a question for people who might define themselves as having gotten over "body image" problems..

Though some days I'll be feeling just fine about my appearance and I'll pass a shiny window or something and feel crestfallen when I look like a big dork - or I'll see another bad photo of myself.

But also it helps to have people around who will back you up when you are feeling down on your appearance. (and by that, I don't mean agree with you!)

(multiple xpost, starting with alba)

Nick's way is healthier, but health is almost as overrated as muscles.

It's aspects of my personality around women that worry me these days...

I think you're right to focus on the idea of the most physically appealing version of yourself. I mean it's probably tied in to being your self and finding a way to look or just becoming satisified with a certain style. I think it probably changes all the time.

noone's ever 100 percent happy with the way they look obviously. I worry about both personality and looks, fwiw, when it comes to the opposite sex. I mean I don't worry constantly, but I do worry, not in a hopeless way though. I'm probably happier now than ever with looks/personality but I still feel there is a long way to go too.

you can only do your best.

i work on the premise that no one is going to complimnent me on how cool /stylish i am ~(or can be) - so i tell myself i am; not narsicism but self confidence.

too much interweb is kinda bad.

excerise is good. even v. irregularly

Actually, there is no way I am going to work out - I would feel enormously self-conscious in a gym, which goes to show that I am not over it as such. I've just engineered my life around it.

I don't know on what basis I say I am fit. I think it's just that I have little to no body fat and stopped smoking a week ago.

The thing is, I'm happy with my face, hair and height. If I got a conventionally attractive amount of muscle as well, I might get horrendously narcissistic and arrogant. I know some people here think I already have, but I don't think they know horrendous.

i started 5/6 yrs ago doing 5-10 max. now i can do 30+. just feels good.

for anti-boring aerobic excerise: starjumps in front of MTV or between magazine/comic book pages; usually best when listening to music. do like 75.

nb: i am not buff. v. slim
squats. sit ups. all the usual jock/tom cruise shit. but at home.

i am not really that attractive, but i don't have that many image issues that i worry about except for the idea of new people seeing me naked. which i don't know why i worry about seeing as i'm in a commited relationship.

also, xpost, buff is easier than skinny for a lot of people

Don't buff, Alba! Stay away from the whey! Muscles are icky, much better as you are.

I was going to join a netball club to keep fit but it clashes with University Challenge, so I haven't. : (

but what is with people who metabolize food very efficiently (i assume?)...
one of my co-workers is this tiny little man whose body is very small in a
lean looking way. yet, he doesn't exercise, and commonly eats two or three chili
dogs or cheeseburgers and fries for lunch, and eats rich food that i tease will
give him gout for dinner.

will he still probably die a fat man's death? even if in a skinny body?

http://www.sport-tiedje.de/weidernahrung/weidercrashweight_det.jpg

But it was you who said in the pub last night that I could do with filling our a bit! Maybe you just meant so that I could throttle you more effectively/amusingly.

still would prefer to be a few kilos heavier. hence the press-ups etc to give tone/curvage to the othersize slight profile.

ANYWAY, obviously for weight-gain skipping meals is not the best strategy PERHAPS but working a pint or whatever of the whey-protein-thing into your diet at certain points during the day in addition to regular diet (or augmented six-meals-a-day diet of grilled fish or egg yolks or whatever strength athletes and people like that eat) will work wonders. Which is maybe a bit obvious, sorry. If you do have an exercise/weights regime, drinking it straight after a work out is supposedly the way to maximalise efficiency etc etc.

But I should double-check this because it is all half-remembered stuff, I am absolutely the least-qualified person in the world to talk about this in pretend-knowledgeable way.

I have grown a small pot belly recently, through having eaten lots of food, and I'm quite proud of it.

I lost the weight pretty quickly, though - the stone I'd gotten went in like a week, which was grim. I've pretty much kept the tone, for what that's worth when nobody expects you to have it.

You mean people don't notice it until you take your shirt off?

Yoga, canoeing trips, scuba diving, dancing lessons, shooting lessons... can have a similar effect. The aim is not to Become Some Body - and lots of those things don't need you to have heaps of muscles or anything - but to acquire a new physical skill which you can take pride in.

Honestly, I don't expect my current feeling to last for the rest of my life, but hopefully it will last long enough for me to get set to try something else.

I've never felt attractive, I've never be given a reason to feel so (I'm talking school here), yet I don't think it really affects me at a deeper level...You've got to learn to like yourself, the exterior isn't all we are (sorry, this is getting hippyish). Anyhow Mitch, I've seen your picture, you don't seem unattractive, though I guess me saying this won't make a difference, you're a good fellow and I wish you well. Maybe, just concentrate on something you can control, like your studies or some sort of creative project, eat sensibly, go for walks...

1) Shell out for Propecia each month and wait one to two years to see a result.
2) Get a hair transplant procedure. Big bucks, and if it doesn't done exactly right it looks ridiculous.
3) Do the spiky-bleach-blonde-Ceasar/Eminem-haircut 'til there's nothing left.

OR

4) Just shave the damn hair off and be done with it.

I went with option 4, and was prepared to hate the results. Guess what? I look younger and feel exponentially better about my whole appearance.

*insert Ned's face glued onto an early '90s Michael Bolton album cover*

I have a belly too. I understand it's my dad's mom's fault (r.i.p.) as she was this very skinny, tall lady (6'1 in her prime), but always had a belly. Of course, she also had 3 kids. um... But almost everyone has a belly poochin' out. In fact, it's kind of gross when people have NO belly because their skin looks stretched, or at least that's what I tell myself.

But anyway, if you ever want to do anything exercise related, let me know.

Okay the hairs going on the front but getting it cut very short makes it looks alot better, shaving it off has been tried not to sure about the results.

Frightening thought.

Hey so I was lurking on the "no boys in the room!!!" thread, and saw the discussion about people saying "Have you lost weight?" as a substitute for "You look good!" (i.e., when no actual weight was lost).

I wonder if part of that's because an observation of weight loss feels objective or analytic, thereby softening what might otherwise be seen as a too-open judgment of someone's appearance. Like, we've been trained not to directly comment on others' appearance, so we feel the need to couch it in different terms. And weight loss being something that one *accomplishes*, this feels safer to commend someone for: it has the whiff of a mere congratulatory remark.

Bumping this b/c I spent like half an hour on that post.

bump it tomorrow during the work day

http://www.mavisbeacon.com/

my self-image re my body is always gonna suck because i've been mentally damaged from years of negative external forces (thanks mom, thanks television). i've gone up and down over the years but i'm resigned to a certain way of thinking about myself. at least i'm not exceptionally narcissistic.

i started going back to the gym again recently after some time away and it felt great! i'm strong and have good stamina so i didn't feel like i wanted to die afterward. :-)

bump it tomorrow during the work day

I know, I just thought I'd forget.

i'm resigned to a certain way of thinking about myself

how does the way you think about yourself physically affect the way you think about yourself intellectually/emotionally/as a whole?

certainly no one needs anything, let alone mom and television, to pull out any of the legs that hold us up.

ha first thing i thought when i saw your wdyll pic jaymc was that you look like you lost weight

Just get a bit drunk