Is it the weight loss or is it confidence?

A little of both in my opinion. People can say whatever happens to be PC, but actions speak loudest. Most people make instant judgements based on a glance.

If they are people who already knew you, I suspect it's your confidence that is changing things. But in general I also recognize that thinner people have a leg up in how they are treated.

bear2303 wrote: »

So i've been pondering this a lot recently and I would love some other perspectives. I've lost 40ish pounds in the last 8 months or so and I've noticed that people in general treat me a little different and mostly better. More likely to help, friendlier and more talkative, complimentary etc. I've always been an outgoing pretty bubbly person but i know that my confidence has definitely gone up recently but i'm wondering if people are responding to my confidence or my weight loss. maybe both?

You are forgetting at least one thing. Losing 40 pounds may have also boosted your mood. You may be more positive and upbeat. You may be smiling more without realizing it. You may be more welcoming by saying things like "good morning" more often just because you feel good.

There is also the whole dynamic of losing weight heightens your success. Most people fail to lose weight so successful weight loss makes you special which attracts people (not sexually).

Of course there are negative ways to view it too like people being shallow and judgmental. The thing is you don't really know what is going through someone's mind so there is no reason to assume it is negative unless you have evidence.

I also like the positive perspective provided by NovusDies; however, I do believe that “the stigma of obesity” is a real thing. I have felt the sting of it over the past several years. Whether or not it is intentional or not, in my experience being obese has impacted the way I am treated.

I definitely think it's a mixture of both, most of the time.

Even at my heaviest weights, well over 100 lb ago, I think I always carried myself in a confident way and came across as being pretty happy and approachable. I have done a ton of public speaking & professional stuff like that which helps. I know another woman who had a similar start weight and she really didn't seem approachable, back then. She seemed very unhappy with herself. She didn't make a lot of eye contact and she wore mostly men's tees. For her, losing 90 lb has TOTALLY changed her life and the way people relate to her...I'd say the difference for her is MUCH greater than how it is for me. Also, my style hasn't changed all that drastically. Hers changed like 100%!

On the other hand, though...I have seen differences in the way I am treated. When I meet new ladies in my larger circle of friends they seem much more likely to take interest & ask me to hang out with them now. When I am simply standing in line or at a store, I feel like people get very close to me and don't seem shy to brush against me or touch me for emphasis if we are speaking. I've been roughly at my current size for 6 years now and I'm still not used to it. For my whole life from teens to mid-30s, I was used to feeling like my personal space bubble was impenetrable. People would make a wider arc to avoid brushing against me, take the seat 2 down from me instead of sitting *right* next to me...things like that. I know it was because of my body size but I never expected the difference to be that great. I am by nature not a hugger, and people seemed less likely to hug me when I was larger and now they just go in for the hug. I guess in a lot of ways that is sad and weird. For me it's just awkward mainly.

I've been married while larger and smaller, but as for guys hitting on me or flirting, I think it's changed a little bit too. But I see almost the same types of differences in that when I'm heavier/smaller versus when I have very short or longer hair. It's crazy! When I have super short hair it's edgier, artsy guys who talk to me and the minute my hair hits shoulder length it's more conventional guys who start talking to me instead. Every time. When I was larger I got hit on by men who seemed to think I should be really grateful for the attention (ugh) and as a smaller woman I feel like guys who hit on me do it almost unthinkingly and don't seem to be at all bothered if I brush it off or ignore them. I am not unattractive but I'm not some sexy type, I mean you can see that I am a nerdy normal female. But there is a big difference in the attention.

I haven't noticed much difference. However, I think there are mitigating factors:

I'm pretty old (64 this week) and female. Others in my demographic complain that we're ignored/invisible. (I haven't found that to be true, either, but maybe I'm just oblivious.) So, perhaps I'm invisible fat or thin, and unaware of it.

I was a pretty confident fat person, and tend to be assertive verbally and (a little bit) physically - I don't mean physically aggressive, but I do tend to take up my space, not shrink out of it. That has changed not at all, AFAIK, on account of weight loss.

I'm not cute, wasn't cute fat, am not cute thin, haven't been cute since that stage of adolescence/young womanhood where pretty much all women are kinda cute. It's not a thing I value or even care about. I dress decently, possibly a little eccentrically (not major, but in an aging hippie direction), and am smart about dressing up-class in cases where I think that will influence how I'm treated, if I care. (The class markers associated with dress do make a difference in how I'm treated in certain scenarios, no question in my mind about that at all.)

As context, I was obese (just slightly over the line into obese BMI), and was so for around 30 years; and am now about 50 pounds down, in the middle of normal BMI (22-point-something this morning), and have been so for 4+ years. There are contexts where people treat me differently - mostly fitness/exercise-related contexts - but it's not necessarily better thin and worse fat. Details matter.

I spent most of my life over 300 lbs - way over for a lot of it. So, I was quite accustomed to being heavy and working my way through the world. I always had a fairly good level of confidence.

But, when my clothing size dropped to something like 22 it was like I appeared out of thin air. Suddenly, people held doors, made eye contact and spoke to me on the street. It was really a shock to me, because I hadn't even noticed that they WEREN'T doing these things until they started to do them.

I firmly believe it has to do with the deeply buried human instinct to fear the different and to cling to the familiar. In our old cave-dweller psyche lies the fear of anything not "like us" - because it might be dangerous. Big things could crush you, things with claws and teeth could eat you. So, even in our modern educated world, people still react with that old instinct. They avoid or ignore or actively dislike what is outside of their experience. Size, shape, color - anything radically different can trigger this response. It is not conscious, but it's there.

When I was really large, I was outside of most people's concept of "one of us." They didn't know anyone that large... they had no frame of reference. When I dropped down into a size 20-22, suddenly, I stopped being significantly different from most people. I was relatable. I was "about the size of grandma" or "a little bigger than my sister." As my size dropped, more people found me to be "like me" or at least like someone they knew. At size 14-16, most everyone has experienced a relationship with someone of my size or larger, so now I am firmly in the "one of us" camp.

As much as I would love to believe that humans have overcome their old instinctual behaviors, and that my level of confidence is what caused the change, the sad fact is, we all still operate based on those old cave-dweller instincts a lot of the time.

Did a higher level of confidence in my physical appearance HELP? Sure. But I will never believe that it was the sole cause for the change.