure out why the kids I know don't mirror much of the rest of society. I live in a community where no racial/ethnic group is in the majority. Our middle school is about 35 percent white, 30 percent black, and the rest is split between Hispanic and Asian (a lot of the Hispanics and Asians are fairly recent immigrants -- the kids may have been born here but most of the parents weren't). We're also quite economically diverse. I don't think that the "thin at any cost" culture has been able to take hold quite as stringently in an area where the culture is so diverse. We are also fortunate in having lots of safe space for the kids to play outside, including playgrounds and public swimming pools.

For whatever reason, as far as I can tell, the kids don't seem to be obsessed by weight and there aren't a whole lot of fat kids. I have never heard any of my daughter's friends (who are all 13-year-old girls) talk negatively about their own weight or anyone else's weight. I may be missing something, but much of the time they don't seem to notice that I am around and talk to each other about all sorts of other things. They are obsessed by clothes, styles, and fashion, but they don't seem to be obsessed by weight.

Boy, Liz, you are lucky.

that sounds like a great idea, diemde..lol
I graduated the same year!!! I'm 5'7 and reached that by 5th-6th grade..

Washington State is pretty darn pale, due in most part to lots of Scandinavian immigrants ... Of 6 million residents, 5 million are white. It may be exactly as you say, Liz, that the 'thin at any cost' attitude flourishes in a less diverse area. We certainly have lots of opportunities for physical activity - biking, hiking, swimming, etc. Washington probably mirrors the rest of the US as far as difficult economic times. I’m curious what other posters have experienced in their region.

It seems like eating disorders practices and WLS surgery sites are cropping up all over. Some targeting teenagers specifically! They’re even being advertised on the backs of city buses. And there are lots of really fat adults and kids everywhere.

When I was a teenager, I used to wish there were more fat people in the world so I wouldn’t be treated so poorly. What I’ve found is that the larger the populace gets, the more anger and disgust is heaped upon us. I worry about fat kids for a lot of reasons - most of all how they’re coping with all the extra societal scrutiny and public revulsion.

It can’t be easy.

Tulips...
Do you recommend his book? Should I wait for the paperback
edition? What I'm really asking is there information in it that
waiting to know would hurt my progress?

Liz and AntiM,

To expand on my last post to Liz, I teach in a middle school (7th grade, to be exact) in a community which is about 55% Hispanic, 30% white, and 15% everything else--Pacific Islander, Asian, and Black, in that order. The sizes of the kids range from tiny to huge; some of my PI boys (and girls!) are up to 6" taller than I am and quite large; while some of the other kids are up to a foot SHORTER than I am and maybe weigh 75 pounds. Almost everyone obsesses about weight, looks,weight, height, weight, being "a student", weight, being "in", and did I mention weight? It's appalling. As a school, we're working on these problems and concerns, and as a teacher, so am I.

One example of the problem--we had Michael Pritchard come to give 3 assemblies last week. He was incredible! However, at one of the assemblies, one of the eighth graders was heard to say, "Oh. He's FAT." I'm glad I wasn't there, 'cause I might not have been too professional or polite. Grrrr.

Jude

I've tried visualizing myself as a normal weight person and I've had a really tough time with it. I've been obese most of my life (100lbs at 8, 160 by 12, 270 by 17) and so I have no frame of reference. I just can't get a full-frame picture in my head though I can see parts of me. I did get down to 148 in my early 20's (starvation diet and chainsmoking - not recommended) and that has been my lowest adult weight of all time. I still looked pretty plump - better - but plump. It didn't last long and I bounced between 155-170 for a year afterward, and then started steadily climbing again after marriage and kids. Over the years there were a few LF/Lcal diets that I doggedly stuck to that eventually got me somewhat below the 200lb mark, but of course that only lasted long enough for me to get rid of my old fat clothes and buy some new size 22 stuff. The 286 I weighed in July of '02 is my heaviest recorded weight. It was a shock to say the least even though I knew I was popping out my 28's and the 32's fit much better. I'm a small-boned and short so I've always looked very heavy and don't carry the weight well at all.

