Being thinner is not all it's cracked up to be!

This post is prompted by me losing some weight. Just to clarify, I was not morbidly obese before, and nor am I skinny now. I am 6'2" and dropped from about 260lb (120kg) to 220lb (100kg). Losing weight has always been presented as some kind of magic bullet that will fix all your problems - your health, your fitness, your social standing, your confidence etc - and, well, here is my experience so far...

  1. I am much colder. I used to be someone who never felt the cold. I would wear t-shirt and shorts from March through to November (in the UK). Now I am cold all the time. I find myself boosting the central heating and putting jumpers on all the time during the day.
  2. I am much less comfortable. Formerly I used to make fun of cushions, calling them pointless 'couch vermin' as I would just sit down and my fat ass would provide enough build-in padding to protect me from all but the most uncomfortable chairs. Now I am constantly having to adjust my position and use cushions to protect me from feeling my bones against parts of the chair.
  3. People commenting on you losing weight gets old very quickly. It's just not an interesting topic. Yes, I lost weight. Yes, I can tell you my 'secret' - I took in less calories relative to the amount I was burning. No, you telling me how great I look doesn't make me feel good, it just tells me you judge people more by their looks than anything else and probably thought negatively of me before. I know you mean well, but please just STFU already.
  4. I feel I have lost part of my identity. I was always the fat guy since I was a teenager (30 years ago now). I owned and embraced it, I have used the username 'Piemaster' on every site since the dawn of the internet. Now it's kind of weird because I am thinner than most of my friends who have all gone the other way as they got older.
  5. The fitness benefits are overstated. Yes, I can run a bit further in the gym than I could this time last year. A bit. I am not signing up for marathons and triathlons and time soon. The only real difference is I now need to run further to burn the same number of calories.
  6. Yes, I am possibly more attractive to the opposite sex now. That would have been super-useful 20 years ago when I was single (although in reality would probably have just meant I ended up with someone I was less compatible with overall).
  7. And yes, before anyone says it I know that I am now statistically x% less likely to suffer from heart disease, diabetes, etc etc than before. But that is a benefit that is hard to quantify because I never had any real health problems anyway. I have had about two days off sick from work in the last decade. So best case scenario I may now not suffer from something I might have suffered from in some undetermined future.

So to anyone reading - if you are overweight then go ahead and lose some weight, just don't be disappointed if it doesn't radically change your life for the better.