Where can I find other kindred spirit exobese people on the internet?
February 9, 2011 1:49 PM   Subscribe

I lost about one hundred pounds a few years ago. While I've mostly dealt with it on my own, I'd love to know of any online support groups of previously obese people.

I'm a short girl, and weighed over 260lbs up until about four years ago. Something clicked and I kind of just figured it out. After a year of healthy weight loss and i was pretty much in the "normal" realm.

You might think that after three years I would have found some stuff, but the shame factor is a real problem. I don't want people to know I was ever that large. People are incredibly judgmental and I don't like feeling so exposed. After I lost the weight I stopped talking about it. You'd think that would make me more likely to gain it again, but so far it's not been bad… But a little bad is scary enough.

I really do have a lot of support. My boyfriend is super awesome and my family is all pretty great, but it would be nice to talk to other people candidly about the really specific issues that come with having been at such a different place. I would really like to get to a place where I don't feel like I have to troll my friends and family's facebooks just to detag all photos that exist before 2007.

I know that for the most part any place where it's a bunch of us exobese people hanging out is going to focus a lot on weight loss tactics and everything, but someplace that would be more focused on the head space would be more useful to me. I'm not looking for help losing more weight, I have that covered.
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (6 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Reddit has a VERY supportive community called loseit. I haven't done much with it, but they do try to support each other. Being that it's reddit, it's pretty public, so if you're looking for a more private venue, then that might not work.

But so far, I've found everyone there to be really decent to each other (you can also support by popular, so if people DO make asshole comments/troll, they tend to get voted down to the bottom of the page)...

Loseit subreddit

Good luck!
posted by symbioid at 1:56 PM on February 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


I've lost 120 lbs in the past couple of years. If you can't find an online community that suits you, feel free to contact me if you want to talk.
posted by elsietheeel at 2:08 PM on February 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Can you rework in your head how you view your weight loss? To be able to lose that much weight and keep it off is an incredible accomplishment. Most people can't keep off 10lbs, much less ten times that. The people around you must be real jerks if they can't appreciate that--most I know applaud what you've been able to do with your life.

Looking up "self-care weight loss" on Google may bring you to communities that are more interested in the head-space aspect of loss. Groups who focus on weight loss as a form of self-care tend to be very concerned about the emotional aspects of losing weight and keeping it off.
posted by Anonymous at 2:18 PM on February 9, 2011


There are a lot of people who have started weight loss blogs and successfully lost a large amount of weight. If you don't want a public forum, you might consider just emailing them individually. Even reading their blogs might make you feel less alone, but I'm sure that at least some of them might be interested in chatting with you about your shared experience.
posted by decathecting at 3:37 PM on February 9, 2011


Depending on what method you used to lose the weight, you might be able to find a maintenance section on a message board dedicated to that weight loss method.

Me, I lost 80 pounds doing low-carb. My most-frequently visisted message board, Low Carb Friends, has a section called "The Maintain Lane". It's not a terribly busy area of the board, but there's always a conversation or two going on, and you can almost always find someone who's been through any particular issue to bounce things off of.
posted by themissy at 4:03 PM on February 9, 2011


Shame isn't usually a rational emotion, and I know people can be really shitty towards those who struggle with obesity but, just as a single data point for you that might help: my reaction to finding out that someone I just met had lost 100 pounds would be total awe. As in, you kick ass. (I am naturally thin-to-average weight.)
posted by availablelight at 4:57 PM on February 9, 2011 [2 favorites]


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