Is what I see in the mirror not what others see

[Blilight]

A few years ago I decided I wanted to lose some weight after my 2nd was born , I went from a size 8 knickers to a size 14 nickers ( my weight goes to my hips legs and arse ) .

I worked out and ate good food and cut out the take aways . I lost the weight and when. I looked in the mirror I noticed I didnt look any different , but the scales said otherwise . I went from 9st to my lowest 7st 4 lbs !!

it was strange because people told me I was really tiny and i could t see it ...

That was 2 years ago and after seeing the scales I stopped the gym and put on a so e weight ...

I think back to that time and it really makes me think that what I see in the mirror is completely different to what others see

When I look at myself in the mirror, I think I don't look any slimmer than people who say they are two sizes bigger than me. But I recently saw myself in a photo standing next to someone, and I look like a tiny person. I think of myself as some lumbering giant, with huge shoulders, but in reality I'm only a size 6. Similarly I think my feet look huge, but they're not really. We just get used to staring at ourselves in the mirror.

Debbie are you serious? That sounds horrific. I think I would have jacked in the new job before I’d have done that.

I’m not a size 6 (I’m a 12 bottom, 10 or 12 top) and I think I’m enormous and lumbering and awkward. I look at clothes in shops that I think look far too small for me and when I try them on they’re fine, or too big. I put on a lot of weight after having a baby which I have now lost again but in my head I’m still that size.

I think I've the opposite of body dysmorphia.

The scales, the clothes size, comparing myself to other peoples stats, means that objectively, I'm short and fat.

But I don't feel it.
I still think I look nice - when I make the effort, not everyday.

When I see a plumpish woman, it's only afterwards I realise that actually I'm bigger than her.

That sounds weird and smug. I know it does. Its just all that body insecurity melted away in my early 20s. It's a gift

Nobody should ever be asked to do that!

I hate how other people see me. A couple of months ago, I started a new job in a care home. On the training course I had the short straw, so I had to strip to my knickers while other staff used me to train doing dressing, hoisting, washing etc. Never been so humiliated!

^^ this exact same post gets posted overt couple of months whenever a care home training thread is made

..not troll hunting by the way. It’s just very, very odd.

@7Days doesn’t sound smug, sounds wonderful to feel that way.

Debbie wtf??!! I've previously worked in care and been hoisted on manual handling training but always fully clothed, why did they need you just in your underwear? I would complain about that trainer!

Op I don't ever notice it when I lose weight but when I look back on times when I was a lot smaller I can see I was tiny. I always notice when I gain weight though!

@FissionChips- pretty sure this is the well known knickers troll. Ignore it and usually they stop.

I was overweight for most of my life till a few years ago and I did find it hard to reshape my perception of my size, I couldn't tell what clothes would fit me etc.

Yep, I was a big girl in my teens, about 180lbs at my heaviest, and I'm 5ft 8" so looked like a line backer...

I'm now 39 and the fittest I've ever been. Body fat of 18%, probably 130lbs, basically ripped, toned and trim.
But still in my head I catch a glimpse and sometimes think I'm far bigger than I actually am. Inside I still view myself as someone with a weight problem when it's quite obvious I don't have a weight problem.

I'm getting better now, but it took me a long while to see myself as others did. I will automatically choose to try on clothes in a medium when really I'm a small. It's habit and a mental image we've built up of ourselves over time I suppose.

Hi again Debbie, What did your boyfriend say? Wasn’t he convinced everyone would fancy you? Twat.

The difference between how I perceive myself and others see me is I know what I look like naked!!

I'm very 'skinny fat', (love handles, belly ect) and also have loose skin. I think some people hide fat well and some people are hiding muscle.

Apologies for the derail - just dropped by to remove a couple of posts from one of our frequent flyer underwear trolls.

That underwear troll thing is so weird. Do they trawl the threads and then think 'ah yes, a thread where i can tenously link the stripped-to-my-knickers-for-care-home-training story, JACKPOT'!

I have some inverse body dysmorphia. When I am slim I think I am fat. I fret over every perceived imperfection or proportion imbalance. When I am fat I think I'm ok. Then I try to fit clothes and realise how enormous I've become because I deluded myself and thought I looked slimmer than I am.

All my life I thought I would start living once I lost weight and was slim - then I’d be confident, popular, pretty etc and it would change everything.

Except that I was slim at some points - I’ve yo-yo dieted and gone up and down like a pair of bellows and I didn’t see anything different when I was seven stone lighter or heavier. That’s the weight of a whole (small) person difference and I didn’t see it on my body in the mirror! I just always thought I was fat and always put life on hold ‘until I lose weight’.

When I got to my slimmest ever weight, people really noticed and I hated feeling like my body was public property for everyone to comment on but aside from that, nothing magically changed. I didn’t become immediately confident and turn into a totally different person as I had always imagined I would. Now I see photos of myself then, I realise I was gaunt and didn’t look great but at the time I still saw a fat woman in the mirror and wouldn’t have dared wear a bikini.

Then, like a PP said, something just clicked in my brain. I stopped waiting til I got slim, I developed confidence from nowhere and now I wear bikinis at a size 18-20 that I wouldn’t have looked at in a size 10-12. I have found that I care so much less about what other people think and it was that fear that crippled me before, not my weight. Changing my weight never helped until I lost the fear!

I met a PhD student who was researching this - how good we are at recognising our own body shape. She said the overall answer from what she'd found so far was - we are very bad at it. People who are at either end of the scale tend to think they are a lot more average than they really are. I can't remember what she said about people who are of a healthy weight. Going by that Gok Wan show I will assume that healthy--weight people tend to believe they are fatter than they are.