Photos are some of the cruelest things out there, I’m telling you! Like the Croods, who just smear paint on their face and then smack it into a wall… kinda feels like that sometimes.
But then again, I think focusing on how you feel is also very, very important. You lost 6kg for pete’s sake! So yeah, what if you’re not ‘there’ yet, you’re further along the road than you were 11 weeks ago.

So bluh. 😉

Well just to be philosophical, what’s more real? How you feel about yourself, so taller, stronger, fitter and leaner, or how you look in some random picture? 😉

Hello Ghostgirl, I had the same sort of experience! Have been feeling so much thinner and fitter – in fact I was feeling quite thin – and I’m absolutely not!
I’d been avoiding reflections etc so to avoid seeing how far I still had to go. THen I saw a reflection! 🙁 Yikes! Not at all how I felt!
Of course I know I must still look fat but have been feeling so much thinner with clothes fitting better!
Tear that photo up in your mind! If it pops back into your mind go La La La La La and the memory of it will fade! Best wishes 🙂

That may be her reason – but it’s yabhoo to her because she is also showing everyone that her son loves a real person not a photofit. I know well that if someone loves you they also love how you look. xx

ghostgirl, my husband likes the way I look for real, but agrees I don’t photograph well even on the wedding day, when I genuinely was looking pretty rough. We first got together via a lonely hearts column – we’re very, very old and there was no internet dating back then – and he has admitted if I had sent him a photo he wouldn’t have bothered to reply. As it was, when we met face to face, his first reaction was “fwaaw”. As was mine. A bit of role reversal took place. He noticed my big, blue eyes. I noticed his great legs and nice butt!

speedy, I don’t think the m-i-l is being deliberately mean. She is so focussed on her only son (who she thinks is God and I have had to bear the consequences!), she probably hasn’t noticed that I look crap.

It has been comforting to know that friends and rellies I know to be beautiful in real life sometimes look less than attractive in photographs. So it’s not just me.

Well now, I have spent many years telling my 22 year old daughter that she is “beautiful inside & out” & every time I tell her that, I also remind her that the most important part is the “inside” bit – how we behave, how we treat people, how well we live our lives. The “outside” bit is largely what we are given basically. Sure, we can all be different sizes – but does that makes us better people? Of course not! Our personalities matter so much more than our looks – which were dished out at birth. There are so many complicated reasons why I am overweight – but at last, here is an opportunity to deal with it….once & for all. The benefits are going to be huge, but despite all that, I am still going to be me. The difference is, I will feel taller, thinner, lighter, happier, healthier, more confident & maybe even attractive on a good day. That will be utterly priceless……and the best gift you could ever give yourself!

So, forget about your m-i-l – you are not married to her! If you are lucky enough to have a husband who loves you, you are very blessed…..

Good luck on your fasting journey hermajtomomi – I will look forward to your updates!

I’m just gonna chime in with another story. I’ve been doing Taekwon-Do for almost 6-7 years now, and a little less than a year ago I earned my black belt. I absolutely loathed the pictures of the exam. I was too heavy and I just felt ridiculous. For a long time I felt like I didn’t deserve it. My coaches disagreed. They reacted quite differently though – one said “Well that means you don’t trust us to be good judges, so you’re just insulting us” but the other one said “don’t tell anyone, but your exam was the best of the three”. He also insists on calling me his best student towards outsiders. This made me mad for a long time, until I realized that my weight isn’t everything. Yes, if I want to get to big tournaments I have to train and lose weight. But I was (and am, although I’m not there atm) the student who always was there when they needed an extra hand somewhere, I taught the kids and sometimes adults on my own every week when the others of my grade still had to do their mandatory “3 times a year teaching hours”. I’m good with the kids, and I care. Also I kick ass, despite my weight (imagine how much better I could be when I’m lighter!).

Anyway, wasn’t really meant as a “look at how awesome I am”, but it just shows how I’ve always been focused on my outside looks (for a while I didn’t even want to go to training any more because I was embarrassed) whilst all the others just saw -me- as the person I was, not my weight.

So there. An essay from me 😛

Well I got 17 more kg to go!! So you’ve got it easy 😉

Hi aud,

I was thinking chronologically. Inside my head I’m about 7 and a half. The dress was in fact a top worn with black trousers which had I been in better shape would have looked great. Although I deleted the wedding photos, I’m still stuck with several ID photos taken a few weeks later, when I enrolled at uni and had to have a student ID card and various library cards. I’ve still got them and there I am with my great steroid-inflated pudden face.

