My body always looks about like I think it should in photos.
My head, on the other hand, looks huge. Maybe it’s big hair - I dunno. 
Nobody gets to complain about being short if I’m around, seeing as I’m 4’2" (there are medical reasons, obviously). My boyfriend says I make him feel monstrously tall, and he’s about 5’6" or 7".
And I’m pretty sure I beat you on being the shortest person in your school by a year, at least, since middle school started at 6th. Nyah nyah!
My weight has been remarkably steady, though I’m not too fond of the way I’m proportioned. I’d like to drop a couple of pounds, but much more than that and I’d be too thin.
Hi. My name is Sunspace and I have a spare tire…
I absolutely have a reverse anorexia mindset.
I always think I’m a little overweight, but pretty damned good looking until someone grabs a snapshot of me sitting on the couch, thighs splayed out in front of me, head trying to hide in the large squishy shell that is the rest of my body. Aaaah, it’s awful.
I’ve lost 30 lbs so far and I don’t -feel- any thinner. Co-workers and friends have mentioned that I look smaller, but I still feel “a little overweight”.
I don’t think I’m quite ready for the camera yet. Something tells me that it’ll just scream, “THIRTY POUNDS HANS’T MADE A DENT IN THE SQUISHY TURTLE SHELL!”
sigh
Just let me live in my delusional world where I’m a full-figured supermodel, just waiting to be discovered, please.
I always look worse in pictures than I look to myself when I look in the mirror. I also feel even bigger than I am when I am with members of my mother’s family. Most of them are average or short, and they vary from thin to chubby, but they all just seem so tiny to me. I am not just fat; I am big. Even at my lowest adult weight (teenage actually) I was still quite a large person, although I was only about twenty pounds overweight still. I have long limbs and broad shoulders. I make it a point not to divulge my weight; few people know it, and they are astonished that it is as high as it is. So am I. I’m 5’8" and my shorter aunts and cousins always say, “Oh, but you’re tall.”
I also have big feet and hands. My rings are huge, and had to be so even at the nearest approach I made to a normal weight. That is what bothers me the most. I want to be dainty. Even if I weighed 130 pounds, I’d still have to wear size ten shoes and rings. Argh! Were I a fat hourglass, I would be happier at this weight. I am not. My shape is peculiar. I have discovered, however, that I may be able to build some curves into my body. When I lose weight by exercising, particularly when weight training, I found that some semblance of an actual figure seemed to be emerging. Now I just have to keep at it.
Actually, it was when I saw photos and videos and I didn’t shudder. Seeing my old clothes come out of the washer and utterly dwarfing my new clothes. I’ve gone from a 58-60 waist to a 46-48, and from a 5x shirt to a 2x in most brands. I can shop at the Old Navy and at a regular mall for the first time in about 15 years, and I’m only 25. I’ve had to buy clothes from the Obese and Gangly stores for years, but I don’t any more.
Comments from supporters helped, but the stunning realization that one of my old shirts was half-again too big is what really did it. Just 60 more pounds to drop me to 260, 15% fat (low-normal), and I’ll be happy.
I’ve always been a large person – I luckily carry quite a bit of muscle mass underneath the fat, so I’ve never had mobility problems or anything, and my weight was usually under-estimated by ~50 pounds because I carried it well, but I was still hugely fat. I’ve fallen to fat, but no longer morbidly obese, and my lean mass has remained at about 220, so I will settle out as a well-built, big 260. I’m looking forward to it, but I’ll still think I’m huge. I will be, compared to a lot of people (many of my co-workers and customers are tiny Asian people, which doesn’t help), because anyone who is 5’ 9" and 260 with 15% fat is arguably a large person. The muscle mass is of course centered mainly on my lower body, but that’s OK – my upper body is large enough to help balance it out.
I’ve been working out 30 minutes 5 times a week for the past five weeks or so. This past weekend, I wanted a pair of nice brown dress pants, so off to Boscov’s I went and got a few pairs to try on in the dressing room. The first pair I tried on were huge, even though they were the size I’ve been wearing (and the size I had on in the store!). So were the second pair, and the third. I finally went back out to get another pair, only a size smaller–a size I haven’t seen in about 10 years.
