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People Share The Best Examples Of 'It's Expensive To Be Poor'

People Share The Best Examples Of 'It's Expensive To Be Poor'
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It's actually really ridiculously expensive to be poor - an unfortunate truth that a lot of people are learning firsthand this year. There are even some among us who are too poor to be able to afford to work.

We know, it sounds like a complete contradiction; but it's a reality for a shockingly large number of people.


One Reddit user asked:

What's your example of "it's expensive to be poor"?

and yeah ... poverty is complicated.

Fees On Fees On Fees

Overdraft fees. Oh, you ran out of money? We'll just charge you more then!

- VonSnapp

My bank just switched our free checking to an account with a monthly fee. $7.00 a month if your account goes under $10. So if it goes under $10 they basically just help themselves to your remaining balance? It really chaps my behind.

- ComprehensiveSet902

While charging overdraft fees they also want to charge you fees for your debit payments failing - each one. But they failed cause the bank processed them started with the biggest payment instead of the order you spent and each fee lowers your balance till the last one also fails.

- MyPacman

NSF fees too. Juggling bills becomes hazardous. If you guess wrong, or lose track, or have a sudden emergency, or someone cashes a check you thought they'd already done, or an automatic withdrawal (which got me the most frequently). The payment gets refused, which, sure, if the money's not there of course the bill isn't paid. But then the company charges you an NSF fee, and so does the bank, and the bill you already weren't able to pay just got 50-100$ more expensive.

- Mjolinirsbear

The Differences

In the past 10 years, I've gone from borderline poverty to being upper middle class. Here are some of the differences:

- An overdraft/late fee could be as much as 10% of my savings account. Now it's a drop in a bucket, and having white collar job, means I know how to effectively negotiate to have fees waived.

- When you're broke you can only afford cheap products that break easily, Now I buy quality products that are built to last for years.


- Expensive dinners are completely out of the question when you're broke. Now I frequently eat great (And healthy!) meals because my job pays for lunches and dinners.

- When I was broke I had to purchase expensive equipment to learn my craft so that I could get a job. Now I my job pays me to use my equipment.

- Broke people have to pay for an expensive education to get a good job. Many people with good jobs are encouraged to take classes at the expense of the employer.

- People with good paying jobs can be 10 minutes late for work without fear that they will lose their job. If I have a good excuse, like my car breaks down, I can literally not show up for work for the day, get paid, and receive a heartfelt message from colleges offering support.


- Things like expensive booze and other luxury items are something you want when you are poor. When you work a high paying job, these sort of things are frequently gifted to you from bosses/co-workers and sometimes it becomes a hassle of trying to get rid of nice things you don't need (I end up giving away, re-gifting or donating a lot of stuff).

- When you are broke, it's hard to find a good paying job. When you have a good paying job, you are seen as a valuable and you will receive multiple job offers.

A few things that are new to me that I find weird about having money:

- Expensive clothes fall apart so fast, like the fabric will start to dull after a 3rd wash. I had an Old Navy shirt that easily lasted 20 years and never faded.

- Expensive things take up so much time and can be such a hassle to care for. Like fountain pens, nice wooden kitchen utensils, Linen place settings, etc.

- -CoreyJ-

Shoes

Shoes.

Better shoes last longer before they need to be replaced. But they cost to much for me to afford them, leaving me with sub-par shoes that need to be replaced more often.

It's not easy staying healthy on a tiny budget. I stay fat. Shoes wear out. It's expensive for my body.

- [Reddit]


Definitely true irl. I wear duty boots every shift I work. When I was new I couldn't afford anything other than a cheap pair of $80 boots. My feet froze in the winter, sweated in the summer, and they weren't really waterproof. That first pair lasted me about 10 months, and that was a stretch.

I managed to scrimp and save for a $300 pair of Danners and that pair lasted me nearly a decade, kept my feet warm in the winter, didn't make them sweat much in the summer, and kept my feet dry in standing water up to about 6" deep. When they wore out, I sent them back to Danner to be refurbished about about $120 and have gotten another 7 years and counting out of them.

- Obwyn

Rent

Housing. The longer you commit to stay, the lower your monthly price. But poor people don't always know where they'll be in a few months time, especially these days.

- SPP_TheChoiceForMe

Oh man, got a really good look at that recently. Me and my fiancee wanted to move to a new house, and we didn't know how long it would take to sell the old one and find one we liked, so we rented an apartment in the meantime.


