A data point, though my situation is not even about weight: I used to be skinny fat in my mid-twenties until mid-thirties - so basically still kind of slim but some belly fat and not much muscles. Kind of average, unremarkable.

After a breakup I started being more active again, I went bouldering once a week and gradually got into shape and then really athletic after about 2 years when I started going twice a week. My total weight didn't change at all. I dress just as good as before and have the same overall style. Of course most clothes simply look better on me, now that I'm more in shape. Same good job that I still like. I do go out a bit more. But overall I would say I really didn't change anything except getting more attractive from putting on muscles and losing fat.

It made a hell of a difference for dating. Before I felt mostly invisible but since then got approached in bars all the time, which rarely happened before. After some time I got way more confident - but when this stated I sure wasn't yet. Some woman even told me into the face that I lacked confidence after they approached me and realized I don't have the personality and/or confidence matching my appearance. They certainly only approached me because of my appearance.

The people only loosing weight are probably held back by other things. If they changed everything but their weight they likely wouldn't have more success either. I would say I had most things figured out already before and It seems I was held back only by having an average build. Just getting fit absolutely made the difference for me.

I think there are too many variables to really control for well on this one. Obviously someone who does what your friend did is going to have many factors changing how people interact with them and it will accumulate into and even larger total effect.

I lost 100lbs very rapidly. The difference in attention and little social things was noticeable almost immediately. Same style of dress, moderately kept hair, but otherwise decent personal care on both sides of the weight loss.

What is interesting though to me is that I hit my goal weight right around the time some major life events happened and I pretty much was operating at the lowest self confidence levels I ever had in my life. I was less social and much more withdrawn than before.

I still would notice the “second glances” from folks I never got before, and even friendly greetings etc that were a bit weird at first to me.

I don’t think you can really translate these changes into dating success or whatnot without other life changes though. They just Lower the difficulty level - you still need to put the work in.

> He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult.

I think the problem many __men__ have with that is that an "appropriate" wardrobe looks more uniform and less individualized, basically boring.

> I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight.

This feels like it could be a correlation vs causation thing. Its a lot easier to put effort in if you see it getting results. Is it that they suddenly put effort in triggering all this or is it the weighg loss made the investment of putting effort in return results where previously you'd need a much higher level of effort to see results making it only seem worth it after the weight loss?

Or is it the weight loss resulted in higher self confidence giving all sorts of knock on effects.

I think its really hard to tease apart cause and effect here. Would the same changes be possible without the weight loss or have the same results is kind of a hard question to answer.

>For a while he tried to explain it all by his weight loss alone, but over time he realized it was an overall change in everything about the way he carried himself and presented himself to the world.

All of what you're saying is just looks. Clothes, posture, etc. all matter and we all know some exceptions to the rule, but people make clothes look good and not so much the other way around.

>Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them.

Not everyone looks better if they slim down. And if you do it the wrong way, or don't update your clothes to not be baggy, or just plain have excessive expectations, it's going to be disappointing. Losing weight just gets you to the baseline of where you might not make people want to look away or find reasons to not like you. If you're short, then you'll still be short after losing weight. If you're ugly in the face, you'll still be ugly, if not more ugly. I know you're talking about men because even overweight women have lots of options. Dating is also nearly impossible for average men now. You shouldn't assume that weight doesn't make a huge difference based on a few examples of guys who can't get dates. Think of it more like not being fat is to make others not immediately blow you off for that one reason.

I have a lot of respect for folks that successfully lose a great deal of weight. If I know someone did that, my estimation of them generally goes up, several notches. I'm no stranger to quitting stuff, but significant weight loss is still terrifying to me. I could benefit from losing 20-30 lbs, myself, and it's not been easy. Success has been ... elusive.

Maybe it's different, these days, with GLP-1 drugs (I have always called it "Gila Lizard Poison" in my head), but it takes serious discipline and grit to lose the weight, and keep it off.

That generally comes from massive personal change; both internal, and external. Quite difficult.

