To think everyone who is plus size feels the same way I do?

[cryariver]

Name change for this post.

I’m morbidly obese
I’m 5ft 5” and I weigh 17stone, I’m a size 22.

I haven’t always been this size. Up until a year a ago I was 13 stone and a size 14, which I’d maintained for a long time.

The problem is, I’m incredibly embarrassed by myself and I detest the way I look.

I haven’t seen a lot of friends in over a year, I’ve turned down the opportunity for meet ups because I can’t bare for them to see how I look.

I mentally bully myself every single day and if I said out loud what I said do myself, people would be disgusted.

I hate the relationship I have with food, but food is like a drug to me.
I love how loved, calm, comforted, satisfied and happy it makes me feel when I’m eating, which makes it harder to stop.

I don’t eat at work because I tell myself people will think I’m disgusting, so I just drink water all day and have a big dinner when I get home.

I hate having the use the printer at work because it means I have for walk past people and I’m so disgusted by myself and embarrassed about what people will think of me.

I’m so exhausted from the constant bullying but I don’t know how else to live with looking the way I do.

Those who matter don't mind, those who mind don't matter.
Try to build your self esteem your self worth is not your size, my friend in work is 5ft4 24 stone she is friendly, very thoughtful, funny, a gem.
When I think of her they are my thoughts.
Life is short live it.

For the people being pissed off at the op - she isn't saying she views others in this way, or judges others on their weight or clothes size .

It's about judgement of herself, her own feeling of self worth and how SHE feels. She's not suggesting everyone who is maybe carrying extra pounds SHOULD feel like this. It's that she does about HERSELF.

I understand, I'm feeling pretty rubbish myself weight and clothes wise. We all need to learn to be a bit kinder in how we view ourselves.

My mum has had weight issues all her life and has passed those strange thought processes onto me. It's very sad, emotive, difficult. I'm trying to make positive changes.

Be kinder to yourself ♥

Start tomorrow with a conscious decision to be nicer to you, if negative thoughts creep in or you're mean to yourself pinch yourself hard on the wrist to make you conscious of negative nagging.
Get your nails done, buy a nice dress, do one nice thing for you every day, within a week you'll feel better. I'm rooting for you.

I’m very overweight. I hate everything about my body. I know that, logically, my weight isn’t a reflection of who I am as a person, but I see it as a major failing. I assume that slim people are just fundamentally better than I am. I am embarrassed to walk around in this body. I feel sad that I cannot appreciate all the remarkable things my body has done simply because I hate how it looks.

I do not make the same assumptions about other people who are overweight. I reserve my loathing for myself.

No, they don’t. I’m sorry you do, but it’s ok to fundamentally like yourself even if there are aspects of your body you don’t like and want to change.

Bigger than you. Wobble often re self image, of course I do, but basically I’m aware most people in this world aren’t in fact looking, judging, noticing me at all, because I’m not that important to them. Or them to me. The people who do matter to me love me. DP fancies the pants off me. Are they all wrong to love me? Am I? Am I supposed to be so unacceptable? Apologise for taking up space? Fuck that.

Are you kind? Do you do a good job? Do you make other people feel good, advise them maybe, make them laugh? Hug them better? These are waaaaaay more important facts about you than your damned weight. Don’t define yourself, or others by it.

For the people being pissed off at the op - she isn't saying she views others in this way, or judges others on their weight or clothes size .

It's about judgement of herself, her own feeling of self worth and how SHE feels. She's not suggesting everyone who is maybe carrying extra pounds SHOULD feel like this. It's that she does about HERSELF.

OP asked 'AIBU to think everyone who is plus size thinks the way I do'

Don't be surprised, or shouty, that OP got answers.

I feel like this too. It occupies my thoughts every day. I am slightly shorter and slightly lighter than you so I think our BMIs are probably the same. I also feel that comfort from food and I can be planning to lose weight at the same time as I am imagining having some crisps. My health scares me as I think I will develop diabetes but that hasn't been enough to change.

Personally, I find that I can only seriously lose weight when I don't feel that burning shame. At the moment I am feeling a bit more positive about other aspects of my life, so I am motivated to change the thing that is making me unhappy. Shame and embarrassment are what holds me back. If I buy something to wear that looks vaguely nice, it is so much more motivating to think of myself as attractive and want to shape up.

