What's it like to ditch the chunk as a middle aged person? Do you know, because I bloody well didn't and a lot of what occurred has deviated somewhat from standard media assurances of instant sexual chocolate and general sylph-like infallibility. No one warns you that your nipples will turn purple- that was a complete shocker. Even though I'm just fucking with you about the nipple thing, the newly-shrunk, including myself, often wank on about the incredible benefits of being smaller whilst neglecting to elucidate the negative aspects of getting and staying there. Some shit went downhill on the way out of fattyland. Let's take a head to toe, no punches pulled approach because the downside is deserving of consideration by anyone thinking of reforming their own habits.
THE BAD NEWS
Hormonal & Psychological Fluctuations: I'm female, just into my forties at the time and for me these physiological changes were nothing short of horrific. Body fat produces oestrogen and god only knows what else; when you start to shed it, your endocrine situation can go pretty batshit. Oestrogen can affect everything from period pain to skin texture to energy levels and nobody tells you that. I found out the hard way and it wasn't fun.
Hormones also party hard with your psychological and emotional fluctuations and can greatly amplify any fucked up tendencies you might already exhibit. My weight loss was entangled with chronic depression, a midlife crisis and repressed complex grief, and holy shit that kaleidoscopic psycho-physiological cocktail was one of the worst times of my life. Crying, rage, intense gloom, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, whiplash temper- it wasn't pretty and I wasn't even perimenopausal yet. I had genuine self-harm and suicidal ideation for the first time in about 15 years. It lasted about a year and a half and was almost intolerable for the first twelve months. I didn't seek professional help, but I should have. Smoking the odd joint helped relieve the worst mood swings/darkest thoughts. Be warned: if you have any chronic psychological issues, they could well leap into acute mode when you downsize. It's not all hearts and fucking flowers. You may not recognise it until it's too late, so warn a partner, friend, parent or healthcare provider and ask them to keep an eye on you. If you take one thing away from this ramble, let it be that single recommendation.
Also: being smaller and dedicated to regular exercise (like it or not) cuts into your slothful creative time. If you're a writer or any kind of artist engaged in projects that require extended periods of quiet contemplation, you may find your ability to summon and prolong this important mental state is impaired. My concentration is nothing like it used to be, which sucks arse.
Also: being smaller and dedicated to regular exercise (like it or not) cuts into your slothful creative time. If you're a writer or any kind of artist engaged in projects that require extended periods of quiet contemplation, you may find your ability to summon and prolong this important mental state is impaired. My concentration is nothing like it used to be, which sucks arse.
Dysmorphia: Modern humans are inherently delusional. We lie to ourselves about all sorts of bollocks and our shape and size are often just particles in our personal haze of ambient bullshit. I knew I was fat but studiously avoided quantifying that state so as not to upset myself unduly. Which led into not really knowing what I looked like when I was losing weight. I still don't really know what I look like now, in any objective sense. Getting smaller doesn't guarantee you will be able to automatically appreciate and enjoy the results of all that hard work. Let's throw in the salient fact that there's always one (at the very least) cunty observer who thinks you could still stand to be thinner anyway, and probably won't hesitate to tell you that.
I have days when I think myself three sizes larger than I am and that can be unsettling, to say the least. I don't know which clothes I'm going to fit into or what I should wear now; that's exacerbated by the whole hitting-forty thing and having to let some looks go, but still... the dysmorphia is a constant battle. My recommendation: skip the scales and just measure the shit out of yourself right from the start to combat the mad mental business that can keep you from recognising and being rewarded by your own progression.
Hair Loss: Ever wonder why fat chicks go for a pixie cut once they start dropping sizes? Your fucking hair starts falling out, yo. No one tells you it will probably happen as a result of caloric restriction and stress which sends a good portion of your follicles into 'drop and sleep' mode, but it's incredibly common. Mine started shedding like a fucking Labrador around 3 months into a 1000 calorie/day regime and I probably lost about 15% in total. After clogging the shower drain for 6 months, my hair has more or less recovered but I had to cut it short.
Benign Positional Vertigo: I started getting briefly dizzy from lying down, sitting up and turning/angling my head too quickly. I narrowed it down to BPV, which is a condition caused by shifting of crystals in the inner ear, affecting balance. Anecdotal evidence suggests it's moderately common amongst people who lose a lot of weight, I suspect because of altered fat deposits in your face, skull and neck etc, so it makes sense that minute, stasis-dependant stuff gets slightly out of whack. It resolved after a few months.