Both can be true: A person’s state of mind is affected by people around them.

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I remember reading some study that (in men) height compared to your peers at 16-19 highly correlates with confidence.

Ive seen the opposite in some people.

I know a ~55ish year old lady who is beautiful, but looks 55. I see her adjusting to her new reality and its painful. I imagine she used to be able to get away with being mean and sarcastic because she was so hot.

Now it just causes office fights. "I wont work with X" is something Ive heard.

The interesting part is that I originally only worked with her on the phone, so I always thought she was mean... Then I saw her in person and everything clicked.

I dress like a hobo so that everyone fucks off and nobody wants anything from me. Sometimes I go somewhere and people walk away, giving me personal space. It's amazing.

Same here. Afterwards I got more fat again, and again I don't notice a difference in how people threat me.

The problem with this stance is that the alternative (making people feel bad) will exacerbate the problem by contributing to feelings of hopelessness and ostracism.

The first prerequisite for making difficult changes is a supportive environment - not a judgmental one.

I'm also quite anti "body positivity" as it is usually espoused online, especially in relation to weight, which is by far the main focus of the movement. It feels quite self-destructive, you accept that your weight is unchangeable (even though I would say that in 75% of cases, and probably even more, it definitely isn't), and try to feel "proud" of it, even though there are piles upon piles of quite definitive research which proves that being overweight is horrible for your health, and you essentially start preventing your improvement, by choice this time. You start eating more because now you decide that you actually like being fat, now thinking that that's who you are and always will be, and you should feel proud of yourself (which is quite silly all in itself), and you just end up in a worse state than before. Body positivity will not help you get healthier.

But, we also shouldn't forget that the idea of body positivity didn't just pop up out of a vacuum, it's inherently a reaction to the culture. And here I disagree with you, if your peers and society in general just slightly nudges you to be healthy then that'd be okay, but that's not really what happens from my experience. I used to be quite overweight, especially while I was a teenager, and it was tough. People didn't really treat me like a peer, everyone avoided me, and made fun of me constantly for my weight. Random people would tell me how fat I am (by the way, I wasn't even that fat, far from obese). And in the end it fucked me up quite badly, I had no self-respect, no confidence, and I didn't really want to live at that point. I managed to turn it around, I stopped eating properly for days, often just snacking on a package of nuts for an entire day, I would start passing out when standing up, I would exercise so much until I couldn't walk anymore, and in the end it helped! I lost a ton of weight, people stopped tormenting me, and I started to be perceived as quite normal. I even had my first real boyfriend, nobody even looked at me before. But I was still miserable and felt way more unhealthy, at that point I was underweight and eating one portion of rice a day, maybe with some vegetables. No snacks or sweets of any kind. What was essentially bullying did help me to lose weight, but it did not make me healthy. That's just my personal anecdote, I bet there are people who used people making fun of them to start a journey of healthy self-improvement and honestly that's great, but I know most overweight people can't take it well. This is kind of the issue with using shame to get people to improve (though most people who hate on fat people definitely do not have that as their goal), as that shame often messes with your mental health, and makes progress way harder. Many overweight people straight up turn to food to try to feel good, just making the issue way worse. Or they get better in a self-destructive way like me. Ironically I was definitely not healthier when I was underweight, I felt physically awful most of the time, but because I looked quite normal people thought I was more healthy! Weight isn't a perfect metric for health itself, and we shame overweight people disproportionately more than underweight people (especially for women, though I bet for men it's different).

And I think a lot of people who try to follow body positivity have a similar experience to mine (at least I think so, I don't really have proof!). They have endured a ton of meanness for their weight, and often started to hate themselves because of it, and then they turn to body positivity as a sort of "Fuck you!" to the people who made them feel subhuman for their weight. And it's obviously also not productive, it's just a heavy swing in the opposite direction. It's caused directly by the shame society places upon being overweight. It's just the opposite side of the same coin, where I believe both sides suck.

- "Being fat is morally bad!"

- "No, being fat is morally good actually!"

