The Weight of Comments About Weight

I’ve never thought I was fat and I’ve never thought I was too thin. That is, of course, until people remind me it’s so.

I ran into someone I worked with 7 years ago and almost immediately she said, “You’ve lost so much weight.” She really emphasized the so. She was right. I have lost weight since then. Probably about 20-25 pounds. Then later in the conversation she said it again, “You’ve really lost so much weight.” I didn’t know how to reply.

According to the four sites I just googled, I was within my healthy weight range 7 years ago. About 4 years ago, I just started losing weight. I noticed it but it came off slowly so I just adjusted along the way. I didn’t change my behavior much. I am still a sugar hound drinking 3+ sodas a day. I still eat mostly what I want. The only differences are that I eat at home more and eat much less fast food. I’ve always had digestion problems associated with not being able to walk that keep me from eating way too much but those aren’t new.

In the past year, I’ve dropped several pounds below what the same sites above call my healthy body weight. I had to buy new clothes because nothing fit anymore. It’s nothing to complain about, well, mostly because we live in a world where it is bad form to complain about being thin. It’s comparable to complaining about being rich. But when people tell me that I’ve lost so much weight it does make me wonder. Did I look fat before? Do I look too thin now? I never thought I looked bad at either weight but comments like that can give you a complex.