When you’ve lost about a third of your body weight, people seem to notice it and make comments about it. Living my whole life in a fat body, I always thought that I’d really like it when people noticed that I’d lost weight. My weight has yo-yoed throughout the years and I may have gone on diets and lost 10 or 15 pounds but I’ve never really lost weight the way that I’ve been losing weight the last few years. When I was living at home and dieting, my family would always tell me that I looked slimmer - even if it was only 5 or 10 pounds. At the time, I found it really nice that somebody was noticing all my hard work and that even a few pounds might be making a difference. Now that I’m a bit older, my gut feeling is that they were probably just being nice or encouraging me to keep going (or maybe they really did think I looked slimmer just because they knew I was trying to lose weight). During those times in my life, I always dreamed about what it would be like to lose X number of pounds, what I’d look like, and what people’s reactions would be. I wanted people to notice my weight loss and I wanted to be validated for it. When you’ve spent so much of your life getting picked on as a kid or ignored as an adult due to your body, you really want other people to validate your body.

The weird thing is that when people say certain things about my weight loss, I actually feel a little violated and the same emotions that I felt when I was picked on as a kid come back. Don’t get me wrong - some people know exactly what to say (and how to say it) to complement me. Telling me that I look great is a really nice way to complement me and ALWAYS makes my day. Asking me what I’ve been doing and really listening to my long-winded answer is also nice (yes, it is a complicated process and I don’t have a simple solution to magically melt the fat off). Announcing, “YOU’VE LOST SO MUCH WEIGHT,” to a room full of people, some of whom I just met is not so nice (this actually happened to me about a year ago). When a not-so-close friend made that remark, it really felt like a back-handed complement. It was almost like she was saying to everyone in the room, “LIKE OH MY GOD SHE USED TO BE SO FUCKING HUGE.”

I don’t mind if people tell me that I’ve lost weight - as long as I’m not being made into a spectacle. A co-worker once pulled me aside in the cafeteria and whispered to me that I’ve lost so much weight and that I looked great. That was nice. She figured out that my body is just that - mine and that I probably wouldn’t want everyone in the cafeteria to know that I used to be LIKE SO OH MY GOD huge.

I spent most of today traveling to Dallas for a work project. When I handed over my driver’s license to the TSA agent at SFO, he looked back and forth between my picture and my face and then said, “Congratulations! Diet worked!” My first thought was, “Wow, have I really lost that much weight that even the TSA guy can tell a difference between my driver’s license head shot and my current sleep-deprived self at 7 AM in the morning?” But then I had that sinking feeling like I had just been picked on. I really don’t want random strangers (and the TSA no less) making remarks about my body. Maybe the TSA guy was just being friendly but it felt pretty intrusive.

I think part of the issue is that even after losing 70+ pounds, I’m still fat so open discussions about my weight are still a little dicey. I might be able to buy cuter clothes and from normal people stores but when I need a new pair of jeans, it is still way easier for me to head to Lane Bryant (where I’m a “2″) than try to rummage through a pile of jeans at Banana Republic, only to realize that I’d have to order a 16 online.