Yes, I feel this way too. I piled on 10lbs a year for the last six years living in a country where portion sizes are crazy and it’s impossible to walk anywhere. I really can’t wait to go home for a visit but the idea of old friends/family seeing me like this makes me want to cry.

I used to feel like you do. I was 18 stone at 5'3" and my weight dominated my thoughts, constantly. I was sure that if I was slim, I would be happy - I was convinced that if I was slim, it would change my whole life for the better.

Then I got really, really ill. I was vomiting 10 times a day and could barely keep water down. Eventually, weighing under 6 stone, I was admitted to hospital, to be fed intravenously. I was wearing size 6 jeans, but I was utterly miserable. I felt weak, cold, shivery. I had trouble sleeping and had to be lifted in and out of the bath by DH. It was humiliating. I was even lower than my "dream weight", but I looked and felt horrific.

Slowly, I put some weight back on. Nearly 2 years on, my weight has stabilized at around 11.5 stone and I look and feel so much better. I'm officially "overweight" again, but I don't look gaunt, or like I'm "dying" (thanks for that one, Mum!), which I was.

I'm a size 16 and I will never criticize my body again. I have been obese and I have been underweight - and everything in between - but I have finally found acceptance, after learning that being slim didn't improve my life in even the tiniest way. My clothes might have been a size 6, but I wasn't well enough to wear them out anywhere!

You really do need to be kinder to yourself. I realise that no one else will learn from my lesson (except me), but I felt it was helpful for you to hear this perspective.

Losing the weight does not solve everything.

I def get the bit of meeting old friends etc as worried how big you may look. I am dreading going back to work. I am prob not that much bigger than I was before lockdown as have lost and put on but feel like I wasted a year of my life where I had time to exercise. I have a colleague who has lost 5stone and dreading see her as a bit of a preacher but I know quite a few have put on. I work with mainly nice people so hoping we will just be pleased to see each other.

I literally carry all my weight on my stomach with skinny legs and arms. I’m 14 stone but size 18/20 because of the stomach fat :/ I feel the same op x

@legotruck

For the people being pissed off at the op - she isn't saying she views others in this way, or judges others on their weight or clothes size .

It's about judgement of herself, her own feeling of self worth and how SHE feels. She's not suggesting everyone who is maybe carrying extra pounds SHOULD feel like this. It's that she does about HERSELF.

OP asked 'AIBU to think everyone who is plus size thinks the way I do'

Don't be surprised, or shouty, that OP got answers.

Apologies if it came across as shouty, that's definitely not the case. I was trying to put emphasis on the words, that's genuinely all.

The op is asking if others feel like this. She's not saying people should feel like this.

I’m 5’3” and found out today I weigh 15 stone 12!! I’ve gone up from my previous all time high of 14’6 last year without really noticing. Most of my clothes still fit ok, and I’ve bought a few new things a size up, which are a bit baggy, so I haven’t even gone up a whole jeans size with over a stone gained.

I also have a thyroid issue - as so many of us seem to have - but I’m honestly shocked when I stand on the scales as when I look in the mirror I actually think I look ok! Obvs it depends what I’m wearing and whether I’m particular bloated or whatever but on the whole, I’m ok with how I look. I’d prefer to be thinner of course, but not enough to actually do anything about it.

5 ft 6.5 and didn't rocket upto 17.6/size 20 over the last 2/3 years from 12 stone , now 15 stone something and a size 16, trying to get down to around the 13 stone mark

did rocket**

I am 5.6 and about 15 stone I'm 59.I went to the gp about a lump under my arm which thankfully was an 'over developed' ligament, the dr weighed me and noticed my weight exactly the same as 3 years ago to the ounce! I told her I have no energy and my joints are really painful and that although I really don't eat much I just can't shift the weight... 3 blood tests later and I'm surprised to learn I have an under active thyroid ( I'm usually quite healthy). Please get checked out and don't give yourself such a hard time if you can lose weight then go for it or if you can't please learn to love yourself a bit more as I highly suspect that the only person who thinks you're disgusting etc is you.

BTW when I asked my dr for saxanda she said we give that to people who are morbidly obese and you are not.

