Mentally Catching Up After Noticeable Loss?

foreverblissful
foreverblissful Posts: 50 Member
edited December 2019 in Motivation and Support
Although I'm very happy with how far I've come, this has been something that has increasingly been bothering me. Now that I am 8lbs from my "goal" weight and starting to look "noticiably smaller," I feel like my body doesn't look like mine anymore? Don't get me wrong I love my shape, and how healthy I look and feel, but sometimes it seems "fake" despite the months worth of effort.

Does anyone have any tips for how to deal with this imposter-esque syndrome during weightloss? Has anyone else experienced this before?

Replies

  • robertw486
    robertw486 Posts: 2,399 Member
    It's not really that uncommon for such things to happen. Quite a few people speak of it taking time for their mind to catch up to where their body is. I've never really had it happen to me, but as a percentage of my total weight I've never had very large swings that some have.

    Give it time, realize that it's there, and just don't reach a point where you obsess about losing more or crazy goals until your mind catches up to where you are.
  • gcibsthom
    gcibsthom Posts: 30,145 Member
    This "mind catching up with the body" is real. I went through it, and I think the more significant the weight loss, the wider the gap between body and mind. I lost 117 lbs, and have been in "maintenance" mode for about a year, and I can't say that the gap has yet disappeared. One motivation I had for losing the weight was a "before" photo I kept on the refrigerator. I still use that to try to lessen the mind/body gap. I also use the mirror....before I would never look at myself in the mirror. Now, I really enjoy seeing the changes. It seems that I learned a lot of mind games when losing the weight, and I still use mind games now that I am at goal. I do have to remind myself constantly that I have reinvented myself. (and changing other aspects in my life help me to remember this...things such as making habits of going to the gym, working out, riding my bike, etc....). Good luck
  • 88olds
    88olds Posts: 4,530 Member
    Been there? Maybe.

    Don’t think I felt like an imposter but as I closed in on goal I wondered this- if I wasn’t the fat guy always trying to lose weight, who was I? The good news is that in reality, not much changed.

    I had a bit of fun when people who hadn’t seen me recently didn’t recognize me. Still have a bit of fun here and there when I try to convince people I’ve met more recently that I really did weight 285 lbs.

    Another thing that has helped- as I’ve gotten old I’m a lot less inclined to feel like I have to explain myself to others.
  • Lobsterboxtops
    Lobsterboxtops Posts: 92 Member
    I’ve had it both ways....when I was young and thin I thought I was big. When I got big, I didn’t really see it. Now that I am getting back to a normal range (like you w/in ~7-8lbs of goal) I still feel big.

    Here’s what I have figured out... I used to rely on clothing size, but vanity sizing has ruined that. I suck at mentally judging my size so I just now assume that my mental image is wrong and to use the scale to give me impartial data points.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,102 Member
    edited December 2019
    Not so much imposter feelings, in my case, but I couldn't process how much smaller I really was. I needed to buy new clothes at goal weight, but it would take multiple trips from racks to dressing room, because the clothes that would fit looked impossibly tiny for a long time. If I looked in the mirror or at photos, I couldn't see the weight loss that was shown there; I still saw "me" and part of being "me" was "I'm fat".

    I'd say it took a year or more at goal, before my current clothes looked normal, and the old ones hyuuuuge; and I could compare old/obese photos with goal-weight ones and see the actual difference.

    Advice? Just give yourself time, and patience. It'll sort out: Thin you will become the real you. :flowerforyou:

    Brains are weird. ;)

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