I was talking to a colleague who is naturally thin and she had commented that she noticed I was losing weight which of course I downplayed and thanked her.

Today she said she was walking with another female colleague yesterday and saw me on the street walking to the subway and that the other woman who I barely knew commented that she noticed I lost weight. All of this was very nice and positive but I find it uncomfortable that people would be talking about me. I spent so much of my life just trying to blend in and not be noticed.

This all is positive and I'm in no way offended. Of course someone would notice a loss of 70lbs. But I am surprised and my reaction and I wanted to hear from others if they experienced this.

I downplay compliments all the time. They make me feel very uncomfortable be even though I have lost some weight it is still not where I want to be. I am great full but it's a self conscious thing. On day a coleagu of mine just said to me "shut up and take the dam complement" with sarcasm of course. I respect her because she has lost weight as well and knows what I am going through.

I think that often we find ourselves embarrassed by our size, and we don't want anyone to notice us or point out how big we are or how we look. We know how we look we know we are large and we don't need or want anyone to notice us so we try to make ourselves small.

Then we have surgery...and we begin to get smaller literally...and at the same time out in the real world we seem to get larger and people who we thought did not notice us before are not only noticing us but making comments about us and be they positive or negative we might feel just as embarrassed. After all WLS still has that stigma to it that Obesity does right?

Aren't we all taking the "easy" way out of our fat suit by having WLS?!

No we aren't and as time goes on we understand that there is nothing "easy" about our journey. Hopefully through the process we begin to respect ourselves for our efforts, and we being to respect the self that was obese, and the self that endured testing, pre-op diets and surgery and the self that is on the road to and/or recovering from obesity every single day.

We begin to lift our head higher and higher and as we lift our heads our eyes are finally able to meet the eyes of others with confidence because we know who we are and we love ourselves for who we are no matter what numbers on the scale no matter what size our clothes or the shape of our body we become larger than life filled with gratitude and appreciation for ourselves so we lift our heads and say Thank you. Thank you not for noticing my weight loss, but for noticing "me" and acknowledging my journey and that of countless others.