I do relate to a lot of what you say OP. I’m obese and I don’t always feel good about myself.

But, I don’t hate myself. I try and be compassionate towards me and my
Body and I like parts of it.

I am also working on getting fitter and eating better too.

I know it’s hard to be bigger but I also
Don’t believe that we change through hating ourselves.

you are in a very difficult place emotionally right now, and it's not a stable place from which to launch any kind of positive change in your trajectory so I hope you can find a way to be a little kinder to yourself. It has been a very tough year.

I don't think it is that helpful to form a fixed mindset about how very overweight and obese people must feel about themselves, it is always going to be a wide spectrum but how other people feel about themselves doesn't really affect you, so it doesn't matter.

I gained weight slowly and steadily from my late teens to my mid-40s going gradually from a size 14 to a size 22/24 slowly (with a faster gain each pregnancy) and reached 18.5 stone by early 2020 (and yes contrary to an earlier post you are quite right that the term morbidly obese is correct for that kind of ballpark, the term is true for a bmi over 40). During much of the time when I was gaining weight I didn't feel that bad about it, no. I knew I was heavy but I had clothes I felt good in, and I enjoyed what I ate and drank, and for me I felt that my emotional stability would get so severely affected by dieting (I certainly don't have a great relationship with food but being hungry is a really difficult thing for me to bear) that I thought I had to make s choice between either mental health or physical health and I felt comfortable choosing mental health and accepting myself physically. I found comfort in identifying people about the place who were even fatter than me and telling myself that I wasn't too bad because I wasn't as big as them - but it's always possible to get even fatter.

I was able to make a total turnaround due to covid, which provided me with sufficient motivation to get over my mental blocks about dieting and start losing weight seriously. I am back down to a size 12, around 11st now which I haven't been since my teenage years. It's not an easy path but its possible. I hope you find the right path for you, but I suspect that reinforcing your self-loathing isn't a good starting point for that path so I hope you can take some initial steps to give yourself some positive self-talk about what you can do well, and focus on some good things, and take it from there.

I'm a right tellytubby at the moment and definitely need to lose some serious chunk. I'm the same dress size as you but a different height.

I'm not happy with how I look and more importantly I feel unfit. I need to do something about it. Seriously, I really do.

But like hell will I feel embarrassed about how I look. My son snuggles up to my big wobbly belly and loves to cuddle it. How can I hate my body when it did something as amazing as produce two children? My size reflects the fun nights I've had with gorgeous food and time spent relaxing with the ones I love. Yes, I need to get fit and I will do - but I won't be made to feel bad. I've certainly never been bullied about how I look.

This may sound unbelievably wanky but we are all in this universe for a very short time. When your time is up, the fact you had chubby thighs or a wobbly tum really won't matter. The world will carry on turning no matter what. By all means do something about it if you're unhappy but curtailing your life due to being overweight is a serious waste of precious time.

YABU. I am bigger than you and don’t feel like that at all. I’m sorry that you do, but please don’t assume you speak for everyone. There are far worse things someone can be than fat.

In a WAY I agree with you because when I am slim, I genuinely feel good about myself, no effort needed, I don't need to think about or discuss it, I just feel genuinely good. When I put on a lot of weight, the days I feel good are very limited, only when I make a huge effort, and even then doesn't last all day. I have to really TRY to think positively about it, use positive language like referring to myself as 'curvy' rather than fat and you know, just generally convince myself that 'I am more than my size' and all the other similar statements that you see on body positivity memes. I can't speak for everyone of course, but my friends at least are the same. Would never judge or look down on anyone for being overweight but don't feel genuinely secure when it's us.

Will add, I do agree with a PP that life is short and should be enjoyed! So I'm definitely not one for dieting and gruelling work out regimes! But I do feel that finding something that works for me to lose weight while still enjoying myself is important as I don't feel I can really enjoy my life while I'm very overweight as I don't feel entirely secure. But perhaps I'm just insecure and others don't mind as much.

I’m 5ft 4 and 14.5 stone, I need to lose 3 stone. I feel nothing like you do. Yes, I wish I could lose the weight but I don’t even try. It does not ruin my life.

I get you op. I've tried to discuss this with therapists and have been dismissed or offered unclear cbt- therapist only seemed to read one book!