I have days when I think myself three sizes larger than I am and that can be unsettling, to say the least. I don't know which clothes I'm going to fit into or what I should wear now; that's exacerbated by the whole hitting-forty thing and having to let some looks go, but still... the dysmorphia is a constant battle. My recommendation: skip the scales and just measure the shit out of yourself right from the start to combat the mad mental business that can keep you from recognising and being rewarded by your own progression.
Hair Loss: Ever wonder why fat chicks go for a pixie cut once they start dropping sizes? Your fucking hair starts falling out, yo. No one tells you it will probably happen as a result of caloric restriction and stress which sends a good portion of your follicles into 'drop and sleep' mode, but it's incredibly common. Mine started shedding like a fucking Labrador around 3 months into a 1000 calorie/day regime and I probably lost about 15% in total. After clogging the shower drain for 6 months, my hair has more or less recovered but I had to cut it short.
Benign Positional Vertigo: I started getting briefly dizzy from lying down, sitting up and turning/angling my head too quickly. I narrowed it down to BPV, which is a condition caused by shifting of crystals in the inner ear, affecting balance. Anecdotal evidence suggests it's moderately common amongst people who lose a lot of weight, I suspect because of altered fat deposits in your face, skull and neck etc, so it makes sense that minute, stasis-dependant stuff gets slightly out of whack. It resolved after a few months.
Wrinkles: My skin was so much better when I was fat. No contest, no equivocation. Virtually zit-free, soft, dewy, plump and unlined. There is a lot to be said for truckloads of gloopy mischievous oestrogen and a layer of subcutaneous blubber; you have little idea how much of your bloom consists of those two fickle bastards until they are whittled away. Now I have an awesome set of crows' feet, more upper lip lines than I personally care for, more and juicer pimples and my T-zone is greasier. That's my 40s talking too, but it was definitely linked to weight loss. Still have minor rosacea and photosensitivity. Shape-wise, I now have a more angular oval face, which I consider an improvement- luckily, because whatever emerged was going to be a surprise. You do need to brace yourself for facial change. It sounds like a superficial consideration, but believe me, alterations to this most fundamental personal register can be disturbing to an already overtaxed self-image. By the way; all that expensive and carefully-curated makeup you wore when you were fat? Most of it no longer suits you.
I managed to dodge the all-over droopy-dog excess skin thing, but only through a combination of stupid luck, slow-paced reduction, good nutrition and replacement muscle mass through the boring toil of protracted physical exertion. Others are not so fortunate.
Teeth: I suspect caloric restriction was instrumental in one of my rear molars cracking. You need to watch that shit, especially if you've got smoking/drinking/addiction issues or low bone density/incipient osteoporosis etc.
I managed to dodge the all-over droopy-dog excess skin thing, but only through a combination of stupid luck, slow-paced reduction, good nutrition and replacement muscle mass through the boring toil of protracted physical exertion. Others are not so fortunate.
Teeth: I suspect caloric restriction was instrumental in one of my rear molars cracking. You need to watch that shit, especially if you've got smoking/drinking/addiction issues or low bone density/incipient osteoporosis etc.
Breasts: They are unpredictable beasts at the best of times and a lot of people will tell you losing weight isn't the best thing you can do for your knockers. I would argue that it reduces your chances of having to get cancerous boobies excised, but you probably won't give a shit about that if getting smaller has snatched all the fun out of your funbags. Some bootylicious Celtiberian ancestor is responsible for my personal bustiness rather than just plain excess adipose, so I'm still a DD. Crazily, they seem a little perkier to me after dropping the poundage. They also swell more painfully during my cycle at my present weight, and finding bras made for women with large, morphologically distinct breasts instead of just contiguous fatness in that general area is seemingly impossible.
Arms: Fat arms and big boobs tend to go together and thusly I was blessed with both. Oddly, my upper arms have been the most stubborn holdouts as far as reduction is concerned although I tend to minimise this mentally; thanks, dysmorphia. Went through a phase of rather unsightly underarm looseness (bingo flaps) that seems to be slowly resolving despite my being no spring chicken. It's taking a year longer than everything else, though. Caveat: I did jack shit as far as dedicated upper body work goes. There's also the small matter of hand-shrink; none of my rings fit very well any more and I have to swap them to my largest digits.