The smaller size fit. I stood in the dressing room, in the smaller sized pants and cried.
I realized that the pants I’ve been wearing (and the blouses) are all starting to hang on me. Last year, for my birthday, my daughter bought me a really nice suit, which was so tight I couldn’t wear it, but didn’t want to get rid of it because my daughter had bought it for me. I wore it on Tuesday and it fit beautifully.
Every evening when I think, “I’d just like to sit on this couch and veg out”, I remind myself of the original reason I began working out–that I didn’t want my heart to become a clogged lump of fat in my chest. The loosing weight part is secondary. It makes getting off the couch a lot easier.
I am aware that I should be doing something to lose weight, exercise-wise. Reading some of these posts is making me want to contact a Physical Therapist to find out what I can do that won’t be incredibly painful to me, but will give me some kind of work-out. ( broken back is a source of pain and many work-outs are off-limits )
I’m with about three others in this thread - too thin. I’m a guy looking down the barrel of 5’9" and 120 lbs. It’s better than the 115 lbs. that I had kicking for the last couple of years, but I need about ten more. I also slouch all the time, so that certainly doesn’t help.
Maybe all the ladies will be attracted to my dynamic personality 
What are your limitations? – someone here might be able to suggest something. I lost my 85 with walking as my only exercise.
I had the opposite problem for a while. In my teens and early twenties, I had a severe self-image problem, and even after I took steps to improve my appearance, I still thought of myself as a dog’s dinner. (No weight loss, just hair, makeup and wardrobe.) Many times, I would be in the midst of berating myself: I was such a dork; every girl at that party was ten times better looking than me; I should just stay home…and then I would pass by a mirror and almost not recognize the babe staring back at me. Still happens with photos from time to time.
I tried to say that earlier. Many of us have unrealistic ideas of what we look like.
Any kind of serious torque or vertical compression/impact is terribly painful. So, walking is out. I tried walking, the impact of my heels on the track was terribly painful, I’d be worse off for hours after I walked, than I was before I walked each day.
Ditto swimming, gym machines and Nordic Trac.
-sigh-
Cartooniverse Swimming does not produce any impact on your bones. In fact is has exactly the opposite effect. It takes the pressure off your bones so that you may move much easier.
I have degenerative bone disease, which means my bones are crumbling every day and any impact I make on them has the potential to cripple me. I have had surgery where they took a bone from my hip and put it in my neck to replace a crushed disk. This needed immediate surgery because they coiuld no longer see my spinal cord where it was compressing against it (Using an MRI). They also showed me that one disk above and one below were halfway through my spinal cord Two in my lower back were creating problems as well. These will most likely need surgery at a later date. I lost 85 pounds AFTER I had the surgery by using a diet, water therapy, and eventually, low-impact aerobics.
I have a niece who was recently paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident and this is also the therapy they are prescribing for her.
I have the similar but different experience whenever I see photos of myself.
I’m 5’9". I weigh between 100-110 lbs. Dunno, I get weighed once a year at the doctor. I’m freakin’ skinny, I know this. I hear it from everyone. (Somehow it’s ok to tell a skinny chick “Oh my God you’re so skinny, I hate you! ::giggle giggle::” whereas… uh, the opposite would get you slapped. But that’s another rant.)
When I saw photos of me graduating from college, in my black robes and all that, I was like “Holy crap, do I really look like that?!” I’m aware that I’m tall, and being skinny accentuates that. But I looked scary! All towery and waifish and… well, I looked like a really skinny owl. The glasses didn’t help. And at my girlfriend’s wedding, I was the tallest member of the wedding party! The heels didn’t help.
It’s amazing, the disparity between how I think I look, and how I must look to the rest of the world.
Agreed that there is no impact. However, the rotational forces inherent in swimming, even in treading water, make the facets and break-point grind in a way that’s terribly painful.
I’m very glad that you were able to have the surgery that protected your spinal cord !
