Yes, I’ve Lost Weight. Don’t Let It Define Me.

“What did you do? Tell me your secret!”

“You look really great, by the way.”

“You’re skinny. Am I allowed to say that?”

I’ve heard many iterations of these questions and comments over the past three years as I have slowly but surely lost weight. I have not had any secrets or supplements to aid me beyond a basic caloric deficit and an elevated workout routine. I used an app subscription program for the first year or so, and now I monitor my activity with a fitness tracker, but I am not always consistent. I’ve had many plateaus and setbacks, and my motivation ebbs and flows with the seasons, yet the results are clear.

I’ve been reluctant to speak directly about my weight loss because I don’t want to lend it more significance than I believe it should have. Yet so many feel compelled to address the difference in my appearance when they recognize it. It’s one thing to receive encouragement from close friends in whom you’ve confided your goals, but it’s another matter entirely with old acquaintances who couldn’t immediately recognize you. You suddenly realize how much everyone’s minds had coded you as overweight, something you so desperately hoped they’d overlook. Receiving compliments often retroactively validates my fears of being valued less because I weighed more.

Of course, being overweight should not be viewed as inherently negative. But for many in Western society, that is exactly the case. When others tell me I look good, the implication is I looked bad at a larger size. Many have subconsciously internalized our society’s messaging that skinny is superior and fat is a moral failing. I’m well aware I carry this implicit bias, too.

I grew up with far too much shame around my body to ever have a healthy relationship with it. I was awkwardly tall for my age, towering above my classmates until middle school. I wasn’t exactly fat, despite being labeled as such by some boys at summer camp, but I was never thin. I stood out in gym class where I wanted my lack of athletic prowess to go unnoticed, and in ballet where I wished I looked more like the other girls. I regret being complicit in the teasing of other children who were heavier, perhaps hoping they would pull focus from me while simultaneously affirming I was not like them. My insecurities were exacerbated by my family’s judgments about how much I was eating and my mother’s insistence I’d be “as big as a house” if I continued, often using overweight relatives for reference. I watched my father replace full meals with cans of Slim-Fast, lamenting what had become of his physique, with little lenience for the disease he’d developed that made movement difficult and painful.

This was the 1990s and early aughts, when diet culture was at its peak. Concerns about “health” were often conflated with more superficial interests. Despite more recent scientific findings to the contrary, weight is still seen as an indicator of overall physical well-being. I’ve certainly received extra consideration from new fitness instructors who’ve incorrectly assumed I had not done an exercise before, as well as unsolicited advice from gym junkies insisting I just had to find the right workout for me. Never mind that not since I was four years old have I not been active in some form of dance, the only exception being the years after college when I was too broke to pay for classes.

Privilege and access should be far greater considerations for anyone worried about Americans’ health. Overweight individuals are all too familiar with having their legitimate medical concerns neglected due to their BMI. My long-suspected thyroid disease remained undiagnosed and overlooked till I was 23. In the preceding decade, not one doctor thought to test my antibodies to confirm that despite normal levels of thyroid hormones, my immune system was attacking them. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis runs in my family and I’d exhibited symptoms for years, yet every suspicion was dismissed with each routine blood test. Perhaps I was seeking an easy-out for my insatiable appetite and weight gain, or so it was implied on more than one occasion. This occurred with decent health insurance under reputable providers, privileges unattainable for many Americans. Society then disparages these individuals when their bodies suffer accordingly.

A lot of damage was done as my thyroid went untreated and bad habits were formed. I spent most of my twenties in survival mode, eating emotionally and bogged down by student debt. I avoided dating, convinced no worthy partner would want me in my present form. I’d seen how men responded to me at various sizes and the differences were distinct. Despite the assurance of others that many men appreciated bodies like mine, I refused to accept my current weight as an integral part of my identity. I bought clothing that was too small and leaned on self-imposed prerequisites of improvement before embracing life. I lived somewhere between denial and delusion, protecting myself from the self-loathing that would ensue were I to face reality without the means or motivation to do things differently.

