How you look VS how you THINK you look

mlrtri

How does your mental image of yourself ( how you think you look) compare to the real you (how you actually look in a picture)?

Mine are WAY off. I hated pictures before I started losing weight because it hit me in the face with the reality of my actual size. I have lost 10 lbs (45 to go). I know that isn’t a lot but I feel SO much better. My core is stronger. I stand up taller. My clothes fit better. I just had in my mind that I was looking a lot better. I saw a picture of myself from a family thing this weekend. I did look a little better. But there was not anywhere near as much improvement as I thought.

Does anyone else have this? Does it ever improve?

I have read posts where people who lost all their excess weight still feel they are overweight.

Do any of us feel the way we actually look?

I long for the days when I see a picture of myself and don’t cringe.

SuzySunshine99

First of all, photographs can be very deceiving. Different lenses create distortions, so how you look in photos may not be an accurate representation of how you actually look.

As far as our our perception, though, it gets interesting. In my case, when I lost weight, I loved how I looked in photos. It helps that my husband is a photographer and knows how to shoot flattering angles with the right lens. But, even in casual photos, I LOVED my new look.

However, a few years later, I guess my enthusiasm wore off. I had maintained my weight loss, but for some reason, I started to not like how I looked in photos anymore. I started to nitpick...my arms looked fat, my stomach wasn't flat enough, etc. I think it's common to find fault in your own appearance.

Not weight-related, but another interesting thing...now when I see photos of myself, I think I look way older than I thought I did. I don't think I look old when I look in the mirror, but when I see photos of myself, the difference between now and a few years ago seems staggering to me.

And I don't think it's just in my head...for two years, we had to wear masks at work at all times. When we finally took them off, my boss said to me, "You look tired." (side note...never say this to someone). I wasn't tired, he just hadn't seen my face in 2 years, and I was 2 years older.

Sorry for the ramble...the point is that what matters is how you feel, not how you look or think that you look.

mlrtri

That made me think about how I felt when I was a healthy size. I would pick at myself then, too. It wasn’t depressing to see a picture but I would pick on other things.

spiriteagle99

I still tend to think my legs are much larger than they actually are, probably because when I look at them, I'm looking down from above. When I see a photo or look at myself in a store window, I am always a bit surprised at the fact that they aren't huge.

OTOH, I still don't like photos of myself because I do look so much older these days. I always tossed out photos taken of me; now I just don't allow my photo to be taken. At 65, wrinkles and gray hair are a given, but a lifetime of being outdoors every day without sunscreen has definitely had an effect.

Lietchi

Oh boy, difficult issue

When I was obese, I hated the way I looked and avoided pictures. However, when I look back at those (very few) pictures now, I've discovered that I didn't *truly* know how heavy I was then, it's only now that it really hits me.

When I started losing weight (after 10lbs) I was so proud and felt so much more confident. My BF's reaction: "hm, you think you can see a difference already?"

Now, 75lbs down, and my mind still plays tricks on me. I'm still sort of surprised when I catch a glance of my reflection in a window or mirror. But when I look at myself in my usual mirror at home, I see myself as less slim than in those fleeting glances outside my home. Perhaps it's just a consequence of my mirror not being full-length, who knows.

My general feeling of myself is slim overall, but I have moments where I feel my stomach 'blubber' sticks out or my arms are fat - those areas still carry some fat, but my mind probably exaggerates the amount.
Seeing myself naked is the hardest part, confronted with the remaining stubborn bits of fat, and seeing excess skin sag depending on how I hold myself (pro tip: don't look down at your stomach when doing planks ) In my eyes I look more slim dressed than undressed.

It's a tricky thing, I'm still inching down in weight because I feel I still have some fat to lose, but I'm also very conscious of the fact that my mind may not be my best friend. I take progress pictures of myself, because those do look different from when I look into the mirror, it helps me keep a somewhat balanced perspective.

quiksylver296

I'm in a weird place right now. I feel like I am very fat, as I am at my highest weight ever. But because I've been lifting heavy for over 6 years, I don't look like the weight I am. I don't look in the mirror like I want to look, but I also don't look as bad as I feel like I do. If that makes any sense...

Chef_Barbell

quiksylver296 wrote: »

I'm in a weird place right now. I feel like I am very fat, as I am at my highest weight ever. But because I've been lifting heavy for over 6 years, I don't look like the weight I am. I don't look in the mirror like I want to look, but I also don't look as bad as I feel like I do. If that makes any sense...