I have the same problem; cursed genetics. Female, 6’ tall, big hands and feet (size 11 1/2) and while my fingers are proportionate to my palms, that does mean that my rings are of the sizes normally used on guys. My wedding ring actually fits on my uncle’s thumb, to give you an idea. 
Broad shoulders. European build (long body, shorter legs).
Currently, I weigh 130kgs. That’s something in the order of 260lbs, but I’m not going to look up an accurate conversion, since lbs are so much more depressing than kilos. According to my doctor, I need to lose 50kgs. It’s so not going to happen.
My self-image is a funny thing. When I was in school I was always called ‘fat’ even though - looking back at photos - I wasn’t in the least bit fat, merely much taller than anyone else and with a larger frame. I had a horrible self-image. I felt like the ugliest, most undesirable person on the planet. I was gawky and socially inept and couldn’t meet people’s eyes because I couldn’t face the judgment in them.
When I was 16, I went on a diet and got down to 52kgs (size 10-12). I looked like a cow in famine - hip bones sticking way out, collar bone way out, you could count my vertebrae just by looking. Clothed, I looked great; naked it was horrible. To maintain that weight, I had to eat under 2,500kj per day. Life on the lettuce leaf.
Funnily enough, it was a good thing that I did this. Friends of my brother’s who had previously ignored me suddenly wanted to be my boyfriend. Guys who’d never given me the time of day wanted to be seen with me. Disgusted with the superficiality of the world, I said ‘fuck that’ and threw the diet out the window - who the hell wants to starve themselves for that kind of guy anyway? I was the same person I’d always been, but only *now * desirable as girlfriend material? Screw that.
Since then my weight went up, up up. I’ve been a size 26 for the last 8 years or so, and happily so. My husband has never noticed my size - he honestly sees people for who they are, not what they look like. He has never made me doubt for an instant that he finds me attractive, and this has done strange things to my self-esteem. Now when I look in the mirror I’m frankly astounded to see a fat woman there. I always mentally see myself as solid but not overweight; curvy without wobbly. Instead of being paranoid about my looks, I walk into a room confident that I’m likeable and attractive. This new self-image is at least as far out of whack as my previous beliefs (particularly with ‘attractive’ - I’m actually very plain, though constantly surprised to realize this when I see a mirror), but I’m happier with it. 
I’m not paranoid about my hands and feet anymore either. His hands are huge - really long palms and long fingers. The first time he ever took my hand he said in wonder ‘it’s so dainty!’. I thought he was being horrible until I realized how his hand actually dwarfs mine. (I had an ex-boyfriend who was nasty about a lot of things, in case you’re wondering why my first reaction would be to believe he was being cruel.)
Khiadra, I strive to be more like you. Your self-image sounds very healthy now and that is a wonderful thing. Sadly, I know exactly what you mean about the hands. I am quite improperly pleased when I hold hands with a man and his hand is bigger than mine. It doesn’t happen often. As for women, I tend to like smaller women than I am, so that’s hopeless. Heh.
In this case, I guess you get to be the one to make *them * feel special and dainty. Knowing how good it feels in reverse, that’s not such a bad thing if you think about it! (Well, okay, you may have to squint a bit and tilt your head the right way to see the bright side, but it IS there… )
I do feel your pain though. My sisters-in-law are 5’8" and 5’10", willowy and very fine-boned, and I know that even were I to be a good weight I’d still look freakishly oversized compared to them. As it is, I just cringe whenever the camera comes out at family occasions (and his family are photo-crazy).
The phrase that goes through my mind at such times is from an old Monty Python skit about the ‘original’ version of the painting ‘The Last Supper’, in which there are three Christs.
“The fat one balances the two skinny ones!”
I was watching a video of a wedding I had recently attended. Suddenly this tall guy showed up in the frame, and I started snickering, saying “Look at the guy on that nose!”, amongst other not-so-flattering comments. Heh! It was me, a fact I realised about 5 seconds after everyone else in the room had already burst out laughing :smack:
I used to have really big ears at one time too - luckily, my head moslty caught up with them. Obviously, my nose forgot to stop growing.