Thin = happy, right?
Well, not by itself. You've made big changes and worked hard to reach that magic, healthy number: your goal weight! But there's no finish line, says Michelle Vicari, who's kept off the 158 pounds she shed with the help of gastric bypass surgery in 2006. "No balloons fall from the sky," she says. "In fact, you wake up the next day to more of the same."
Lisa Durant lost 115 pounds using Weight Watchers and My Fitness Pal. But when she got to the "after weight loss" part, she felt lost.
"I spent so much of my life with 'lose weight' as my primary goal. I had no idea what to do with myself once that was accomplished," she says.
So she wrote about it in a searingly honest blog post called "The 'After' Myth," which went viral. "Losing weight does not mean you no longer struggle with your weight; I wish I had truly understood that. I still struggle with food. I still struggle with me," she wrote.
That doesn't mean it's not worth it -- it is. But if what Durant says is true, there's no "after," then what does the next phase look like?
You're Still You
Everyone, small or large, is dealing with challenges of some sort. If you've been focused on just the weight, once it's gone, the other issues will surface.
Rosalia O'Donoghue, a teacher from East Stroudsburg, PA, dropped 103 pounds with diet and exercise. "I really thought I'd have more self-confidence after," she says, but "being thin didn't make me an outgoing person."
Sometimes people do feel let down or sad once they've lost weight. "They realize that their lives still aren't perfect," says Deborah Beck Busis, a diet program coordinator at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy. "Solving that one [problem] doesn't solve the rest."
Think of some healthy-weight people you know, she suggests, and ask yourself, "Do they have perfect lives?" The honest answer is "No."
"If weight were the only thing that determined our happiness, it would be a simpler world," Durant says.
Luckily, perfection isn't required -- from your body or any other part of your life. If you find it hard to handle what comes up, try working with a therapist or counselor.