Has anyone here NEVER been slim?

[TheScarlettPimpernel]

Hello!

Just airing some musings from another thread so as not to clog it up -

I have been medically obese (or very nearly) since I was about 15, and I am now 32. There was a period from around 19-23 when I was really very fat (around a size 22-24), and aside from that I have been anything from just under 14 stone (I'm 5 foot 8) to about 17 stone.

So although I have (mostly) not been the kind of size to feature on TV shows, I have certainly always been notably overweight.

I feel it has been the defining characteristic of my life and has affected everything - I have never really worn short sleeves in summer for example, and have worn jeans in public perhaps twice (people far larger than me do both of these things of course, but it's not something I'm comfortable doing).

Anyway, here is my query. I am losing weight, though I am early on in the 'journey', and for the first time in my life my aim is not to be 'a bit less massive' but 'to be slim' (I want to lose 3 stone 10lb).

The reason I have never actually articulated a desire to 'be slim' (as opposed to just 'a bit less fat') is because honestly, it just seems completely impossible, like I might as well try and touch the moon. People who were once slim know that they can be a slim person, so I imagine they can kind remember how it felt, and what they wore, to keep themselves going. But is there anyone here who was always fat, even as a young teen, and then got slim? Because seriously it seems to me to be nothing less than a fairytale !

I also worry that no-one wants me to be slim. At my lightest I was around a 16ish and people frowned and muttered and said "gosh don't lose too much" and "your face is lookign really very thin" and "oh Scarlett I just don't recognise you anymore", and all that ballcocks. I still was only just light enough for size 16 jeans so what they were on about I've no idea

ANyway I'm rambling. Anyone got any thoughts?!

Hiya Scarlett, I'm leaping over from t'other thread. I don't know if I qualify or not as I have been overweight or obese for the last ten years, but before that was bulimic and underweight to the extent that I was hospitalised. But I have never FELT slim - for as long as I can remember I have felt fat and frumpy, and uglier than everybody else in the crowd. So the gradual weight lose I'm seeing at the moment is weird for me because I'm almost expecting it to "cure" that side of me, when in reality it might not at all. Even if I hit target I might feel just as fat as I ever did.

YO Pix, thanks for following over...

I'm sorry to hear about your previous troubles - it seems sometimes as if it is all sides of the same coin whichever way you look at it. I guess you are healthier now, at least, - but I think I understand about feeling 'cured' regardless of what the scales say.

Hmm. It is a very complex business actually. And I don't think any of my friends would really recognise the description I give - of having felt obese and repulsive all my life, when I suspect that they think of me more as 'plump and bubbly' (almost worse than 'fat cah'!)

I have been slim then obese for about 14 years and now slim again. Most of my friends haven't seen me slim before and I got all the comments about not recognising me and don't get too slim , how did you lose all that weight etc. I couldn't work out if the comments were complements or not so just smiled and tried to ignore them but must admit I found them very difficult to deal with. I feel people have an image of someone and when that person changes they have to make comments. I noticed this in particular when I got slimmer than them.
I started my diet just wanting to be a bit less fat and just continued until I had lost a third of my body weight.
Not sure if this answers any of your questions but I do understand what you are saying.

That is really helpful toomany - and congrats on your loss :)

It is weird, how people react. I wasn't even slim, I just wasn't very fat any more, and yet some people found it really quite unnerving I think. My Mum bless her sort of missed her comfortable, plump daughter. Some of my girlfriends were a bit perturbed that I was heading for 'their league' ( you know what I mean!) at a rate of knots (lucky for them I went into reverse and went back to the comforting unthreatening old me with icing all over my face ). Hilariously enough a couple of my close male friends barely noticed. "I've lost three and a half stone!!!" was my outraged cry. "You just look like my pal Scarlett to me", came the infuriated response.

I am sure your guy friends noticed men don't comment. Although not one day has gone by without someone commenting on my shrinking size only one man has mentioned it, all the comments were from women including lots from people inwardly know. Never in a million years did I expect such a big reaction. It's weird though because I feel exactly the same inside, my life us the same , same problems, same good bits.

Meant to say ' women I hardly know'

Yes I thought that was what you meant!

I am glad to know it is possible, at any rate. Do you mind my asking how much you lost? I am all about getting inspiration these days!

I feel like I've been forced to be a particular kind of person by what I look like, and by what that appearance signals, and I want to find out who I would have been had I not resembled a fat Victorian laundry-woman with a plump pleasing face and arms like gammon hams

Mmmmm, gammon!

Everybody noticed when I cam back from ML significantly smaller than pre-pregnancy. Men, women, children - they all wanted to comment. Which was really really odd for me and unexpectedly hard. I think my "fat persona" is invisible rather than jolly and bubbly. So everyone suddenly staring made me feel like I was standing around in my underwear or summit!

I've still got about a stone/ stone and a half to go but I can do that subtly a pound or two a week so no-one is really noticing that.

Oh crumbs. I want so much to do this but then panic about the effects of having done it, which is a kind of self-sabotage isn't it?

See, what I am aiming for is to become almost a different person, the one I have always secretly hankered after being and the one only my DH has any clue is lurking in there.

I said to him the other day, You know if I achieve what I want to achieve I won't be that plump Edwardian maiden in long handmade skirts doing embroidery in the corner, I'll be getting tattoos and abseiling (Disclaimer: I am prone to exaggerating) and he said very calmly "That's all right dear, you've spent 20 years embroidering: it's time for a change"

:)

He is marvellous, really

My brother recently lost lots of weight. When he got down to normal (ie BMI of 25) my mum said to me she thought he looked TOO THIN now and didn't I agree? I said, no sorry mum, I can't agree with you there. I just hope she didn't say it to him!

Yep, me :(

Aww, your husband sounds lovely. I love DH to bits but he is more a "Hmm, whatever, do you want a biscuit" kind of a guy.

Me! Your post really resonated with me. I have always been overweight (as in I remember not wanting to be weighed at school at age 7). Have literally never been slim.

But I lost three stone last year (lipotrim fyi) and it's been interesting. Doing a fast and furious method was quite enlightening. I think for me doing diets where you lose a pound or so a week meant that a signficant weight loss was always a pipe dream because reaching goal weight would take a year at least so it never seemed realistic or achieveable. But losing the weight quickly meant suddenly I was there (as a slim-ish) person and since then I have found it easier than I would have thought to keep the weight off because I feel I have something invested in it at this point. It's real to me now, not a fairytale in your words, so I can commit to keeping it up more easily. So far at least.

Like you, I never articulated a desire to be slim because it seemed literally impossible. Now I am here and it's odd. I have had lots of comments (all positive actually) from women and not from men. I think people really are pleased for me so that has not particuarly been a problem. But we'll see - can I keep it up? I'm six months in and something in my mind has shifted, I think, but after decades of being overweight I realise I can't take this for granted.

Apart from my first 2 terms at uni, where I didn't realise at the time anyway, I've always been overweight. I was a size 18 when I got married and over the years crept up to a 26/28. I'm on the way down now size 22. I am going to follow my bmi down to the normal range, but have no desire to be skinny!