Yet another doctor visit! lol

Bob is worthless too.. 

If I can lose another 50 lbs.. I'll rethink my position....  other than that...  studly was absolutely STUNNING which made me feel even worse.....  stunning... 

I bought several new clothes. .. pants.. jeans.. nice tops.... by the time I got here, I was so swollen that nothing fit.. LOL  

OK girlee, time for a look at this self image problem you are having.  Where are you getting these ideas that a pleasantly plump woman cannot be attractive to a man?  My friend Dora weighs over two hundred pounds...umm, don't you DARE tell her I said that, and she has men hitting on her all the time.  But it all has to do in the way she carries herself, Dora got 'attitude'.  She is "done" to perfection and knows how to work it...there is definitely a swing on her back porch!  A very well rounded back porch I might add that guys just love.  And as much as you workout, I'm sure yours is even much harder.

So if guys find her attractive, what makes you think that you have to be fifty pounds lighter to rethink your position?  Enquiring minds want to know!

Mary 

I'm happy for your friend...  I also see a lot of very attractive women on this board who are trying to lose weight.. let's face it.. many of us do it for more than health reasons..... Vanity is definitely up there!

I'm just into reality.. it keeps me grounded.  I know what I am and I recognize my limitations and know what I need to do, and if i wasn't working on it so absof*ckinglutely hard, I guess I'd have to be happy with what I've got....   but I am working on it.. just not getting anywhere..  If men were interested in me being as fat as I am.. I'd have one.  It just doesn't work for someone like me.. I NEED the edge of looking better than what I do... that's all.  Just reality.

.  

Yanno, I'm not a therapist...hell, I don't even play one on TV!  But I am a woman, and that makes me more than qualified on the subject.  No woman wants to be the fat bride.  We have in our minds what the perfect bride looks like, usually it's with an eighteen inch waist for Pete's sake.  But women all over the country are getting married in a size sixteen wedding dress and are absolutely beaming and loving their lives.  But what got them there in that size sixteen wedding dress was that they put them selves out there, inviting people into their lives to have fun.  You said yourself that you used to walk into the gym with your head down and not talk to anyone.  Now I know you aren't at the gym to make friends and influence people, but if you were to want a 'friend' in your life, how the hell are you going to meet anyone if you don't project the image that you are 'available'?  You may as well wear a sign that says "I'm not good enough".  Not good enough because you are fifty pounds overweight.  Now that may have been your Mother's way of thinking, but the fact that you have bought into that just breaks my heart.  How would you feel if someone were to tell your daughter that she wasn't good enough for them because she was overweight?  You'd scratch their eyes out for talking to your girl like that.  I just wish that you could learn that you are capable of going out and attracting men.  But men aren't mind readers...you have to let them know that you are open to getting to know them better.  So I say that you don't have a man in your life because you aren't letting any men know that you are open to that.  Not because you aren't attractive enough.  In your HEAD, you're not attractive because your idea of attractive is what you looked like at seventeen.  Guess what, even if you could fit into those clothes, you're never going to look like that again.  But my prayer for you is that you learn to be happy and have a life at any age or weight.  You can't put your life on hold waiting to get to a size six, cuz what if that only happens six months after your dead?  Sorry if I've gone too far, but you are too vibrant of a woman not to live a vibrant life!

 Mary      

ahhaha.. Mary.. you haven't gone too far... it was the best butt slapping I've had in ages!  OOH woman!!  TY!

I'll be praying for you.  Hope you get some answers!

I totally understand how you feel.  I weigh 276 pounds now.  My husband, who is the love of my love, has always and still does think I'm beautiful and desireable.  The problem is mine - my father told me when I was thirteen that I was "gross, fat, and ugly".  He was really trying to tell my mother how he felt about her, but he didn't dare do that directly - she might deny him sex!  So he told me, and I believed him, since he was my father!  After that, I believed I was a yard wide when I wasn't, and the whole family focused on my "weight problem".  I only discovered this past year that I developed a belief that being fat automatically means you're ugly, too, except that just isn't true, in reality!

I have let other people influence me about how I look too long.  I have gotten perms for years because my sister said around 20 to 25 years ago that my hair didn't look good straight and flat on my head, that I needed body!  So I came to reject my natural look, which is straight hair!  Then a nurd once thought that I was my husband's mother, so I started dying my lovely, silver-gray hair golden blonde, to offset that insult.  Do you see how ridiculous this is!?  In a week, I am getting my hair cut, and not permed, so it will go back to what it naturally was.  There is nothing wrong with straight hair!  I will let the blonde coloring grow out, so my lovely gray hair comes back.  There is nothing wrong with having gray hair at 56 years old.

I am working on accepting myself and my body just where it's at now.  If my husband thinks I'm beautiful and desirable, well, then I probably am!

Denise Phares/kitties4

Denise, I wonder if it's generational to equate fat with ugly?  I'm fifty-one and I seem to recall that if someone was fat they were ugly.  Fat and ugly.  Fat and ugly.  It's weird because I wasn't a fat child, but my aunt once told me I was.  So immediately I considered myself fat and ugly.  I asked her about that later and she said she told all of the girls that so they wouldn't be so full of themselves.  Good grief, she left us feeling full of self loathing!  So sister, we might be a li'l chunckee...but we ain't uglee!!!  And if our men are happy with us having a little meat on our bones, I say it makes them better men.

Hey, we wanna see what you look like with straight grey hair!

Mary

 Here's my two cents, for what it's worth.
I spent way too much time, probably half of my life, hating myself for being fat, not thinking I was attractive enough, accepting a lonely future because I found myself so flawed. I spent years, hiding my fat, hiding behind my hair, just plain hiding.

The way I look at it now, this is my mantra ' I just don't have time for that crap"
I don't have time to let someone else tell me how I am supposed to look, or supposed to feel, I just cant be bothered with that. Once I realized that (many years ago) I grew something new... confidence... I don't know how it happened, it just happened, and I woke up one day tired of feeling like I had to wait to  live my dreams and my wants around a number on a scale, or a roll of fat.

I am not kidding you when I say this... THe sexiest thing about a woman, hands down, is her confidence. A strong. confident woman can achieve anything she desires, and doesn't let her pant size rule her day. SHe is fabulous regardless, she is fabulous because she exists.

I know that people telling you all this does not make it easier for you in any way, but look at all the things we write about here, and listen to them, and know that you can make a choice..

You can choose to feel like crap, and be down on yourself, or you could just TRY... TRY to make better choices for yourself,  try to feel like you are a treasure that any man would be lucky to find, try to feel the way you felt about that guy, about you, and see what happens.. Take control and stop running away from a more confident you.
Any man who crosses your path is lucky to have found you, and you don't to try hard, because you are confident on yourself, and you don't need others validation of your outward appearance.

I wish you could see what I see...

First of all, Miss Maria.... if I looked like you I'd be prancin' around!!  Lemme tell ya!  But... as God would have it.. I look like me... so.. there in lies the "acceptance".

Thank you ladies...you're all such good peeps!