They had really flexible leases, with durations from 6-15 months, different prices for the same apartment.

We calculated the cost of breaking the lease at different times together with the cost of each lease, and found that even if we moved at exactly 6 months, it would be cheaper to sign a 15 month lease and pay the penalty than to sign a 6 month lease.

Moving at pretty much any point would be cheapest to sign the 15 month lease and break it (I think at 10 months, it would be very slightly cheaper to have signed a 10 month lease). Funnily enough, we ended up moving after 6 months, but we still made the cheaper choice with the 15 month lease.

- ka36

The Breakdown

car trouble vintage GIFGiphy

Not being able to afford routine car maintenance and then having to shell out thousands when it breaks down

- Grass-Content

Nothing like having to push your car off an intersection because it suddenly died and won't restart, never mind if you were on your way to school, work or similar. It's a great way to lose your job.

- MyPacman

This. THIS! THIS THIS THIS. And having a flat tire every other week because you can't afford new ones. Spending ten bucks a pop to have your old tires patched when a new one (for your cheap little clunker car) costs $85 but you can't afford that because you've spent ten bucks a week for the last six months getting patches.

- Pokey1984

Laundry

Coin laundry :(

- camriver

I'm feeling this one.

My washing machine went kerplooey two weeks ago. I finally broke down and went to the only laundromat in my rural county.

$4.25 to wash each load, $1.75 to dry each load. I spent twenty bucks doing three loads of laundry.

That's $480 a year to load up my stuff and take it to a communal laundromat, during a pandemic. Holy f*ck I miss my washing machine.

- SuperTurnip

Or to put it another way, and really drive home the "expensive to be poor" aspect, in a year you'll have spent enough money to buy a brand new washing machine, without getting the washing machine.

And that's not counting the time spent there. At home you can multitask while the laundry's going.

- CommodoreBelmont

Can't Afford Health

So I'm in the US and it's "Open Enrollment" I've been looking at health insurance plans for a few weeks now. Here's my best option, as a 36-year-old single white woman with no health problems.

$235 per month (discount because I'm low-income) premium. $85 co-pay for normal doctor's visit. $145 if the doctor treats something in-office. I pay any in-office supplies that were used out of pocket. $13,000 deductible. Insurance pays 40% of hospital visits and overnight stays. Separate $7000 deductible for prescriptions. Zero dental or vision care.

Guys, I make between $800 and $900 per month. That's a quarter of my income as a premium alone. Which would be great, except if I pay the premium, I don't have any money left over for the co-pay, so I literally can't afford to both buy the policy and use it.


When I absolutely have to see a doctor I drive a couple hours to a clinic that offers huge discounts for people who self-pay. They are actually a god-send for things like sinus infections and strep throat. I had pneumonia a couple of years ago and not only did they give me the "self pay discount," making my office visit just $35, but they also found "office samples" of an albuterol inhaler and steroids, meaning all I had to buy was an antibiotic from the walmart $4 list.

I also drive an hour and a half to a Planned Parenthood clinic for my annual exam and things like that. They charge on a "pay what you can" scale. I figure out how to get by, mostly. But if anything big ever goes wrong or I develop a chronic health problem in the future, I'm gonna be so screwed it's not even funny.

I really need an eye exam as my glasses are giving me headaches, which means my prescription has changed again. And forget getting my teeth fixed, which is actually my biggest problem right now. There's no help for things like that. The healthcare situation just sucks.

- Pokey1984

Freebies For The Rich?

An inverse example is all the things rich/well-paid people get for free:

paid vacation days, gym/pool in your building, company cell phone allowance, commute reimbursement, retirement match and investing advice, paid lunches and travel, education opportunities, ability to participate in investment opportunities, references to even more highly paid jobs, etc etc.

- BurtReebus

It is definitely frustrating when I hear about rich celebrities getting giftbags with tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in them. That is just silly.

- AbandonAllHope

Food

Food.

