How do you handle the "SKINNY" comment?

I think this has already been said (more than once) but I'll throw my 2 cents in anyway!  It definitely takes longer for your head to catch up with the rapid changes happening below the neck, and I don't know if it ever completely catches up.  Partly I think because when we look in a mirror, we see what we want to see, not what is really there.  For me, I was able to tell myself "I'm really not that big" as long as I looked in a mirror.  It was only when I had to look back at the hard proof of a photograph that I knew I was kidding myself.  I think the same thing happens when you start losing the weight - that mental image you have inside of how you think you look is still pretty much the same - just now after you've lost weight your reality is on the "skinny" side of your mental image.  Think of it as a number line, where your mental image of yourself is at 0.  (I don't know if that will make sense to anyone else, but that's the best way to explain it to myself!)

The best advice I can give you is to take lots of photos, so you can see what you really look like.  I was amazed when I started taking lots of pictures around 6 months post surgery - I had to convince myself that I was the person in the photographs, and it still shocks me sometimes to see my new self in a photo or reflection when I'm not prepared for it.  As for the people commenting on how skinny you are getting - just say "thank you" or that it is something you're working hard at!

I get this all the time.  I usually say thanks and tell them where I started out.  People who didn't know me back then are amazed that I was ever overweight, let alone super morbidly obese.  Makes me feel good.  Skinny isn't a bad comment -- much better than the names I was called prior to WLS!

Of course, for people who have suffered to gain weight all their lives (a hard concept to imagine, I know), the name "skinny" is just as bad as being called "fatso", I can only imagine.  To me, I'm embracing the name skinny! 

And I'm still a size 12, anyway, because of the excess skin!  lol