Not only do I hear fear of success, but I tend to self-sabatoge (can't spell) for that reason. I am so SCARED of losing weight and getting to a healthy range for fear of who I will become and how people will treat me. You see, in 2001, I got down to 235 from 333 lbs. People whom I worked with who never even smiled at me, started to take notice and tried talking to me. Boy did it bother me. I am now and was then the exact same person inside and deserved to be treated with respect.

As I sit here, holding in the tears, thinking about how that made me feel..... I know I need to do this for me. I want to live a happy full life. Which fear is stronger...dying young or not being able to live life to the fullest OR being smaller and healthy.

I can relate to both of you - there is so much emotion in these extra pounds I carry around and I think it can be scary and uncomfortable to open that up. I am a little nervous as I lost one pound this week putting me below 250 for the first time in ten years - I will always lose a few pounds but just wouldnt go below 250 I used to be half this weight but life was confusing and difficult and not always easy (oh real life!) Sometimes I feel more comfortable at my current weight. Not physically but emotionally. Maybe I feel people dont expect as much from me at this weight (and by people - I mean me) I do feel ready to lose this weight and be healthy and energetic. Lets focus on the positive and keep moving forward. The rest will sort itself out and probably will be easier than we think!

Wow thanks to everyone who has posted here. What incredible insight you have. I too am of the fat=safety because of childhood trauma. I have been thin and I have been and am fat. When I am thin I have trouble with issues of dealing with people (opposite sex) and I have issues of how much space I take up in the world. I feel minimized. I am trying to deal with this as I try to get healthy and trying to overcome fear of success.

I have an overwhelming feeling of guilt if I'm successful at something. I was thinking earlier today that many of my friends probably hate me because I'm not slipping up on this diet thing and I'm always dropping weight like it ain't nothin'. When I've had successful careers I've felt guilty about having money in savings while other people around me have very little. I've sabotaged not only weight, but careers and things that I deserve in life. I procrastinate an unhealthy amount and my social anxiety is crippling.

I wonder, too, how closely linked self-loathing is to sabotage? Although if you ask me if I love myself, I'll say yes, my behavior says otherwise. If I truly loved myself, would I have done this to my body?

Being fat and not horribly unhappy with how I look feels like a political statement. I don't want people to think I'm doing this to be more attractive. I don't want my other fat friends to feel like I think they're any less wonderful because I'm changing (many of them have chronic illnesses that make it extremely difficult if not impossible to lose weight). I want to kill the idea that the only good life is a thin life. I want to kill the idea that it's anyone else's business what someone's size or health is. I want everyone to be treated with dignity and respect. I fear success because I don't want to be a part of the constant chorus of "if you're fat, you're not acceptable."

NorahCait - I feel the exact same way! I think part of why I've had such trouble losing weight the past few years is because part of me doesn't want to. I hate the idea that I can only be healthy if I have a BMI of less than 25. I hate that I eat better than a lot of skinny people, yet people I assume I eat nothing but garbage all the time. I hate that we're constantly told that if we're fat we don't deserve anything - that we don't deserve to be happy or loved, that we don't deserve to feel good about ourselves, that we don't deserve to wear whatever we want without giving a crap what anyone else thinks. We've been told for so long that beauty = thinness, and I don't want people to think that I agree with that, which I think is part of why I'm holding myself back.

Part of my attempt to reconcile my beliefs with my desire to lose weight is to set my goal weight higher than it's "supposed" to be, at least according to BMI charts. My goal weight is 190, and that would put me back to what I was in high school. It's about 10 pounds short of putting me back in the "obese" category, but when I weighed that much I could run with no real difficulties. I had no health problems. I liked how I looked. I just want to get back to that. I don't care about being skinny or thin anymore.

Of course, that's just what I've decided. I am by no means trying to put down anyone who *is* trying to get to a "normal" BMI or a "healthy" weight or anything like that. Everyone's different, and we have to figure out what will make us happy. Just thought I'd share my thoughts in case anyone was thinking something similar.

I do have some fears or anger around success but not around my main goal of getting to a healthy weight. I think it helps in part that I haven;t put any stress on myself to reach any particular goals so I'm not so emotionally invested in my progress. Thats not to say i'm not working hard at it but that i'm taking it one day at a time and not setting strict goals other then to have a good day each day and let the mess-ups move on by. Granted I don't have a scale that can measure me at the moment so i'm living in ignorance and i guess thats bliss. Once I can track myself I'm sure their will be more emotion involved.

I've failed and succeeded to many times to spend a lot of energy on it. Maybe that sounds weird since its an issue that takes a lot of emotional energy, but right now I can't let that be an issue, it doesn't help me in my progress.

I did get very angry in the beginning with people knowing that I had started to try and loose weight. I hated to look on their faces, I hated their words of congratulations and support. I just wanted to scream at them to shut-up and that they were going to ruin it. I still get angry from time to time when family gets involved, I don't want your advice. Their a sense that this is mine and mine alone so stop getting involved. Their advice and support also feels like a judgment, like "we knew you were fat and unhealthy but we didn't want to say anything, were glad your taking care of yourself - good luck." Pissed me off to no end. It's the comments and the sense that people see you correcting something thats wrong with yourself, that your dieting, that makes me angry. I'm not a different person, I don't need them to tell me about myself. I'm doing this for me and no one else. It worries me how i'll be treated differently once i loose the weight. Just as no one would say anything about my weight now, why do you get to say something later. I may be losing an extra person in body weight, but I am still the same person. I also know most of this is in my head.

Of course I also want to attach other issues of happiness and self worth to my weight loss. While I know that can't be the case i do worry I will get to the goal and still be dissatisfied and unhappy. I hope not, wich is why i try to stay realistic about this journey. But we have all admitted we have quite a bit riding on this, emotionally. I said in the last paragraph that I am and will be the same person, but honestly how many of us are hopping we will be better people by the end. If I do have issues at the end then perhaps I will invest in a real therapist.

Then theirs the fear that it wont last. I'm 26, that either means I have a full life ahead of me at a healthy weight or I have a long life ahead of me trying not to go backwards.