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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Eleanor Gordon-Smith

I lost weight and now people treat me better. How do I reconcile this?

A young woman touching her hair in front of a mirror
‘Leaning into the parts of your life that aren’t filtered through appearance might make it easier to tolerate the parts that are,’ Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. Painting: Young girl looking at herself in a mirror by Carl Thomsen, 1894. Illustration: Artepics/Alamy

I am a woman who has been fat since I was about eight; I am now in my early 50s. I have been on Ozempic for almost two years. I have lost almost 50 kilos and can now do a whole lot of things that I wasn’t physically able to do before, which is great. But people treat me differently now. I had my work review and I am doing less but got feedback about how much more I am doing. I have been asked if I am looking to date, and even if I am thinking of having a child, both questions I never was asked when I was bigger. I didn’t think people treated me badly before, and still don’t, but now I am seeing that there is a difference. It is not comfortable for me. I am not at risk of putting the weight back on but how do I navigate the difference in how people are treating me?

Eleanor says: A lot of people notice this after losing lots of weight. You get spoken to in a different key. People turn on a switch you didn’t know they had. For some people this feels great. For others it’s unnerving: to feel so newly visible and yet somehow so unseen.

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