You look different, did you lose weight?

[Yo-yo girl 118]

When did people start noticing your weightloss and how different you look? I’m 8lbs away from losing a total of 50lbs in under 3 months and quite honestly NO ONE has said Damn you look smaller or wow you’ve lost weight. They simply haven’t noticed any change. My mom sees it but she’s also paying attention to the changes because she is the only one who knows about my surgery. I took lots of pics and i steady take them to compare myself and the change IMO is astronomical. I truly don’t need the validation from others and I’ll even be uncomfortable with that sort of attention but I’m curious to know.. when did others start noticing that you were smaller? Did people that hadn’t seen you in a while noticed first or the people you work with or come across all the time? How much weight did you lose before people noticed?

[Kimbero 167]

My co-workers and some of my customers at work have noticed they will say things like oh you look great or did you do something different only my coworker that I work with on a daily basis knows about my surgery I haven't told any of my customers and then of course like my brother and sister-in-law if I haven't seen them in about you know couple few weeks they will be like why you look great.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using BariatricPal mobile app

[Dubbs 37]

I found the 1st 50 pounds hardly anyone noticed. The 2nd 50 has been much more noticeable. Keep it up, pretty soon everyone will be commenting. Good luck!

[Lisa.H 5]

I haven't had surgery but when my x and I separated I lost about 40 pounds in under a month. I'm 5'1 it was 190- 150 so a few clothing sizes. I used to sit at a hotel restaurant and drink soda refills. I was constantly hungry. Night and day I thought about getting sugar. Previously I had volunteered at a hospital foundation in back office support. When I went in for my lab and endocrinologist appointment 4 different physicians stopped me in the hallway to ask what plan I was using and my own physician said my weight loss was remarkable. When he asked what was I eating I started to tell him about the food at the shelter and his face changed. I was so embarrassed. Nobody else said anything about my appearance until I went blond lol.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Lisa.H

[KimTriesRNY 1,853]

Many times people notice but say nothing. Bless these people.

Once the comments start, they don’t stop. People constantly pressure me for precise amounts of pounds I have lost. It’s none of their business. Not trying to be rude but your average person can’t really fathom what you weighed or how many pounds you lost.

For example a coworker said to me....wow you must have lost like 30 pounds....

[TakingABreak 2,733]

11 hours ago, Yo-yo girl said:

When did people start noticing your weightloss and how different you look? I’m 8lbs away from losing a total of 50lbs in under 3 months and quite honestly NO ONE has said Damn you look smaller or wow you’ve lost weight. They simply haven’t noticed any change. My mom sees it but she’s also paying attention to the changes because she is the only one who knows about my surgery. I took lots of pics and i steady take them to compare myself and the change IMO is astronomical. I truly don’t need the validation from others and I’ll even be uncomfortable with that sort of attention but I’m curious to know.. when did others start noticing that you were smaller? Did people that hadn’t seen you in a while noticed first or the people you work with or come across all the time? How much weight did you lose before people noticed?

I can feel your frustration. It took almost 90ish pounds for my coworkers to start commenting. Now, my clients have really started to notice, but again 125lbs down now...

[Krista27 341]

People at my work didn't notice until I had dropped about 60lbs. I work from home and go into the office about once a month. The last two months I went in people really noticed! Everyone at work was super positive about it which is great.

[MissLindseyR 110]

I work with a ton of surgeons, honestly, they don't say much except for my bariatric surgeon, who I also work with. Now my surgical residents, they do check on me often and ask how I'm doing. But I work more closely with them than the attendings. I think some people might find it uncomfortable to really talk about a person's weight or weightloss. Now my close coworkers, we talk about it all the time haha.

[Frustr8 7,886]

I prefer You look different, did you lose weight? to OMG Is that really you? I always want to looks behind me to see if someone else is there!

[AEdoesRnY 531]

In my experience (losing weight on other occasions, not this time around because I’m only three days postop) even when people notice they don’t always feel comfortable saying anything...they worry that commenting on it implies that they think you needed to lose weight or acknowledges fatness (former or continued) that usually they fastidiously pretend not to notice, etc. I would say that people are noticing, even if they’re not “able to put their finger on” what’s changed or just feel unsure about mentioning weight... I found that if I got a haircut or a new outfit that gave people an outlet to tell me I looked great without them having to worry about the whole weight/fat minefield....