This is me exactly right now 💯

mlrtri

Thank you for sharing. I am feeling great so I feel like I should be looking great, too. But it took time to get here it will take time to get back. I am learning patience. I am also learning (or trying to learn) how to celebrate the small goals which will help me accomplish my big goals.

bojaantje3822

My body looks fantastic in pictures taken head on but I look awful in pics taken at an angle, any angle, imo. I look slimmer in windows than in the mirror. Sometimes I look slimmer in the mirror than in pictures, sometimes it's the other way around. It doesn't help that my mind-body connection is awful and I've never had any concept of how much space I take up or how I move through the world. Even when I exercise I don't truly feel what's going on, which muscles are working, what I'm supposed to feel when stretching. It got better with time but I'm still nowhere near other people. At least I've learnt to recognise how my core feels tightenee vs untightened so I no longer accidentally let go while squatting... oops.

My confidence doesn't come from the weight lost according to the scale or tape measure or how I look. Some of it comes from my fitness and strength gains measured during exercise but the majority of it comes from my fitness and strength and weight loss and body composition changes measured by touching my body with my hands. When I first started squatting, the outer edges of my glutes started feeling stronger and smoother to the touch. Then my leg muscles felt different. Now I can feel my shoulder bones, my hip bones and my ribs with my hands under the fat. And my arms muscles in different positions are starting to take shape. I sorta see my shoulders look different, more muscles and slimmer, but my touch makes it way more obvious that my body is changing.

AnnPT77

For quite a long time after I lost weight, I still visualized myself as fat. I didn't recognize myself right away when I passed a mirror in a store, or things like that.

Mostly, my mind has caught up now. (I'm 6+ years at a healthy weight, with my 7th anniversary of starting MFP coming up next month. I don't remember when my brain adjusted, but it was not some instantaneous thing: Maybe more like on and off of visualizing myself more accurately or less accurately, gradually shifting to more accurately, more often.)

I'm probably one of the least appearance conscious women I know, honestly. I didn't hate my fat body (though I knew it didn't look as objectively good as it would look thinner). I didn't hide from photos or cringe or anything like that. I don't think my current body looks perfect, but I think it's OK enough.

One way I know that I truly think it's OK now is that I'm not really working to improve my appearance. If I thought I should look better in achievable ways, I'd work on it . . . otherwise I'm just telling myself fairy tales about wanting to look better, y'know? (I felt the same about being fat when I was fat: If I seriously wanted to change it, I'd be changing it. Then I did.)

I'm sure part of this is me being a li'l ol' lady, knowing I'm not ever going to be in the dewy glow of youth, with gazelle-like graceful limbs. I look OK for a 66 y/o post-mastectomy gray-haired wrinkly formerly obese aging hippie, and that's good enough for me. I feel good, I think my body looks at least as fit as the average woman my age (OK, maybe a tiny bit more fit than average 😉), and my body can still do lots of fun stuff.

I do wish that pretty much every picture of me actually rowing on the water didn't look like I'm unhappy (it's my "concentrating" face). That bugs me, because I'm really super-happy out there, and it doesn't look at all like I am. 🤷‍♀️

I doubt any of that helps anybody else, though.🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

mlrtri

I am not taking progress pictures. The future me may regret that. But I don’t want to get bogged down by scale and pictures. I want to lower my BMI and improve lab results. Improved physical appearance will follow. But it is crazy the discrepancy between how I feel and how I look. I wander if I will ever have a healthy viewpoint.

IAmTheGlue

A funny thing happened today. My 4 year old took like 20 random pictures with my phone while I was getting ready to take him to the store to pick out his birthday cake. Only one was of me and it was pre-make up/ hair care.

One… I’m significantly thinner than I feel. Two…. Dang I’m old. Lol I was shocked by the picture for both the exhaustion on my face (to be fair I’m going through something physically/ medically and I feel run down) and my size.

When does your brain catch up? Idk. I prepare to shimmy through places I don’t feel like I should fit and there is actually plenty of room. Sometimes I go through those type of places just to see if I can fit… try to fix my brain.

OnTheRoad24

I take regular progress pics (Photo Friday) and it spurs me on to push myself every week to lose more...

threewins

I was thin for a lot of my life. So in my head, I'm still thin. However, when I look in the mirror I see the truth. I've asked my long distance girlfriend to delete a few photos of me from her Instagram. I made a sexy video of me in the shower for her. After watching it, I deleted it, unsent.

mlrtri

Thank you for sharing. It will be interesting to see what my mind does as I cont to improve my health. This process, for me anyway, is much more mental than physical. I can deal with a hunger pain but focusing on my weaknesses has been hard - but necessary.

