What is something nobody tells you about weight loss?

I’ve been in a weird sharing mood today so… here we go.

What do the above pictures look like to you? Before and after photos, right? Pretty normal. Obvious weight loss there. About 130lbs, actually. A whole person.

I lost a whole person. Pretty awesome, one would think. Something many people would commend.

These are my before and after photos… Well. Sort of.

But let me add my weight in each photo.

So… yep. In the second photo ^ I am actually the lightest I’ve been, and nearly 10lbs lighter than I am in the last two photos.

What is something no one tells you about weight loss?

The journey may mentally and emotionally f*ck you up.

Excess skin may f*ck you up.

Other people see one thing (the latter two photos) but you see the second photo. You are with you all the time. You see every unflattering angle. Feel every droop in your skin when you sit or lay down. You feel and see all of it.

But you hear the compliments people are paying you. Commending you for your discipline and your effort. Saying that clearly your hard work has paid off. But… has it? You look in the mirror and grapple at the excess skin.

Has your hard work really paid off?

Are these people lying to you?

Phantom Fat Syndrome is one of the worst things I’ve had to deal with.

And I hate it.

Honestly, I don’t know if I can be inspirational right now because I hate what I see so much. I hate what it feels like. I hate looking at it every day. Yeah, one day, sure I can get it removed when I have the money for it, but when? How long am I going to have to live like this? Live with the skin reminder that I used to be over 300 lbs?

People can tell you all they want that you need to love and accept your body for how it looks, and to a degree, you do, but their words in the end don’t really matter. What other people say won’t change how you feel about yourself. People call me pretty, I still think I look ugly. People think I look great, I still feel morbidly obese.

It’s a literal mindf*ck and it makes you feel like sh*t. Then you just seem like a negative Nancy because you can’t seem to take a compliment.

The physical part of losing weight was the easy part. The emotional and mental aspects have been the hardest.