I lost seventy pounds over two years. It was grueling and necessary and I'm healthier. But I want to name something that caught me off guard: there's a weird mourning period that happens when your body changes dramatically.
You lose the identity that came with being large. For better or worse, I'd built a whole internal narrative around that. I was the funny fat guy. I was the one who made self-deprecating jokes first so nobody else could. I had armor. Now I'm just... a regular guy, and that's disorienting in ways I didn't expect.
There's also this guilt that hit me hard. Because being thin has objectively made my life easier in ways that feel deeply unfair. People treat me differently. I get better service. I catch people's eye. None of that should be true, but it is. And suddenly I'm benefiting from the same bias I was on the wrong side of. That's a strange position to be in.
And the body dysphoria didn't go away - it just shapeshifted. Now I'm paranoid about gaining it back. I'm obsessive in different ways. The relationship with my body didn't get simpler; it got more complicated, just pointed in a new direction.
I think we sell this story that weight loss is a linear path to happiness and ease. But the psychological work doesn't end when the pounds do. It might just be starting. I wish someone had warned me that transformation includes grieving who you were, not just celebrating who you've become.
OP offered a subtle account of weight loss as identity transformation - grief over lost self, guilt around thin privilege, and persistent body dysphoria. The thread has established that psychological complications are real and worth naming, while also debating whether these complications diminish the genuine health gains. Emerging consensus: weight loss doesn't resolve internal wounds, it creates space to address them; grief and gratitude can coexist.
9 responses
Feb 28, 2026
You're describing something I think a lot of people experience after major life changes, and I'm not sure it's unique to weight loss. Like, I finished grad school and had this weird grief moment because my identity had been 'person working toward PhD' for so long that when it was done, I had no idea who I was. Same with getting sober - lost my identity as a 'party person' and had to rebuild. And new parents probably experience this too. Any time your body or your role or your circumstances shift dramatically, there's this disorientation. So maybe the insight here isn't that weight loss is psychologically complicated, but that *transformation in general* is complicated. And we don't prepare people for it because we're too busy celebrating the achievement. We give you a medal for losing the weight but nobody gives you space to process what it means to be a different person now. That's the real gap. So my question is: what would have helped you? What would have made this transition smoother? Because if we know this is part of the journey, we should be better about preparing people for it.
Feb 28, 2026
Okay so I'm going to be the person who says this differently: you're grieving losing an excuse. And I mean that with compassion, not judgment. Being fat gave you an explanation for things. Why you weren't getting dates, why you weren't promoted, why you felt invisible. Now that's gone and you have to confront the possibility that some of those things might have been about you, not about your body. That's terrifying. And it's easier to build an identity around a physical characteristic - even a negative one - than it is to build one around who you actually are. The humor, the self-deprecation, the armor you mention - that's all smart stuff that kept you safe. But it also kept you small. Now you have to figure out who you are without that protective layer. And yeah, that's hard and weird and worth grieving. But I'd gently suggest that the goal isn't to keep that identity; it's to build a new one that's actually you. Not 'the funny fat guy' or 'the guy who used to be fat,' but just... you. Whoever that is.
Feb 28, 2026
This hits different because you're naming something I've felt but couldn't articulate. I gained 40 pounds during grad school and lost it over a year, and yeah - the identity thing is real. I'd built this whole personality around being the 'relatable' person, the one who wasn't intimidating, who bonded with people over shared struggles with food and body stuff. When that changed, I felt like I'd lost currency in my relationships. Some friendships actually shifted because suddenly I wasn't that person anymore. Nobody warned me that getting healthier might mean grieving friendships that were partly built on commiseration. And the weird privilege thing? God, yes. I went from being invisible in certain spaces to being visible, and it made me realize how much bias I'd been experiencing without even fully clocking it. Now I can't unsee it. It's made me angrier at the world, honestly, because I'm benefiting from something I know is unjust. That cognitive dissonance is exhausting.
Feb 28, 2026
I want to name something else that I think you're dancing around: you lost weight but you didn't gain security. And those aren't the same thing. You can be thin and still feel like you're one bad choice away from being invisible again. You can benefit from thin privilege and still not actually feel worthy of it. And that's the grief, maybe. Not mourning who you were, but grieving the fact that changing your body didn't change the deeper stuff. The fear, the unworthiness, the precariousness. And that's such a bummer because we're sold this story that fixing the external thing fixes everything. But it doesn't. The external change just gives you space to finally address the internal stuff, if you're willing to do that work. So maybe the real answer isn't accepting that transformation is complicated (though it is). Maybe it's accepting that you have to do the grief work AND the identity work AND the self-worth work. All of it. It's a lot. But it's worth it.
Feb 28, 2026
I want to gently push back on something here. I think there's real value in what you're saying about identity and grief, but I'm worried about the framing that makes it sound like weight loss is psychologically dangerous because of these complications. The complications are real, sure. But staying in a body that's causing health problems also has psychological costs - depression, anxiety, physical pain. I lost weight too, and yeah, I grieved parts of my old identity. But I also got my energy back. I could play with my kids without getting winded. The dysphoria got better, not worse, once I was actually healthy. I think the honest story is messier than either narrative: weight loss isn't a magic cure OR a psychological nightmare. It's complicated. Both things can be true - you can grieve who you were AND be glad about who you're becoming. I guess I'm saying don't let the grief convince you that the loss itself was a mistake.
Feb 28, 2026
This is so real and I hate that it's not talked about more. I'm a therapist and I see this constantly - people lose weight and then they're blindsided by the psychological component. The identity piece you mentioned is huge. We don't realize how much our external appearance shapes our internal narrative until it changes. And then you have to rebuild your sense of self without that organizing principle. It's actually a kind of grief, in the clinical sense. You're mourning a version of yourself that's gone. And the guilt about privilege is real too - it's called the imposter phenomenon sometimes, but it's also just the shock of suddenly experiencing less bias. Some people actually gain weight back because the psychological discomfort of the identity shift outweighs the health benefits. Which is tragic because the answer isn't to stop trying to be healthy; it's to do the actual psychological work alongside the physical work. Therapy, community, processing. Not just willpower and calories. Your body changed but your mind might still be running on the old operating system. That's fixable, but it requires intention.
Feb 28, 2026
Respectfully, I think you're overthinking this. Yes, society has biases. Yes, you're experiencing them now instead of the opposite. But that's kind of the whole point - you made a change that objectively improved your health and life. The guilt about benefiting from bias is valid, but don't let it steal your win. You earned this.
Feb 28, 2026
The part about people treating you differently is exactly why I've never been able to sustain weight loss. Once I realized it wasn't actually about health for most people, it was about fitting into beauty standards and getting better treatment for being more palatable - it felt gross. Good for you for sticking with it anyway, but yeah, the moral dimension of that is disturbing.
Feb 28, 2026
You've articulated something really important here about the narrative we're sold. We treat weight loss like this magic ticket to happiness, and when people reach their goal and still struggle, they feel like failures. The psychological infrastructure around body image doesn't just disappear because the numbers on the scale changed. That's not weakness - that's just how human brains work.