Writing about weight reduction should feel great, a true success story of resolve, drive, and the power of transformation. I should be gleaming with joy and accomplishment—and some days I am. But if I am honest with myself, writing about weight loss is incredibly difficult—this is why I have been putting it off for so long.
First of all, I feel embarrassed confessing my fatness. It’s not easy to speak about it, even when it’s behind me, even when I've already mastered the skills and approaches that work for me, even when my weight reduction adventure is mission completed. It’s not easy to confess that all these years I was fighting with my weight when I always had the potential to alter it. That I put up with myself, that I postponed good decisions, that I was sluggish or impatient.
It’s hard to put down that simply within a year, it was able to accomplish what I believed was impossible. And no matter how amazing it feels to look at progress images, I still grimace at my before shots, quietly shaking my head in disgust that I let this happen.
In a year, I achieved the impossible: I dropped from 213 lbs to 140 lbs (from 96 kg to 63 kg), which implies moving from a 32.8 BMI to a 21.3 for my 5'8 (173 cm) height. It meant a lot of tough days and weeks when nothing felt right, with a lot of exercise and diets, with a ton of new habits that I aim to follow for the rest of my life. [I published an essay on the mental techniques that helped me since the physical aspect is straightforward.]
There are days when I still can’t believe it, and although I would agree that it seems like complain-bragging, trust me, there are a few negatives to losing weight—even when the cons are obviously outweighing the positives.
Losing the obese identity takes longer than intended.
My weight reduction journey was gradual and steady, precisely how it should be. There were no rapid benefits and speedy development; it was a gradual decrease of 1–2 pounds a week—which felt excessively sluggish at the time. I assumed that at this pace I would have grown accustomed to the shifting of my body, the different way I seem in the mirror and in images.
But it still occurs that I notice my body in the mirror, and I am astonished as if I was still expecting the old me gazing back at me—with her size 16 pants instead of size 6. And although physically it is a great surprise to see me, I still think of myself as someone obese.
When it comes to exercising—I practice kickboxing, and I began jogging recently—I still think with my former fat mentality, and my instant reaction to each new workout or challenge is that I can’t do this. When it comes to clothing shopping, I still opt for outfits that conceal me instead of showing me off. When it comes to picking what to eat for dinner, I still think maybe I should skip it completely—instead of opting for the purposefully healthy options that I became accustomed to this past year.
It takes a long time to remove the additional weight, but the process also consists of abandoning the fat identity, and it could take much longer.
Being slim doesn’t imply instant self-love.
When I was overweight, I felt that getting slim would inevitably imply being flawless. Stupid, I know. But when I was battling with dieting and I was dead weary of the exercise, the mental picture I was painting for myself to withstand the rough moments was my envisioned ideal, toned, gorgeous, slender body, capable of anything.
Now I am at the weight I always wanted to keep. I can see that I am far from flawless, and it takes a lot of mental courage to realize that I will never be. I am not as toned as I want to be (I’m working on it); my skin will never be as firm as a teenager’s (well, who told me that it was a reasonable goal to start with?); my body is still my 42-year-old body (and there’s nothing to do about it).
I look a lot better than I used to; I am skinnier, firmer, and a heck of a lot fitter and stronger, but body acceptance and self-love are not arriving naturally following weight loss. I still need to work on what is going on in my head; I need to cope with my traumas and continue my healing process. I still need to learn to love and accept myself—which shows that my negative self-talk wasn’t solely about my body image but also about other issues that are more difficult to remove than the weight.
In a sense, now I am forced to confront everything, since I can’t blame it on my fatness anymore. I have to learn to love myself now, when I already removed the obstacle I used as an excuse. And it’s not going to be easy. Body acceptance is tough—skinny or fat.
I am expected to be thin and stay thin.
It’s a sad thing to say, but being fat means that people don’t expect you to do too many things—you are labeled as lazy, lacking willpower and discipline. Instead, if you are skinny, you are expected to be skinny and stay skinny. Putting on weight is such a heinous act as if you were committing a crime against humanity, ruining your body, your skin, and your fitness levels, and you were entering a different universe, reserved for lost causes.
I observed it first-hand during active team-building exercises where people weren’t expecting me to run the same distance or climb up to the same height—they classified me before I could have shown them wrong, and I lost interest in proving them wrong. I was a fit person, even when obese—but I never felt any need to show this, so I let people believe I was precisely that lethargic and inept person they saw me be.
Now, I am confronting expectations. As if being slim meant that you are fit too; as if it meant that you are constantly obligated to make healthy choices; as if now you are forced to jump through every hoop.
