Reactions you've experienced

For those of you who have lost a bunch of weight at this point - what has happened when you've seen people who haven't seen you for a while and who didn't know you were losing weight?  How did they react?  What sorts of questions did they ask you?  

How did you respond?  If you thought about it afterward, how do you wish you had responded? 

I'm in the jewelery industry so in see a lot of the same people a few times a year so it's happened a ton especially lately... I have had customers come in and cause a scene with omg you look so awesome your hot.... wow... Most everyone has been so positive....  I actually was in the hospital the other night 4 nights ago... and a woman kept staring at me i knew who she was I haven't seen her since Xmas time... she kept staring so finally i said hello patty ... she said ... how do I know you I  said it's me Kelly from and mentioned my company and she was like Omg I didn't even recognize you. .. you look fantastic... 

I'm not as open with the surgery just yet ..I have with some but not others not till I'm done ... so I just say a half truth and say if it's white I don't east it no rice pasta flour or bread just lots of protien and very low carbs and nothing to drink bu****er!!!  It is the truth just not the whole truth .. and for me right now that works!!! :-)

♡ Kelly

Reactions:

• Oh my goodness, you look great!
• Are you sick?
• Hello, I'm "so and so"... nice to meet you.
• You must feel great!
• How much weight have you lost?
• I'm so glad you finally did something about your weight!

Questions asked:

• What is your secret?
• How did you do it?
• Are you just eating different and exercising.... or....?
• Are you sick?

My responses vary. I tell people that I've never felt better.... that I am very happy and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done - but totally worth it! I will tell someone in private how much I've lost... but I do not announce it in a room full of people when someone asks me by yelling it across the room (true story, has happened) because that makes me uncomfortable.

I am not really open about my surgery... so when the majority of people have asked how I've done it, I laugh and say that I "don't eat anything that tastes good" and the conversation changes. I have confided in a couple (literally maybe 2 or 3) morbidly obese people that have asked that I've had surgery because I believe it could actually help them (and they aren't just being nosy). 

I have never been asked if I've had surgery directly... people will only ask my closest friends or relatives (and not me). If someone asked me directly, at this point I think I would probably admit to it... but honestly... I never talked about my previous attempts to lose weight through diet and exercise... and so I don't talk about surgery either. It's just not something I've ever liked to discuss - surgery or not!

I get a lot of "wow, you look great." And "what is your secret - I need to do that!"

i was relatively open about the surgery, but have also just said low carb and lots of exercise.  Wi my new job it will be weird because everyone there will only know the thinner me.  

As you already saw on my post, I just "came out of the WLS closet" on Facebook. Part of the reason I did this was because there were a lot of people that had no idea I lost any weight, and I didn't want to answer a million questions about it. In hindsight, I should have maybe been posting pics of myself all along, so it wouldn't be such a shock, but I never thought of it that way. So while I used to fear running into people because of the weight I gained, I then found myself fearing running into people because I'd lost so much and have to explain. Ridiculous.

But to answer your question, some people don't say anything. A few didn't recognize me. Most just say I look great. Some ask how I did it or what my secret is. Every once in awhile I get "so did you just eat right and do a lot of cardio?" which is of course code for "did you do it the old-fashioned way or did you take the easy way out and have surgery?" I used to stammer and stutter quite a bit when trying to answer. Usually I just say something to the effect that I had WLS, I have to be very careful about what I eat and I exercise like crazy. The oversharer in me doesn't like to withhold the WLS part, unless it's a person I truly do not like who is doing the asking. I of course understand that we all have different levels of comfort about this, and WLS patients have no obligation to disclose the fact that they had surgery. 

How I wish I would have responded? No idea! Haha. I never came up with a good response I could confidently recite. 

General Reaction: "Wow! You look GREAT!"

My "Go-To" Response: "Thanks! I FEEL great!"

The conversation usually moves on from there, but the couple of times people have asked how I did it, I have been open and just shrugged, smiled, and said "I had surgery." I haven't gotten any negative responses, but the one time that I did get an "Oh..." sort of weirded-out response, I followed up with something like, "Well, it was that or diabetes and arthritis, which was the door that I was knocking on." That worked like a charm and the person just shrugged and said that I had a good point.

If I ever get any a-hole responses, I plan to smile and walk away :) My momma taught me that if you can't say anything nice, then keep your trap shut!

I had the best reaction on Friday.  A former coworker walked into a room I was in.  I said "hi, how are you?" And she replied "I'll be fine once my cortisone shot starts working" and limped on out of the room, stopped, turned and came back in and said "Ms. Milly? I didn't even recognize you!"  Then we talked and it turns out her doctor had just recommended WLS for her so I shared some info with her.

Most people just say, "You look great!".  Women generally ask how I'm doing it.  I just say, "I had WLS in January and have been working my butt off since then."  I've only had one person respond in a manner that I thought was less than fully accepting.  She is an older woman and she said, "Oh, um, well.  I need to do it, too.  Not surgery, of course, but lose weight."  And I just thought, Why not surgery?  haha  

The primary reactions/questions I've gotten are "wow, you look great!" and "what are you doing?" and "how much have you lost?"  If it's someone I'm comfortable sharing with, I'll answer all of the questions, though with the weight question I often just tend to say "a lot!"  Especially when I feel like I'm being asked by someone who has no business asking that question... aka. my landlord when he asked right in front of the new roommate who had just moved in and I'd only known/lived with for about a week.  Suuuuuper awkward since the new roomie would have had no idea I'd even lost any weight. ugh.  But for the most part I just try to recognize that people are really just happy for me and trying to express that they think it's awesome.