Walkywalkerson

I look completely different in my head than I do in reality- in my head I look so much younger and slimmer lol!
I look so different from so many perspectives - in the mirror or on a selfie I don't look too bad because I'm controlling it - but a picture that someone else has taken is pure horror!
And I don't even recognise myself in a video that someone else has taken- it's just awful!
I've created this imaginary much younger, slimmer version of myself in my head haha

ruqayyahsmum

I hate pics anyway but in my head I'm still the near 400lb woman I was.
I convince myself I can't fit places, leave big gaps expecting to get stuck otherwise so it seems odd when I don't have issues

But in pics all I see if the folds of skin. The bingo wings, the double stomach
Would be great if I just never had to see myself

Xellercin

I have a pretty realistic sense of what I look like and I'm quite comfortable with it. But I've done a lot of work on my emotional relationship with my body. Not to like it more, but to just stop investing so much of my energy and self worth into my appearance.

It's perfectly okay to not find certain parts of my body attractive. Most of my very favourite people in this world are people I don't find very attractive, and it doesn't make me adore them any less.

I like that the healthier I get the more attractive I get. I LOVE that quitting alcohol made me look so much younger that my friends and colleagues were convinced I had had cosmetic surgery. That's just fun. But not getting a cosmetic benefit wouldn't have made quitting less worthwhile.

If anything, seeing that dramatic improvement in my face made me feel horror at what years of what I thought was moderate drinking must have been doing to my internal organs.

Deni_R

When I was at my heaviest I avoided photos and found looking at any that were taken incredibly depressing as my mental image never matched the person I saw.

I'm part way through my weight loss (25kg lost) and I'm feeling pretty good but the mirror still isn't showing how I feel inside. I do take regular progress picture and apart from my face I don't see any difference in the mirror but my clothes tell a different story.

I do wonder how it's going to be when I get to goal (which is still 50kg away). I've never been a healthy weight in my adult life so it's probably going to take a lot for me to reconcile internally.

Decoy152

Hello Mirtri, what a great conversation thread, a lot of insight shared here. In my experience self perception can and does improve through the very same level of self awareness your post and the subsequent conversation this thread discusses. I am down 50lbs over the past 2.5 years and at one point actually over shot my weight loss goals I believe due in part to misperception of my own appearance or at least some level of disassociation. Like you I did not initially take deliberate progress photos. I regret this as they may have helped calibrate my own perceptions as I progressed. However, by the time I did finally step in front of the camera, encouraged and cajoled by peers, I found it to be a very useful and self calibrating process. Engaging with others and photo documenting seems to have forced some level of objective logic to counter my inner perpetual critic. For me it is an ongoing sometimes discomforting but ultimately beneficial process. Keep up the great work.

melto1989

I hate how I look overweight and not overweight. I just don't have good self esteem. In the past when I'm actively losing weight I feel great and I think I look good until I see a pic or look in my mirror. I'm not sure if it's in my head because other people tell me I look good I'm 15kg overweight from having a baby recently and when I was a healthy weight I would feel as good in person and on pics but dislike other things

HoneyBadger302

I was great at nitpicking before I put on weight - now I avoid cameras like the plague.

Mind you, I never treaded into obese territory, but I was overweight, and am still overweight for my frame by a fair bit (~20-25 pounds). May not sound like much to some, but that makes a huge difference in my overall outline and how my clothes fit.

Even 10 pounds down from where I am (which I managed briefly in 2019) looks completely different. No big muffin top, no rolls under my tee shirts or dresses, just not quite as trim as I'd like in certain areas, but I look much better in and out of photos.

Add that 10 pounds in and my lumps end up in very unflattering places, rolls under my shirts, muffin tops even when standing....and IMO those things all look way worse in photos than they do in person.

When it comes to photos though, I've never really liked them unless I had time to pose/take/retake until I got the angle I wanted. Had some professional photos back in the day that were pretty awesome too. Candid photos though I avoid - always have, but it's definitely worse now than when I was still in my target range.

claireychn074

My perception of myself also varies depending on my location and situation. At work I feel like a little chunky person (I’m not that tall and I’m muscular), and I want long lithe limbs. In the powerlifting gym I feel small, old and think I look like I need to bulk up. I work in a uni so being surrounded by youngsters isn’t always helpful!