Gut: Changing your diet, especially if you're heading away from regular ingestion of processed carbs, alters the composition of your gut flora and therefore tampers with your entire fucking biology in ways we are only beginning to understand. The transition can be unpleasant with bloating, discomfort, hunger pangs, headaches, low energy, poor absorption, shitty sleep and poopy disruption- you name it. You may need to white-knuckle a month of internal discomfort while your commensal situation adapts to your new inputs.
Arms: Fat arms and big boobs tend to go together and thusly I was blessed with both. Oddly, my upper arms have been the most stubborn holdouts as far as reduction is concerned although I tend to minimise this mentally; thanks, dysmorphia. Went through a phase of rather unsightly underarm looseness (bingo flaps) that seems to be slowly resolving despite my being no spring chicken. It's taking a year longer than everything else, though. Caveat: I did jack shit as far as dedicated upper body work goes. There's also the small matter of hand-shrink; none of my rings fit very well any more and I have to swap them to my largest digits.
Gut: Changing your diet, especially if you're heading away from regular ingestion of processed carbs, alters the composition of your gut flora and therefore tampers with your entire fucking biology in ways we are only beginning to understand. The transition can be unpleasant with bloating, discomfort, hunger pangs, headaches, low energy, poor absorption, shitty sleep and poopy disruption- you name it. You may need to white-knuckle a month of internal discomfort while your commensal situation adapts to your new inputs.
| Whenever you smoke a bowl and inevitably backslide into a weekend of greasy gourmandising your puritanical innards will cane you with headaches, lethargy, effervescent bowel treachery and stinky carb sweats. There is no best of both worlds. Belly: I still have a small one and this seems to be another area that resists all but the most draconian measures. But the fat pad is exterior rather than organ-adjacent so I don't really care, especially since accepting that it'll probably take another full year of punishing restriction to shift it, which will fuck up my proportions elsewhere. Not sacrificing my epic arse for a flat stomach. A bit of navel jelly isn't the worst thing that could happen. I tell myself. |  |
Tail bone: Ye olde coccyx isn't something we normally think about... until it's malfunctioning. If you are the owner of a formerly capacious caboose, you're possibly not aware of the extent to which your arseal padding is cosseting that obscure part of the spine. Your tailbone is like a lazy nun taking a three-hour lunch break from doing fuck-all anyway in a cloister made of pillowy arse fat. It doesn't care for being suddenly required to support your remaining mass without warning; I lost a lot of junk from the hips, lower back and bum and once I was down to a size 16 (UK/NZ), sitting still, even on a nice sofa in an impeccably upright position, was painful to the extent that I would have to stand up after around 10 minutes. Like someone was twisting my finger backwards or grinding out a cigarette behind my poopchute sort of pain. Which may excite some of you. Sadly, excruciating arseplay was not on my wishlist and there was no safeword. Sitting up in bed and sometimes even lying on my side was almost impossible. This hardcore discomfort level continued for about a year. Honestly, it was second only to the hormonal/emotional swings as far as detriment was concerned. My effete, sequestered tailbone has hardened the fuck up and I rarely get sitting pain these days, but it took a year of standing around strangely like I was coming off one too many speed tabs.
General Joint & Skeletal: The frame remains the same. Losing weight won't magic your mighty thicksetedness into daintyhood. If you're in the upper proportional percentile, sleeves will still end two inches from your wrists and people will still ask you to lift heavy stuff for them even though you're thinner. I don't feel more conventionally, acceptably feminine but then that doesn't really bother me personally.
Shit moves around, loosens out and tightens up when you're shedding significant weight. Downsizing is a state of flux, obviously. I had a host of minor tectonic-style alignment and adaptive issues- back, hips, knees, tendons etc- but they all resolved without treatment. Glad I didn't panic and have anything 'treated'.
Feet: After making them carry my fat arse around for so many years I thought they were fairly inured to whatever life could throw at them but the hard walking regime I adopted was still a big shock to their sedentary comfort. I got a shifting cascade of moderate sesamoid, arch and heel pain as the bones and tendons cried a plaintive WTF and tried to duck their new responsibilities. Nothing bad enough to put me on the bench, so I just toughed it out and that seems to have been the right thing to do. My feet took a full year of daily walking to really adapt and that process sucked.
From starting out walking in Chucks I progressed through a number of fancy sports shoes. There's fuck-all difference between cheap and high-end shoes as far as 'performance' is concerned; they're going to make your feet look like hideous loaves of sporty bread and shit themselves in six months to a year, no matter what you spend. I always try to pick them up second hand. Which leads me to...