Being fat means that people don’t expect you to do anything, and in a sense, it is liberating. Being skinny means you need to live up to these expectations, and it creeps into other areas of life, not just physical capacities, but also in terms of motivation, willpower, and mental health. I am still trying to find my own way amidst these new expectations, figuring out what I really want to prove and what is just a mere external pressure I am facing and ditching.
Weight management never ends.
When you are fat, gaining 5 pounds is okay. Losing 5 pounds is only an accomplishment for you, and gaining it back doesn’t make a real difference. People don’t notice nuances—they only notice huge changes that cannot be left without comments.
When you are big and you go put on some weight after a leisurely weekend, no one sees it—except you. When you are underweight, 5 pounds is a lot, particularly if you put through a significant deal of work to lose it. Knowing how tough it might be to drop the final 5 pounds will discourage you from indulging, overeating, or having cheat days.
This should be a good thing, right? Well, not that much. This past year, my biggest learning was that this weight management never ends, and if I allow myself cheat days (I hate the term, and I don’t believe in cheat days, but it’s commonly understood, so I will use it here), then I will have more difficult times getting back on track. It means that if you are conscious about your weight management, you can never really let go of your goals. It always comes down to choices, and you always need to make the optimal choice—be it on your birthday, at Christmas, or at a party. This kind of disciplined thinking was unknown to me before, and as much as I believe this is the way to go, it can feel really daunting to follow it forever.
Weight loss means a loss of strength.
When I was fat—and fit while fat—I had zero problems moving the couch or opening a heavier door with the sheer weight of my body. Now, I experienced that some things are just heavier than me, and my body can’t move them just by their weight.
I am doing strength training and lifting as part of my exercise journey, but it doesn’t yet replace the power of the weight I used to have. I am still not blown away by the wind, but I do feel some negative impacts from carrying less weight on my body.
Also, I notice how others attempt to assist me with tasks I used to be able to accomplish on my own—presuming that I am not strong enough. As a larger girl, I was always accustomed to not obtaining any aid; looking at my dimensions, I was thought to handle activities that demanded power.
I am perceived as weaker, and I feel weaker, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.
Weight does equate with beauty.
While there are a lot of people who feel offended when we celebrate people losing weight (think of Adele or Rebel Wilson), I personally feel great if someone comments on my weight loss. I don’t feel offended; I feel flattered that they noticed it.
And people do notice me more. Even today, still wearing masks and thick winter gear, I notice stares from people (guys) on the street; I see how I am looked at differently; I see how now I am permitted to take up more space. I stopped being invisible. Maybe it also has to do with the confidence I got, but I always held my head up high even before, and I never noticed others staring at me the same way.
And as much as it makes me feel good about myself, it partially enrages me that I am still the same person I used to be. I am just as brilliant, just as witty, just as humorous as I used to be—except now I am going about in a smaller body, which is perceived to be more beautiful.
It is sad and shallow that people think more of you when you weigh less. It’s frustrating because today I have more chances—more jobs, more promotions, better dates, better relationships—than before. Say what you want to say; I despise this too, but it doesn’t alter the realities that beautyism exists, that more beautiful individuals earn higher income, can advance up the corporate ladder faster, and clearly can get more attractive spouses. It’s a bittersweet sensation for me, and I haven’t yet determined how I feel about this.
My body feels unpleasant at times.
This final one sounds so hilarious, given all of the others of identities and cultural notions of beauty and weight, yet it is a drawback for me. I have lived in a big body for so long that I became accustomed to how it feels to move, to sit, to bed down.
Now, when I sit down, after having lost my protecting fat layers from my bottom, sitting on uncomfortable seats with no cushions is incredibly terrible. I can feel every bone in my buttocks, and I try to squirm to find a position where it doesn’t bother me. The same phenomenon occurs when I am resting on my side and my knees are pushing against each other, nearly hurting me. And don’t get me started on my hipbones that have been encased in lovely little cushions all my life, and now that they are out, they make sleeping on my tummy incredibly painful.
Yeah, weep me a river, girl, right? But this path of getting acclimated to a new body is not always simple, just as it is not easy to endure the growth spurt as a teenager or a changing body during pregnancy. Just because I desired something doesn’t make it instantly simple to manage it.
All in all, weight reduction is excellent—if this is what you desire. But fat or slim, there are always obstacles in life that you need to deal with, and ignoring the issues simply because they are the side effects of what you sought is not good. Whatever you are going through is legitimate, and you are the only one who is permitted to judge you for what you choose to be thinking about.
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