Our Society: Opinions, Prejudices, & Misconceptions on Weight Loss

I wanted to share some realizations I had regarding weight loss in our country.  I'm not sure that I would've believed these revelations until I had experienced them myself.  I live in the south east united states.  There are a lot of notions down here but one thing most people have heard of is southern hospitality.  I can attest to the fact that it is alive and well here in the sunny south because I've lived here for 20+ years via way of New England.  This gives one perspective when considering the southern hospitality way.  Nothing like a complete reverse of behavior coming from rushed and hurried New England to the slow warm drawl way of the South.  Just because southerners are warm, kind and most of the time helpful doesn't mean they don't carry opinions with them.  No fault to them I believe this is a human condition no matter what part of the country/world you come from. 

The interesting thing about this is that when it comes to weight loss everyone will tell you what they think.  I'm not sure what the thinking is but I believe it to be along the line of, "as long as I'm talking about you losing weight its ok to discuss it".  I'm not sure if that statement is true but people do take full advantage of it.  Having lost 110 lbs over the course of a year, I've heard it all and a whole lot more.  Everything from are you sick to you've lost too much weight and when are you going to stop this.  The funny thing is that I'm still about 20 pounds over my "ideal" but some insist that I should stop doing what I'm doing.  What I'm "doing" is eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, I cook almost all of my meals from scratch, I've deleted gluten, corn, soy, and dairy from my diet and I'm taking care of my body for probably the first time in my life.  I exercise regularly and have been building up my muscles.  I'm not actually "trying" to lose weight anymore just trying to follow the path of whole health.  I feel that when my body is where it should be it will stop losing weight and it has slowed down tremendously.  Sometimes I get the are you sick line.  I explain that no I've just been eating healthy for over a year now and exercising and that this works.   If you dump the prepackaged foods, sugar, and eat a healthy diet overall you will drop the lbs.  The other day one of the woman I work with told me I was at a healthy weight.  That was a compliment to me and a waitress who hadn't seen me in 6 months said I look good.  Its funny but you will get comments from people who barely know you.  It can get old fast hearing every ones opinions of your weight loss but I do understand that this kind of weight loss makes a person look quite different.  I just think of all of the times when I was stuffing my face with pizza, ice cream and other junk foods.  People don't give you their opinions when you are gaining weight.  Oh believe me they are still there but they don't share that information.  So revelation #1 is that people think its ok to talk about a persons weight as long as its a loss and not a gain.

This leads me into another revelation I had after the significant weight loss.  Large people become almost invisible to the general public.  I know this sounds like a reverse of the truth but I found this out after losing the weight.  Once I had dropped the lbs I found that complete strangers were talking to me more and being much more helpful.  I do a lot of around town work and I started to notice how much more people were engaging with me after about 70lbs gone.  When I was large I didn't notice being shunned or ignored.  It was after the weight loss that I noticed the difference.  These were people whom I had never met so they didn't know I had lost the weight.  All of a sudden strangers were chatting it up.  I don't think our society does this as a conscious choice but I believe there is something that makes them less open to our plus size brothers and sisters.  I was relating this to a friend who is plus sized and she said she knows this and uses it to her advantage.  She can melt into the background when wanted or be the center of attention if need be.  I was unaware of this until recently.

These realizations have been interesting to say the least.  Just observations basically.  Nowadays, I make an effort to make eye contact with plus size people and say hello when out in the world.  I am aware, so its my job to be the change I want to see in others.