Anyone Else Still Feel Fat After Losing Weight?

This topic contains 3 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Bronx 8 years, 7 months ago.

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Bronx

3:03 pm
23 Sep 15
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I’m a 58 year old male, 5’10”. My ideal weight is around 160-170 pounds. A couple years ago I was at 195 and my doctor said I should lose a few pounds, to which I agreed. Especially on a rainy day when I tried putting on my motorcycle Winter pants and couldn’t get the zipper more than halfway up!

I lost the weight with the help of the Lose It iPhone app, but when I got to 170, and then 160, I thought my stomach was still too big when I looked in the mirror. I went all the way down to 130 pounds! Friends were commenting that I looked skeletal, but when I looked in the mirror or saw my reflection in a window all I could see was the stomach flab.

I stopped at 130 because intellectually I knew I was approaching being underweight, which is just as unhealthy as overweight. I also thought that if I still have a huge gut (in my opinion) at 130 pounds my stomach’s never going to be flat. As the old joke goes I don’t have abs, I have flabs. At my age it’s probably more of loose skin than fat and most likely the only thing that will remove it is surgery, which I ain’t gonna do, no way! I’m doing planking every day (too lazy to do crunches) and trying one of those electronic fitness belts, but haven’t really seen results yet.

I’ve since gained a few pounds just to get out of the 130s (and had fun doing it) and am doing 5:2 more as maintenance than weight loss because I don’t want to get back to 195 pounds. I’m just having a hard time overcoming the thought that I’ll always be fat in my mind no matter how much weight I lose. Most of the time I can deal with it but it gets depressing sometimes.

Anyone else have the same thoughts? Have you been able to overcome this?

Thanks

Bronx

Cinque

10:57 pm
23 Sep 15
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Hi Bronx, how supercritical your brain has got! I bet it was useful in spurring you to lose weight, but now it doesn’t realise you don’t need it to do that any more.

I don’t have the same experience, so I hope people can come along who really understand.

But I do have a supercritical brain, and of course us 58 years olds are not going to be firm and fabulous like we were in our youth. Sigh!

Keep being kind to yourself, and your brain should get the message that you have a good body, at a healthy weight, that will take you strongly into your next years.

If it continues being a problem it would be sensible to talk to your doctor about it.

Good luck!

HappyNow

7:28 am
24 Sep 15
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Bronx,

I lost weight last year on 5:2, and have been at my slimmest ever since May 2014. After being on the chubby side, although never obese, for most of my life it has certainly taken my brain a while to catch up with the new reality.

I used to check my new clothes labels a lot last year (yep, that skirt that fits really is UK size 8!) because I didn’t really see the difference to begin with and couldn’t quite believe it was real.

The brain is a funny thing!

My Dad was really quite grey for a long while before he ‘saw’ it. His hair had been dark for 70 years, and that was his mental image and what he saw in the mirror. He knew he must be going grey though because the clippings at the barber’s shop were grey!

I read that your eyes receive too much visual information for your brain to continually process, so your brain fills in the image with what it expects to be there.

So perhaps when we lose weight it takes a while for enough new visual information to be processed for the brain to register what’s really there and see the new image.

It does also sound though as if you’ve got a bit obsessed and fixated on one part of your body you don’t like. I’ve got a lot of those, but I try and look at the whole and not the individual parts!

You know you’re a healthy weight. The reality is that you will never have the body of a 20 year old.

Maybe your stomach is still a bit large!? You don’t actually say if you’re bike trousers fit now or not… 🙂 I’m a pear shape so I carry my flab on my bum and thighs. To get a bum I could really love, my upper body would be emaciated. So I’ve had to reach a compromise and accept (shock horror!) that I will never have the perfect body (unless I airbrush all my photos 🙂 ). What I have got is a fit healthy body and the hope that I will continue to enjoy an active and healthy life into old age.

Continue to maintain your weight, be kind to yourself, stop analysing and criticizing, and just try to accept the new you. Stop looking only at your stomach when you look in the mirror, force yourself to look at your arms or your knees! As you say, you know you aren’t overweight, so you can’t be fat. Hopefully you’ll start to see and believe it too.

Bronx

1:41 pm
24 Sep 15
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Cinque and HappyNow,

I appreciate your replies and encouragement. I’ve been heavy for more years than a “Normal” weight so it’s just unusual for me to think of myself as not fat. Haven’t fully grasped that concept yet; maybe never will but it’s something I have to live with.

By the way, those motorcycle pants are now loose on me!

Bronx