It's kind of tough to find a good solution for this, I think we all agree that we should try to prevent as many people being an unhealthy weight as possible for the good of the people themselves and society as a whole. And I 100% don't think we should encourage people to be and stay obese just because it's easier, but making fun of people who are overweight does not actually help them either. I don't really have a solution for this. I personally try to stay "body neutral" in a way, I try to avoid putting a moral value on unhealthy weight, and I try to view it as any other health issue. But as a society, I think it makes more sense to avoid bullying fat people in the hopes that they take the bullying and turn it into nice and productive improvement, and just make being a healthy weight easier, make healthy food the easiest food to access, put value in sports and walking, and just make it easier to live a healthy life by default.

Sorry if this response kind of turned into a sob story, I thought it was important to try to offer what my own experience was like when I was experiencing the pressure to lose weight, as I know a few people who were or still are overweight who felt similarly, even if it's not universal! :)

> I feel horrible about "body positivity" - making you feel good about an objective problem that's incapacitating and killing you is a huge problem.

It’s also a huge problem when people shame you for being fat. Some of it might be their fault but some of it not. Either way, I think it’s better to accept the body for what it is and work towards improving it and that’s what the “positivity” is. Shaming or judging someone is not a solution, it makes things worse. Yeah it can fuel motivation for some, and be quite detrimental to others - either way it’s nobody else’s business.

I went from being a scrawny guy in my teens, to a chubby/fat gamer in my late teens/early 20s, and then a fit athlete in my mid 20s. While I had envisioned much more interest from the ladies, my biggest surprise was how much nicer, kinder, and helpful random people were. And in a professional setting, co-workers and leaders just treated you more seriously - especially when it came to handing out leadership roles on projects etc.

Short guys have a vastly easier time getting jacked at least.

> I will forever be short

I'm 6'4" so not freakishly tall, but tall enough that people notice and for it to be a problem.

1. Im ever ones human ladder. About once a month someone will ask me to get something off a high shelf.

2. Shopping sucks. Wookie sized pants, Wookie sized shoes, Wookie sized shirts. It's a pain in the ass, I dont ever have anything trendy, and I pay more if they have it in my size.

3. Cars: There are some cars I just cant drive. For years I could walk into a Volvo dealer and NO ONE would talk to me. Why? Heigh notches at the doors and they just knew on my way in that I was never going to be able to be comfortable. And sports cars: forget it. In my youth a friend of mine got her father's Porsche: not a fun car to even sit in.

4. Little things, like flying, taking a nap on a couch, or laying in any sort of medical "bed" becomes a comedy sketch.

5. There are just a litany of things that arent fun that one would not think of: from wacking my head on every low hanging thing that jumps in front of me, to being "too big" for a lot of activities that I would otherwise enjoy (smaller sail boats as an example).

Would I trade height in for short, and the social stigma it comes with. Nope, you do have it worse in that regard. But the world isnt built for people outside the average...

Do you believe that they get an unadulterated perspective of both experiences? That they would be getting the experience of a woman rather than that of a trans woman?

I think there might be something here. I believe people flock to bigger, stronger and healthier people as some sort of evolutionary strategy for survival. If we were in a crisis and had to revert to tribes requiring everyone to pitch in to save humanity would you rather have the person who can resist impulses and keep a strict schedule (fit/healthy) or the person who looks like they lay around eating everything in sight. Using looks alone someone may assume the more healthy and fit person would be better to keep in their circle and thus prioritize being in their good graces.

I understand that it's not that simple, and someone's physical ability has nothing to do with intelligence in the real world. Unfortunately we're all subject to making split second judgements when interacting with strangers and as a result people don't think deeply about how that impacts those they deal with (or don't care).

We are evolutionarily programmed to like attractive people, which excludes most visibly overweight people.

Nope, it's cultural. If you look at cultures outside of your narrow window (in both time and space), you'll find that the perception of fatness has varied wildly over the millenia.

There's always somebody who has it worse. That doesn't mean their troubles don't matter.