Now that I'm losing slowly, exercising and eating correctly so as not to lose muscle tone, what I see are emerging contours that are somewhat muscular. I am a hard worker with large gardens and a 6-1/2 acre piece of property to roam, so in spite of my arthritis interfering with my daily routines, I'm still very strong for my size. I have broad shoulders and a large bust and smaller shapely legs and forearms so right now I kinda resemble a mango-shaped doughball stuck with pretzels. My torso is short but my legs are fairly long for my height. I think I'll have wide hips (hard to tell under all that padding) and a hint of a waistline is beginning to emerge, so I'm hoping to turn out fairly curvy. I know in the 150's and 160's I looked pretty sassy. Still I wore a size 16/18 back then and the docs all said I neeeded to lose another 30-35 lbs to be at a healthy weight. They wanted me down to 115, but I think at 46 those days are long gone . My goal weight was a guess - I may have to revise that as I get closer.

Yeah I wonder what I'll look like too... do you think are there short Amazons?

I love this thread! I visualize myself as being 215 pounds, able to keep up with my kids and being seen by other as "normal".

Also, I see myself going to non-fat peop clothing stores and being able to by fashionable clothing, instead of buying whatever fits me.

It's all so tricky, isn't it? I find myself remarkably conflicted about the whole thing; how I see me, how others see me, how I want them to see me...

I was a thin child, but as soon as I hit puberty the weight started going up. Having said which, when I look at photos, I didn't actually have a problem until I was about 14 - at 13 I was curvy and looked about 18 years old, but I didn't look fat. However, I'd been told by my parents consistently to lose weight or to watch my weight or to 'stop eating' from about the age of 9, so my image of myself as fat started very early - too early, when it wasn't actually true. Also, when you hit puberty early, you are always going to be heavier than those other girls who still look like girls, even if you're not actually heavy. So since from the age of 14 or so I've been overweight, I can't visualise what I'll look like when I get to goal. I tend to see 185 pounds as my average because that's where I stayed for a long time, but as you'll see from my stats I've been up at 240, and the lowest I ever got on diets when I was 17 was 154. Yes, I liked the way I looked then, better than before, but it's still not a goal weight. I'm only 5 foot 4. I'm extremely curvy though, always have been, so I know I'll be hourglass - already am, actually. If you head over to my journal there are a couple of 'before' and 'during' photos.

As for how I want to be seen... well I've already noticed that there are some changes psychologically in how I manage the world. I don't feel like Quasimodo walking down the street anymore. I sit down on an airplane and I'm not nervous that I'll be too big for the seat and squash the person next to me. I get up on an airplane! I used to sit there and not want to get up and go to the toilet because I didn't want people looking at me. However, I still have to steel myself when I walk past a group of children on the street because I am expecting nasty comments - irrespective of the fact that that hasnt' happened to me in a while. And while I do feel more attractive now, less humiliated about what I look like, I do feel conflicted by attention I get. Are we the same people when we lose weight? Because although I have the same memories as the me who weighed 240 pounds, and am affected by those memories today, I do actually feel like a different person - this happens every time I lose weight. Maybe it's because I don't want to be that person? So in a way, I was about to say that I'm angry if someone is attracted to me now if they weren't before because I'm the same person I was then, but really - I wasn't, was I? I remember the first time I went on a diet, when I was 16 - I went from 185 to around 155, so it wasn't even so extreme - and one of my friends told me she'd been in a car with some boys we know, and they'd said something along the lines of "she's looking good now, so which one of us should go out with her?" - have you ever heard such a backwards compliment? We're only talking 30 pounds here, but to them, that's what made me potential material to go out with. It was abstract; none of them were interested in me that way, but the fact that I'd lost weight made me viable dating material...

anyway. I could ramble on for hours about this, so I'll stop now and get to work. Hope it's made some kind of sense...

Deborah

ps what i will say though, is that it is FANTASTIC to be able to go into normal size shops and buy clothes. to be able to discuss clothes normally with my friends, and tell them where I bought something because it's a shop they'd go too as well. To be planning a trip to New York with my thin sister and to know we'll be able to shop in the same shops and i won't feel permanently jealous of her the whole time. (She is now 30 pounds more than her lowest weight, I am 65 pounds less than my highest weight, there's only a 20 pound difference between us - the least ever since I hit puberty)...