General Joint & Skeletal: The frame remains the same. Losing weight won't magic your mighty thicksetedness into daintyhood. If you're in the upper proportional percentile, sleeves will still end two inches from your wrists and people will still ask you to lift heavy stuff for them even though you're thinner. I don't feel more conventionally, acceptably feminine but then that doesn't really bother me personally.
Shit moves around, loosens out and tightens up when you're shedding significant weight. Downsizing is a state of flux, obviously. I had a host of minor tectonic-style alignment and adaptive issues- back, hips, knees, tendons etc- but they all resolved without treatment. Glad I didn't panic and have anything 'treated'.
Feet: After making them carry my fat arse around for so many years I thought they were fairly inured to whatever life could throw at them but the hard walking regime I adopted was still a big shock to their sedentary comfort. I got a shifting cascade of moderate sesamoid, arch and heel pain as the bones and tendons cried a plaintive WTF and tried to duck their new responsibilities. Nothing bad enough to put me on the bench, so I just toughed it out and that seems to have been the right thing to do. My feet took a full year of daily walking to really adapt and that process sucked.
From starting out walking in Chucks I progressed through a number of fancy sports shoes. There's fuck-all difference between cheap and high-end shoes as far as 'performance' is concerned; they're going to make your feet look like hideous loaves of sporty bread and shit themselves in six months to a year, no matter what you spend. I always try to pick them up second hand. Which leads me to...
Shoe size & Wardrobe: I've gone down around half a conventional UK shoe size and a full boot size. The fit of any footwear style that goes above the ankle is heavily influenced by the size of your lower leg and my fat calves forced my feet to sit forward in Docs et al. They've thinned out substantially and now the UK10s are too fucking long. Which is an annoying and expensive problem to remediate.
But not as annoying and expensive as having to abandon and heavily remodel my entire fucking wardrobe. Depending on your personal style and how materially pedantic you are, going down a lot of sizes can involve some fucking horrible sartorial bereavement. I collect vintage garments, make a lot of my own from really nice hard-to-get fabrics and was not happy about having to give them up. Losing weight meant a lot of my treasured pieces just didn't work any more, no matter how many times I altered them and even though I sew, larger, less defined body shapes are relatively easy to dress in comparison with my new emphatic hourglass- possibly the worst shape to try to buy or construct for. For the fastidious dresser, that loss of personal autonomy can be horribly demoralising and at a time when you really do not need the extra drama.
Prepare to part with some of your best gear. For maybe having to construct an entirely new exterior expression right in the middle of your fucking adult life. And for the hideous trauma of possibly having to wear the same basic shit that other people are wearing whilst formulating your new look. The prospect of spending money on those tragicomic high-street items should give anyone with an eye and a conscience sweaty nightmares; I would advise the (smarter than I was) punter to limit investment to a few stretchy staples and maybe a cool belt (for cinching older pieces) to tide you over rather than running out and panic-buying/making a whole new kit for your mid-stage self. Ride it out until you're at your preferred size.
I'll talk about the special and entirely separate hell of other peoples' reactions next time.
But not as annoying and expensive as having to abandon and heavily remodel my entire fucking wardrobe. Depending on your personal style and how materially pedantic you are, going down a lot of sizes can involve some fucking horrible sartorial bereavement. I collect vintage garments, make a lot of my own from really nice hard-to-get fabrics and was not happy about having to give them up. Losing weight meant a lot of my treasured pieces just didn't work any more, no matter how many times I altered them and even though I sew, larger, less defined body shapes are relatively easy to dress in comparison with my new emphatic hourglass- possibly the worst shape to try to buy or construct for. For the fastidious dresser, that loss of personal autonomy can be horribly demoralising and at a time when you really do not need the extra drama.
Prepare to part with some of your best gear. For maybe having to construct an entirely new exterior expression right in the middle of your fucking adult life. And for the hideous trauma of possibly having to wear the same basic shit that other people are wearing whilst formulating your new look. The prospect of spending money on those tragicomic high-street items should give anyone with an eye and a conscience sweaty nightmares; I would advise the (smarter than I was) punter to limit investment to a few stretchy staples and maybe a cool belt (for cinching older pieces) to tide you over rather than running out and panic-buying/making a whole new kit for your mid-stage self. Ride it out until you're at your preferred size.
I'll talk about the special and entirely separate hell of other peoples' reactions next time.
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