Both I and Him Indoors have horrible passport photos. In his he looks like Harold Shipman, while I look like Myra Hindley. One day some immigration person is going to refuse us entry to some green and pleasant land or another.

@tomorrow
“I know well that if someone loves you they also love how you look.”

Looks provides 48 seconds of advantage, then it matters what is said when they open their mouths ans speak.

There are those lucky few that have the looks, communicate well, have great thoughts and can relate with others.

We probably call them stars, and in this visual technology age, are promptly elevated.

For the rest of us mortals, we become spectators and emulators.

Maybe one day we can make a difference without the need for looks.

➰

Tomorrow. I think you perhaps misunderstood what I meant by: “I know well that if someone loves you they also love how you look.” I think we are making a very similar point.

How a person looks has some influence right at the start, when you meet someone. THen you may go on to fall in love – or not. That love may be an infatuation that will fade or not.
If it turns into what I would describe as a real love then, I know for myself that you love the whole person, who they are, what they look like. You do not lose the ability to see and appreciate others for many reasons.
But, at least this is true for me, if you really love someone you also love what they look like – eg their lopsided face, their ugly hands … A person doesn’t have to conform to the current social stereotype of beauty to be loved for their looks.
Culture certainly has an effect on us and what we like and don’t like but I believe any strong love, worthy of the name, easiey over-rides any such superficial preferences. Happily for 99% of us!

Hi sylvestra, my terrible twin – and everyone else, of course. We do share some very similar experiences, don’t we? It so happens my other half is five years younger than me, however I don’t have any kids. I’m childfree by choice, following a fairly harrowing experience au pairing where I was stuck with kids 24/7 and even had to have them sharing my room. Other friends who took the au pair route were much luckier than me. However, it made me very dubious as to whether I could handle parenthood, despite efforts of an overbearing female quack who suggested I sought psychological help “to make me want a child”!! Back in the early 70s you were considered mentally ill if you didn’t see motherhood as the ultimate goal. I’ve no regrets, I’ve been a good aunt and now a great aunt to two boys I love to bits and who seem to like me.

Your ma-in-law sounds like a right witch, well done hubby for socking it to her. Mine was never quite that bad and now, for some strange reason I can’t quite fathom, I feel far more benevolent, even affectionate towards the old dear – now 93 and, shall we say, more than a little confused. In the bad old days when she was well to the right of Genghis Khan I used to refer to her as the Frau Obergruepenfuhrer or compare her to Hitler’s lady friend Eva Braun and when, in her 80s, she was still fit and active, I would make jokes about them keeping them fit in the Hitler Youth. Her poor only son didn’t know whether to laugh or accuse me of disrespect. So I guess I was as much to blame for the rift.

I couldn’t agree more about the way women in particular are judged by appearance. It must be especially galling to good-looking women who also have brains, like my early 40-something niece-in-law – mum of the two lovely boys. She is a scientist whom google reveals to be well-known and respected in her field, but she finds that in meetings with male colleagues who should know better, they are more nterested in ogling her boobs than concentrating on what she has to say.

Having handed in the dreaded MA assignment today, it’s now back to the day job and back on the wagon as from tomorrow. Somehow I managed not to add an ounce over the holidays. It hasn’t made me feel smug, it’s actually very annoying. Not having lost anything since September despite sticking pretty closely to the 5:2 regime and achieving the same result while eating assorted naughties is making me wonder why I bother!

Hi hermaj……yes indeed – congratulations on handing in the MA assignment. I’ve kept you a seat up here on the wagon 😀

Thanks aud, sylvestra and toms for your congratulations. It’s very sweet of you.

However, jumping up and down and waving our knickers in the air should be postponed until I know whether I’ve passed. Results can take 6 weeks or more to come through. And even then it’s still not over. What I just handed in was the last of three essays. And of course back in the autumn there was the lovely research project on the Glasgow Tenement House where I was helped by some delightful people either belonging or associated with the National Trust for Scotland, for which I got a very good mark and the possibilty of turning my report into a book.

Now it’s dissertation time, folks. The big one on which ultimate success depends. I’ve got until September but I can’t hang around for too long. And the day job is picking up, too.

Today has been our first fast day – Him Indoors is Fast Dieting too – and I’ve just enough calories left for a cup of tea before bed time. So I think it could be said that I’m back on the wagon. Thanks for saving me a seat, sylvestra.