I’m not going to dwell on this in future writing and I certainly don’t want anyone to use this as an excuse, but their are few downsides to weight loss. I dropped 45 lbs last year with a few more to go, but here’s what’s been weird about the results.
- I’m cold all the time. I live in Florida and now I wear a hoodie in any weather below 85 F.
- People want to congratulate you, but they don’t know how. I get questions like “Did you want to lose the weight?” Yes, yes I did. People are afraid that I got sick and they don’t want to congratulate me on getting sick. I get it. Just tell someone they look good and move on.
- Weird things don’t fit…like my wedding ring…or the temporary silicon wedding ring I bought when my wedding ring didn’t fit. Now I’m just waiting until I hit my goal to get my ring resized. (In fairness, COVID made it a lot more difficult to get the ring resized last year.)
- The store still won’t have your size. I’m now a large/extra large in shirt depending on if the materials will shrink. Way better than a 2x/3x. But now I walk into a store and find S,M,2x,3x…grrrrr.
- You can’t go back to eating the way you ate before. What got you fat in the first place will get you fat again. Like women having a baby, once the body figures something out, it gets better at it.
- You still have to deal with all the stuff. Emotional eaters still have to deal with their emotions, they just can’t use food. Stress eaters still have to deal with stress, just not with food.
- There is a lot of support out there and a lot of people who subtly try to sabotage your goals (you can have one piece of cake). Supportive people and neutral people are a huge help. I’m fine with neutral. Just let me do my thing. Avoid unsupportive people. Maybe ask them to be less helpful.