I have a lot of benches and I will post more! Thank you for the compliment.
When I lost weight, I lost my anonymity I never knew I had. All of the sudden women thought I was trying to steal their husbands and men were looking at me. Meanwhile I could not recognize myself in a mirror. It was a scary time for a couple of years, but I got through it. This is a big reason people gain back their weight because they cannot stand to be a new person. Lucky for me, someone warned me how hard it would be (a lady who gained back her weight.)
For at least the first year, all I wanted to do was crawl back into my big fat protective shell, but I forced myself to stay on track and try to get through it. This experience is why I hope I never gain weight and have to try to lose it again. The emotional toll is devastating.
wow fitinfun! I have never heard of anything like that before. You suddenly became noticeable! Well that doesn't make society sound very good, it makes it sound horrible if everyone just ignores the overweight people. dang. But some go back and gain weight because it's more comfortable to be kind of invisible right? dang again!
I thought it would be so liberating but I guess if you are used to that insulation then it would be a heck of a shock!
Here's a story:
My fitness trainer was a rich kid who grew in a house on the beach, and was a surfer, a lifeguard, and a swim instructor. I was his first client and we worked together for a year.
Mid-way through I told him I used to have to pause while walking on soft sand to catch my breath while obese. So I would leave the pavement and take 20 steps and them stand there pretending to admire the view. Repeat, repeat. repeat, until I got out to the wet sand where I could walk again.
He thought this was strange.
I told him all obese people did this and he said he had never seen it. So he went to the beach to look and guess what? He had literally spent 90% of his days on the beach and never noticed this. He was amazed to see all these fat people staring out to sea.
Then I told him one of his best friends - a lifeguard herself - was obese. He had to go look at her body and yup, she was. The man was in a bathing suit with her at work all day, and had never seen her body before.
No one sees fat people and everyone is fat now. When I got thin, I stood out like a sore thumb. When I was fat I could slink around and no one saw me. Now they stared. It was terrifying. Coming to SE Asia was wonderful, because people think I am fat here since they are so very thin.
Being scared to be thin is the number one reason people gain weight again. There are studies on it.
howdy this fine Tuesday fitinfun! Oh my gosh...people are actually SCARED to be thin! That blows my mind. Hey this is an entire post right here, I would post this if I were you, no one understands this mentality. I just thought that everyone overweight wanted to be thin and felt depressed if they lost weight and then gained it back!
The obese people are invisible and so in a way you are more comfortable there because as thin as you are people see you as being fat! lol. unreal. totally fascinating though. And you proved this stuff to your trainer who never saw his partner as being obese!
I'm conflicted about posting this. My coaching series has the "adjusting" part at the end of it.I don't want to give people another excuse not to lose weight. They already worry about "loose skin" which most of us have.
As you will recall, 80% of American is now overweight or obese. This makes the thin people freaks. I grew up fat in the 60's and stayed that way until 2011. I was a circus freak of fatness and and then everyone caught up to me in the 2000's. Then I got thin and was a freak again. But now guys were looking at my boobs too.
I would stand in a crowd of fat people and feel so out of place. It still happens, but I'm used to it and far fewer people are fat here.
We do all want to be thin, but when it happens your psyche goes into shock.
Like I said, it's only because of the person who warned me that I was able to hang on. The first time she lost weight she got all the lose skin cut off too. Then the second time of gaining and losing she hated her body too much. She was obese for the third time and suicidal when I read her story. I used to have her on my mind constantly for a good year.
Howdy again fitinfun! ok, I see why you would be conflicted about posting that, I wouldn't either. Wow this is much more complicated as far as psychology goes than I ever dreamed about! But I see those pictures of you when you were obese and I don't think you looked that big. You were big but not nearly as alot of overweight people I see. I know it's still the same trauma though once you get a certain size.
One of my Number One comments now is how I was not that fat to begin with. This tells you how bad the obesity problem is. I could barely wedge myself behind the steering wheel in my car and reach the pedals. The fatter we all get, the less impact one fat person has. I topped out at 275 pounds. I regularly here from people over 300, 400 and 500 who are not ready to lose weight yet since "it is not as bad as other people."
The trauma is really bad when you cannot stand up from a chair or sit in most of them. You cannot wedge into a bench seat in a restaurant. This is one reason why I loved Texas when I was fat. You have big sturdy chairs there and the bench seats are way back.
howdy today fitinfun! yay for Texas ! lol. wow this is all fascinating stuff. To think that someone weighing 400 or 500 pounds are saying that they'd aren't as bad of shape as other people? That sounds mentally dillusional! I guess you were pretty big if your steering wheel was jammed up against you so hard that you couldn't turn it and I'm sure the seat was all the way back.
So Texas is set up to handle overweight people...I guess I do see an awful lot of them and they like to make things bigger here anyway. thanks for the continuing education!