Not an issue of self body image per se

tvanhooser

OK--so I see and hear alot of people who think of themselves as one person put it, "a fat person who has lost weight" so they are discouraged and down on themselves and struggle with confidence, perseverance and self esteem because of weight. No matter how much they lose they still have this image in their head and issues from years of being the "fat kid". And I feel for these people. I understand that this is a painful place to be and I pray for them to be delivered and released from that self-imposed prison of hopeless thinking. But I was wondering if there is anyone else out there like me who is kind of the opposite.....I have not always been overweight and I see myself as the same person inside no matter how my body changes. When people compliment me on my weight loss, I try to be gracious and thank them for noticing and all. But to me it's like when I went blonde for a few years just on a fun whim and never realized that people at the job I had then had never seen me as my natural brunette until the roots grew out to the point that it looked strange and I decided enough was enough and dyed it back to brown. People were so surprised and I was a little perplexed until I realized that they didn't know me as anything but a blonde so it looked strange to them but to me it was just back to business as normal. This is the way I have looked most of my life so it just looks normal to me. I kind of feel the same way about losing weight. Nothing about my essential character has changed and as the pounds come off, I am just revealing the skinny person inside that I have always been in my own mind and making other people realize what's under the "costume" so to speak. It's more like I'm the skinny person who gained weight and decided enough was enough -- I'm going back to normal now. I'm not doing it for others to notice --I have my own reasons but nonetheless, because it is different than they are used to seeing me, they will at some point find some temporary notoriety in seeing what I really am and have always known myself to be; and that's OK because my self-esteem isn't based on anyone's opinion of my body image. But I was just wondering if anyone else can relate?