Body Image Issues

I've lost about 125lbs and I still feel "fat".  Does any one else experience this?  What do you do about it?  I look in the mirror and I see that I am physically smaller but I feel like a big person.  I am in therapy so this is something we will definitely talk about but I thought I would post here and see if anyone had any thoughts/suggestions.

Thanks.

If you see in a mirrow that you are smaller that is great.  But the brain has not catch on that yet.  When I had that issues i bought 3 full sized mirrors and hang them where i needed to pass them while walking in my house every day.  I had to look at myself a few times a day.  That plus making sure i wear clothes that were not too big for my body (not too big ) really help my brain to catch with my changing size. 

Now i see my self the way i am or even smaller. Lol.

Dear Magnoliagirl,

I'm sorry to hear you are going through body image issues. This is a common problem among people who have gone through such a transformation on such a short period of time. Our perceptions often don't match our realities, because we haven't 'caught' up to our changed cir****tances. However, this concern of your sounds particularly troublesome to me because it is one of the main precursors of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. This does not mean you are going to be developing either, but it means that people that do, claim to feel this way very often.

I'm glad to hear you are visiting a therapist.  You'll definitely have to explore these feelings with her, and perhaps revisit your reasons for having this surgery. While wanting to look 'skinny' in and of itself is not a terrible goal, it should not be a primary goal of yours. Instead, I suggest you focus on the other positives associated with your weight loss, such as the ability to do things you couldn't before, your added years of life, your newly found good health, and your new agility, among other many great things that have changed for you since you embarked on this journey. Looking skinny is great, but when we only focus and pay attention to such a goal, we are bound to get fixated, and perhaps disappointed when we don't see exactly what we envisioned. Instead, we need to first learn to love yourselves as we are, accept all of us, then look to improve. 

I would suggest speaking to your therapist about providing you some mindfulness information for you to practice on. If she cannot, please PM and I'll do my best to provide you with some information you can look up online. It is a type of technique that I believe would benefit you greatly, as it has shown to be very successful for people struggling with eating disorders, body image issues, and a host of other issues. 

One of the drawbacks of WLS is that it can only change our bodies to help us lose weight, but it does not change the issues that led us to become obese, nor does it target the self-esteem and body image problems some of us picked up along the way due to feeling inadequate for so long. That is something we gotta work on for a lot longer than it takes us to become skinny, but what will eventually "set us free". 

Personally, the first step starts with letting go of unrealistic expectations, shame, guilt and 'standards' of beauty. We work so hard in our lives to make others feel loved, appreciated, and safe, but we rarely do it for ourselves. Become a kinder, more forgiving, more generous person towards yourself, and you'll start to see that even if the image in the mirror doesn't change, the way you feel about it will. 

I've heard it takes our brains at least six months after weight loss to "catch up" with our actual appearance.  It helps me to look at photos and compare what I looked like before WLS and what I look like today, and I'm still losing weight.  I try to concentrate on what I can do now that I couldn't do before, and how great I feel now.  

Hope this helps

People comment that I "look great" and I do t see it like they do. I know that I have lost weight by the scale and by looking in the mirror, but it still seems foreign to me.  It will still take a while for it to catch up in my head. 

Nice to see another poster from MA! :)

I agree people tells me that I look good like some of you mentioned I feel fat

I think this is a common feeling among people who have had drastic weight loss in a short amount of time. It helped me to see myself with other people in pictures. I finally started to realize that I was smaller than most of them. I occasionally still will be shocked by how small my clothes are when I do laundry. It just takes some time I promise!

Is it an everyday thing or an occasional "fat day"?  Either way it seems pretty common for us.  I have the same feelings sometimes, but for me it's more of a self deprecating exercise.  You know, the old " I'm fat, stupid and everybody hates me" crap.  I'm trying to learn to talk to myself as I would a friend, but old habits die hard.  Therapy helps, good luck.

This always interests me because I never saw myself as over weight.  Photographs were always a shock.  Then tonight we went out to eat and the owner was surprised to see me and asked how I lost so much weight.  It caught me off guard because I have forgotten being fat.  

I am still pre-op, but this is one issue that sort of worries me.  I have always been heavy.  I don't necessarily see myself as being as big as I truly am, but I can't wrap my mind around seeing myself below 200lb.  I think what I am going to do is find some old high school photos where I was less than 200lb and look at them several times every day.  Maybe that will get me in the mindset of what my smaller body will actually look like.  What I don't want to happen is for me to sabotage myself because of this.

On a related note, I believe some folks never escape this feeling or at least take much longer than 6 months.  My mother-in-law had RNY 10yrs or so ago (and has kept nearly all the weight off) and we believe she still sees herself as fat.  She wears clothes that are at least a size too big, never tucks her shirt in, etc.   So, that feeling may never completely go away.