[CyclicalLoser 155]

It has a lot to do with mathmatics if you ask me. Allow me to use myself as an example. I'm 5'9 and probably have a 50" waist even though pre surgery I crammed myself into 48" waist pants.

According to https://www.health-calc.com/body-composition/waist-to-height-ratio, my waist should be between 28 and 35 inches. Suppose the most correct answer is 32" which is about the middle of the range.

So knowing that area of a circle is pi*r^2 means that I should have a cross-sectional area of 804 square inches. I realize this is not a proper way to compute this because we are more oval than a perfect circle, but I think this assumption will hold for this example.

We know that the density of fat is constant, no matter what we weigh. So, as a means to estimate this for me, we do a bit more math. According to https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm, the average of the "normal weight" BMI is 21.7, which is 147 pounds. So going by my highest weight of 303, I am 156 pounds overweight.

At a waist of 50", my area is 1963 square inches.

So I need to lose 1963-804 = 1159 square inches and 156 pounds. Knowing this, we can approximate (for me) that each square inch of excess weight weighs .13 pounds. (I realize this is impossible for a 2-dimensional measurement to equal any volume, but in reality, the math here assumes a cylinder of height 5'9, and that figure represents a square inch * 5'9...But again, bear with me here)

So, now to the fun part.

Let's see how much weight I need to lose to go from a 50" waist to a 44" waist (A 6" difference, which I would say is probably the minimum for one to notice).

50" area = 1963 from above.
44" area = 1520.

So weight loss needed ~ (1963 - 1520) * .13 = 57 pounds.

Now, lets see what it would take to go from 38 inches to the "perfect" number of 32 inches (Keep in mind, same 6 inches off the waist measurement)

38" = 1134
32" = 804

So weight loss needed ~ (1134 - 804) * .13 = 43 pounds.

In essence, it is much easier to lose inches off your waist as you get closer to your ideal weight.

Now, for those that disagree with my 6" assumption, you could calculate this another way. Suppose that instead of an arbitrary waist measurement, it is a percentage, such as 10%. In that case, I would need to reduce my waist 10% = 5" at 300#. But, if I needed to lose 10% of weight at 38", then I would only need to lose 3.8#. So my numbers above would be even more exaggerated. I won't do that math for those, but rest assured, it would show it is even easier as you get close to the ideal weight.

I think any yo-yo dieter here would have probably noticed this as well, it takes a long time to go from a 50 to 48 inch waist, but much less time to go from a 40 to a 38 inch waist.

[Yo-yo girl 118]

On 08/02/2018 at 14:31, Herewego2018 said:

In my experience (losing weight on other occasions, not this time around because I’m only three days postop) even when people notice they don’t always feel comfortable saying anything...they worry that commenting on it implies that they think you needed to lose weight or acknowledges fatness (former or continued) that usually they fastidiously pretend not to notice, etc. I would say that people are noticing, even if they’re not “able to put their finger on” what’s changed or just feel unsure about mentioning weight... I found that if I got a haircut or a new outfit that gave people an outlet to tell me I looked great without them having to worry about the whole weight/fat minefield....

I think you’re on to something here. That might be it. People may feel like they are somewhat acknowledging you were fat and not trying to be rude. if I saw someone I knew lose 50lbs and I didn’t know they had surgery they will have to tell me how they did it lol I’m going to say something and ask questions 🙊 id want the secret lol

[AEdoesRnY 531]

also I feel like I would react VERY differently to another fat person approaching me and commenting on it vs. a skinny person, knowing that they’re coming at it from potentially a similar place/with empathy/etc.

[Born in Missouri 1,264]

14 hours ago, Lisa.H said:

When I went in for my lab and endocrinologist appointment 4 different physicians stopped me in the hallway to ask what plan I was using and my own physician said my weight loss was remarkable. When he asked what was I eating I started to tell him about the food at the shelter and his face changed. I was so embarrassed. Nobody else said anything about my appearance until I went blond lol.

@Lisa H. I must be missing something. Why you were embarrassed and why did the doctor's expression change? Did he think you were living at the shelter instead of volunteering there?

Edited August 3, 2018 by Missouri-Lee's Summit

[Born in Missouri 1,264]

To me, it's sort of like when you think someone might be pregnant but you don't ask because you might end up embarrassing yourself... or worse, embarrassing the other person.

Once, and this still bothers me to this day, I asked someone who clearly looked pregnant how far along they were. Not only was there no pregnancy, but the person I asked turned out to be a man.