I ultimately concluded that to be comfortable in my own skin, I either had to love and accept my body as it was, or I had to change it. And I just could not accept myself as I was. I reached the point where I hated my appearance more than I enjoyed eating any food. I don’t believe this to be a healthy or aspirational mindset and I am deeply uncomfortable with the ideals this narrative perpetuates, but I had to arrive at that place to sustain the willpower required. Ironically, it was only once I was several pounds down, farther removed from my fears, that I saw how debilitating they’d become.

The truth is I have worked hard to lose weight and it can be nice to have that recognized. Yet I hesitate to acknowledge it outright because I spent so many years rejecting the relevance of my size. There is a lot of trauma and heartache for me in this area of which most people congratulating my success are entirely unaware. I do not want to concede victory to the forces that have made me and countless others feel so devalued and demoralized. Rather than portray my weight loss as a journey with a happy ending, I’d rather diminish its significance entirely.

I was a complete and worthy person before I lost weight, despite all the internal and external distortions that told me otherwise. All my best qualities have been here all along. The most important work I’ve done on myself in the past few years is not toning and tuning my body, but healing and mending my mental health. Addressing some childhood wounds and the deeper sources of my self-doubt has given me a far greater quality of life than any physical transformation.

I don’t want to be seen as a mere before and after photo, which is why I’ve never posted those cliché, side-by-side comparisons. I resist the urge to scrub old images of myself from the internet, remembering that how I felt in those moments is far more important than how I looked. I try not to dwell on what my life could have been had I received proper medical care earlier or had I made changes sooner. Not only was I doing my best with what I had at the time, but I also question how much any of it should really matter. While I’m proud to have accomplished something I once feared out of reach, I don’t want this transformation to (forgive the pun) carry too much weight.

Any increased confidence I now have cannot be analyzed independently of the public’s gaze. I agree, I do look better! But I’m aware these opinions are rooted in internalized fatphobia and ableism. The alterations we make to our bodies that we claim to do for ourselves, no matter how painstaking or severe, still contain elements of conformity, subconscious as they may be. I will not argue looks are irrelevant and I understand we are biologically inclined to derive pleasure from aesthetically appealing things. I too want to feel beautiful! Yet most of those noting my increased allure are not potential romantic partners. Should beauty make such a dramatic difference for the rest of the world?

The digital era has only intensified the power of the beauty industrial complex. Unattainable standards continuously evolve to torment teen girls and set unrealistic expectations for young men. While shame is widely marketed to women of all shapes and sizes, fatness is actively marginalized and discriminated against. I suspect our collective contempt will only worsen with the proliferation of Ozempic and similar drugs for anyone well-off or well-connected enough to get their hands on them. Combined with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ aggressive new guidelines for combating childhood obesity, I can’t imagine our youth won’t suffer increased incidents of body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Even as I continue to lose weight, I do not anticipate truly loving my body any time soon. If a man I find attractive does not reciprocate, I still conclude it’s because I’m too fat.

I know most people are well-intentioned when praising my slimmer frame, even if it is not their place. Though I remain conflicted about receiving these compliments, I almost always graciously accept them. Yet instead of uniformly asking the public not to comment on someone else’s body, I’d rather we ask ourselves why we’re compelled to comment in the first place. Why do we assume weight loss, and all the potential reasons for it, are inherently positive? What implicit biases are we carrying that tell us something is better about a person when they’re thinner? Even if we find them more attractive, how relevant is that to us or our relationship to them? Does their smaller size fundamentally improve our perception of them? If so, that says far more about us as the observers than those whose weight loss is observed.

My appearance, like everyone else’s, is not fixed. While I hope to maintain the changes I’ve made, I know my weight will continue to fluctuate throughout the duration of my life. Yet the characteristics I am most proud of will remain constant against any number on a scale. These are the traits by which I’d rather be defined.

Consider complimenting me on them, instead.