Feeling a bit deflated

[ICriedAllTheWayToTheChipShop]

I've lost just under 5 stone since the beginning of December and have gone from being a size 18 (squeezed into 16 most of the time because the denial was strong) to being able to comfortably get into a 12. I still have a bit more to lose but I've had a really happy few weeks of browsing charity shops and Vestiare Collective and picking up some lovely new things. I haven't been a size 12 since I was actually aged 12 so it's been a real novelty.

Then I made the mistake of looking at the latest "Why are fat people so disgusting?" thread in AIBU and inevitably, someone brought up vanity sizing. And now, instead of being a person with a healthy BMI who felt quite good about herself, I have realised that I am an elephantine creature who would have been about five sizes bigger in the old days. I wouldn't even have been able to buy clothes in normal shops but instead would have been forced to make do with a two-man tent from an army surplus store, fashioned into a crude muumuu-type garment. If I somehow travelled back to the 60s and got myself into a group photo I would probably block out the sun and set off the dawn chorus, etc etc...

Sorry for the rant, but I don't really understand why people always do this on weight threads. Why does it actually matter to them? How do they think it adds anything to the conversation?

Sorry you're feeling like that. What a lot of people conveniently forget is that people were smaller back in the day because people didn't have enough to eat! People weren't just slimmer, they were typically smaller in stature, due to failure to thrive in childhood. Nothing to do with willpower. That was the case certainly for many people born up to the seventies and I would guess still quite a proportion in the eighties and nineties too.

I'm a size 12 and I'm not fat. My BMI is 22. Perfectly possible to be a size 12 and slim. Well done on your impressive weight loss!

I guarantee you that if in January your scales read the weight you are now when you stood on them, you would have been delighted, I bet you would have in Feb and March and probably for the last decade or so as well.

Why are you letting your comparison to others take that joy away from you?

Don't be one of those people who spends years being unhappy thinking “if I weighed X, or looked like Y, I’d be happy” then get there and feel unhappy still; what a waste of life!

You’ve done amazingly with your weight loss; 5 stone from Dec to now is truly incredible.

Now, wake up every day and appreciate that the scales don’t read what they did in Dec because YOU wanted to change that reading and YOU have. You’re incredible, believe it and be thankful that today you’re the person you’ve yearned to be.

Yes, Hibernating has a great point here!

I often see girls / young women who are much taller, broader & athletic than we ever were. They look amazing, and definitely aren’t wearing small sizes. They look great in shorts!

Yes, I think about one of my grandmothers, who was about 4'10" and really birdlike in her build, but she lived in rural poverty in her childhood and probably never had enough to eat. Even though she was very thin she still always wore a girdle because that was just what women did at the time. I have no doubt that if people in the recent past had had access to the same types and amounts of food that we have today, they would have had just as much obesity as we do. They weren't morally better than us because some of them were malnourished!

@ICriedAllTheWayToTheChipShop you see it when you see adverts for young women for weight gainers, to make them more 'womanly'. Being skinny was seen as immature, because people still had child like frames in their teens and twenties. My mum was born in the fifties and although rationing had ended, food was still relatively scarce in her childhood, especially rich/sweet food.
When I was a child (eighties) we went to America and I remember being shocked at how tall and athletic everyone was - they didn't have the food shortages we had. Obviously their food availability has caused them a different issue now, but most of us are definitely taller and broader than we used to be.