What's your attitude now?

[Razbry]

I'm going to make some generalizations, and as everyone is unique...this should just about insult everyone LOL Anyway, my own experience tells me that I'm a very different person than when I was MO. Back in my MO days I either was very quiet (offering no opinion on anything)...wishing I could blend in with the walls, or I was always on the defensive, which would be understandable being ridiculed or marginalized. I had a tongue as sharp as a sword, and used with without discretion. At some point following the DS, I consciously decided to put my sword away. As time went by I discovered I had opinions and a voice that other people would listen to. Being normal weight seems to make you legit somehow. I am a better person than I was before the Ds (not great, but better). I'm just wondering if anyone else had a similar or different experience.

 

[Munchkin]

I was a working person when I had the DS. Network Engineer. I worked with a whole bunch of people who pretty much ignored me. Not necessarily in a bad way, I was just invisible. I can promise you losing weight did not make me smarter or open up new pathways in my brain. The number on the scale gave me no new insight. But guess what, all of a sudden I became visible and these same people began seeking out my opinion on how to fix this or that. People I had worked with for years who had never spoken to me past hello.

This just made me sad. I never knew for sure how much I had been marginalized by my appearance. Looking back armed with this new knowledge it's probably true my whole work life would have been different if I had not been fat. I missed out on a lot of opportunity because of my weight.

 

[JackieOnLine]

wow, Munchkin, that is sad.

I have no doubt people are treated very differently when they change size significantly. my Mom was a librarian in a high school. She was always small but she said she got MUCH less respect when she let her hair go gray. (so she colored it until she retired)

we are a society that cares enormously about appearance.

 

[Munchkin]

wow, Munchkin, that is sad.

I have no doubt people are treated very differently when they change size significantly. my Mom was a librarian in a high school. She was always small but she said she got MUCH less respect when she let her hair go gray. (so she colored it until she retired)

we are a society that cares enormously about appearance.

I thought about this phenomenon a lot. And my conclusion was the people doing this really are not aware they do it. I truly was invisible to them so why should it surprise me to be ignored?

Goes right along with my oil change story. I had been going to the same place for years. Same guys, same small town in central Minnesota. After I lost the weight I went one day to get my oil changed after work. It was like being transported to a parallel universe. I pulled up and they are right there opening the doors for me and bringing me coffee. Talking to me and being polite and interested. Things they had never done before.

Sure it's sad and it makes you angry. But the people doing these things are not even aware on any level. People are treated well or poorly based on their appearance.

 

[star0210]

I honestly don't think my attitude or my perspective has changed any. I'm still the same person I've always been. I also can't say anyone has treated me any differently either.

 

[SHales]

I am in the same boat as Star0210. Not a lot of change for either me or others.

 

[southernlady]

Same boat here...I don't think I have changed nor have I perceived a change toward me by others.

 

[JackieOnLine]

I would expect a lightweight to notice less or no difference, strictly as a guess.

and just as a gross generalization I think I went from being ignored (at times, in some ways) for being a Fat Young Woman to being ignored as a smaller OLD woman. it's possible, anyway!

 

[hilary1617]

I'm definitely treated differently by others now. Though I don't feel like I've changed in how I deal with people, I'm exposed to a different set of behaviors to which I have to react.

It's a mixed bag.

I think my current appearance is more beneficial from a career perspective and in public, more often people are polite / gracious / thoughtful now. For example, people hold doors open for me, offer to assist when I am carrying bags, etc.

A few years ago I was carrying Hannah in my arms coming back from the 4th of July fireworks and tripped on a pothole in the sidewlk and we both fell into the street. (Charles was walking ahead of us with Liam and our folding chairs and didn't notice that we had gone down.) The throngs of people around us kept walking, leaving a fat lady and child face down on the pavement during the several minutes expended while I figured out whether I was sufficiently injured that it would be unwise to even attempt to move. These days, I'd expect it more likely than not that a someone in the crowd would ask if I was okay or would even extend a hand to help to return to my feet.

Counterbalancing new helpful and pleasant behaviors from members of the general public, post-DS I am far more frequently approached more often in circumstances where I would prefer to be left alone. For example, I rarely have a flight these days where my seat neighbors ignore me, so I get a book out of my bag before takeoff instead of waiting to be able to use my laptop. Also, even though I'm a middle-aged mom who wears a wedding ring, I'm no longer invisible to men when I take dinner alone in the hotel bar, so I'm more likely to order room service.

 

[DuodenalSwitchaRoo]

I haven't changed, nor have I noticed much change in the way people close to me treat me. HOWEVER, the public at large are WAY different!!!! I used to be the freaky circus lady, fair game for comments and glares. Now I am just normal fat. A fatness they see every day and I haven't gotten any comments, stare or glares in a year. It truly is amazing. Sad, yet it feels good not to be discounted as a human straight off the bat.

 

[star0210]

I would expect a lightweight to notice less or no difference, strictly as a guess.

and just as a gross generalization I think I went from being ignored (at times, in some ways) for being a Fat Young Woman to being ignored as a smaller OLD woman. it's possible, anyway!

I didn't start out as a lightweight..I was close to 300lbs.

 

[DuodenalSwitchaRoo]

I didn't start out as a lightweight..I was close to 300lbs.

Thats a lightweight to me People treat me much better now at 320+ than they did at 644.

 

[Razbry]

So many different and shared experiences. In my own experience, what absolutely floored me was the change that occurred in me. I became a kinder, gentile more understanding person. I understood that the behavior of other people that I interacted with was not all about me. You never know what another person is dealing with, no matter what their size.

 

[hilary1617]

I was in Vegas Tuesday night and caught a Penn and Teller show with Charles and the kids. Mid-show, Teller came over to my seat, grabbed my hand and took me up on stage to assist him solo with a fairly lengthy trick. (I sat in a chair with a fishbowl on my lap while he made coins and live goldfish appear.) This would never have happened pre-DS when I wore my cloak of invisibility.

@Razbry , sounds like a really positive change. It's so true that you never know what anyone endures - so many lead the "lives of silent desperation" that Thoreau so aptly described.

 

[Will2014]

Very interesting thread...shines a spotlight into some classic human behaviors. One thing I've noticed, as I've started a new job recently and only 4 people there new me as fat, is how many derogatory remarks are said about fat people on a daily basis by thin people. It was truly shocking to me to hear, as I was never privy to this kind of talk because I was "one of them". Any general conversation about food can turn on a dime and become hurtful rhetoric about one of my heavier coworkers. It's really sad and I can't help but wonder about how I must have been discussed in the past by people who were always nice to my face. Has anyone else found this kind of vitriol so prevalent? Or did I just join a hospital loaded with loathing and disgust for those who are obese? I always knew that obesity was the last tolerated area of discrimination, but man alive I had no idea it was that intense!