I’m getting more and more compliments about my weight.
Here’s the thing: I’m not losing weight to appeal to anyone’s aesthetic sense and it rings incredibly hollow when the celebration is purely cosmetic, not someone more informed happy for the bigger win for my health.
But I’ve lost weight before, and it was at this weight, crossing below 250 lbs, when people started commenting incessantly then 10 years ago. It was more abrupt then, happening all at once when I returned home for Christmas from Denver.
I have poor interoception, meaning my proprioception of internal signals is low. Unlike every weight-loss gimmick infomercial you’ve ever seen, losing 70 lbs has not made me feel more energy. I do not feel euphoric. Instead I’m battling an endless field of worthy opponents like almost passing out from standing up because my vasculature cannot adapt at the rate I’ve been losing weight, almost 3 lbs/wk until most recently.
When people tell me I’m looking good, I want to lash out at them. I want to inform them that I do in fact have a mirror in my bathroom and a scale on my floor. I want them to know that their visceral reaction to my former obese self is not a permission slip to pass judgment about my current appearance.
I want these people to shut the fuck up.