Everyone always argues "it's cheaper to eat healthy! Buy X, Y, Z in bulk, check A, B, and C specialty grocery stores, meal prep and freeze for the week, grow your own produce!" But these sorts of solutions really require a base level of wealth to begin with. Not a ton of wealth. If you're lower-middle class but still ending up in the red because you eat out too much, you can probably (probably) use these tips to cut your food budget enough to make a difference. But to do these things you need:


  • to live in a place with easy access to many different places to buy food (conventional groceries, discount groceries, big box stores, farmers markets, ethnic groceries, and bulk retailers)
  • a car, or very, very reliable public transportation and strong arms
  • time to travel to all these places to bargain hunt
  • a kitchen that has all the appliances to cook and store these items, and space for bulk foods in both a pantry and freezer
  • time to prepare these foods daily, or meal prep
  • the money to buy these things up front in bulk
  • the money to pay for a bulk shopping membership up front
  • the space, materials, and time to grow a significant amount of food

  • When you live in a food desert, like many inner cities and rural areas, pick-and-choose grocery shopping is not an option. When you don't have a car or live a very short distance from the store, buying more than an armful of groceries is not an option. When you work multiple jobs to pay rent, spending many hours per week on shipping or food prep isn't an option. When you live in an efficiency apartment, complex cooking and infinite food storage isn't an option. When you don't have a surplus of money this very minute, buying in bulk isn't an option. When you live in an apartment, or a desert, or an urban house with a concrete backyard, or a place that is a snowy tundra 6 months out of the year, growing a garden isn't an option.

    Plus, everyone gives this advice assuming a single adult or a two-adult, no kids household. But not everyone eating dollar menu and ramen noodles is a broke single college kid in a dorm blowing their allowance on beer then crying poverty. Children complicate all of this even further. So people end up buying dollar menu because it's Tuesday, payday is Friday, and they quite literally have $10 to their names to feed themselves and their kids. They could buy apples, but apples won't keep the the hunger pains away.

    - TerribleAttitude

    Wholesale

    I used to think that Costco was good for bulk sales

    My son founded a food charity and we started applying for business licenses. Guy mentioned a wholesaler to me.

    My son and I went to the wholesaler and he had 200lb pallets of pork shoulder for pulled pork- which my son needs- for $140! 200 lbs of food, which my son uses to feed like 500 homeless people- for $140.

    Or like 1000 chicken legs in cases for $0.29 per lb. something like $80 for 1000 chicken legs.

    Can you imagine if you were dead broke and spent $80 on 1000 chicken legs- you could eat for 6 months. Working with real food wholesalers is so much crazier than anything I expected.


    It's the set up for all of that - the ability to move pallets, have a huge deep freezer that all has to be there first. You're not going to have that if you're poor.

    I remember there were these cabbages, like $20 for 40 cabbages. A guy was buying like 80 cabbages to make cole slaw for his restaurant. He could spin that into profit and make money.

    I just felt like buying them and giving them to poor families. People have no idea how much more they're really paying than what food actually costs.

    - BaseballCollector


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    People Reveal The Weirdest Thing About Themselves

    Reddit user Isitjustmedownhere asked: 'Give an example; how weird are you really?'

    Let's get one thing straight: no one is normal. We're all weird in our own ways, and that is actually normal.

    Of course, that doesn't mean we don't all have that one strange trait or quirk that outweighs all the other weirdness we possess.

    For me, it's the fact that I'm almost 30 years old, and I still have an imaginary friend. Her name is Sarah, she has red hair and green eyes, and I strongly believe that, since I lived in India when I created her and there were no actual people with red hair around, she was based on Daphne Blake from Scooby-Doo.

    I also didn't know the name Sarah when I created her, so that came later. I know she's not really there, hence the term 'imaginary friend,' but she's kind of always been around. We all have conversations in our heads; mine are with Sarah. She keeps me on task and efficient.

    My mom thinks I'm crazy that I still have an imaginary friend, and writing about her like this makes me think I may actually be crazy, but I don't mind. As I said, we're all weird, and we all have that one trait that outweighs all the other weirdness.

    Redditors know this all too well and are eager to share their weird traits.

    It all started when Redditor Isitjustmedownhere asked:

    "Give an example; how weird are you really?"

    Monsters Under My Bed

    "My bed doesn't touch any wall."

    "Edit: I guess i should clarify im not rich."

    – Practical_Eye_3600

    "Gosh the monsters can get you from any angle then."

    – bikergirlr7

    "At first I thought this was a flex on how big your bedroom is, but then I realized you're just a psycho 😁"

    – zenOFiniquity8

    Can You See Why?

    "I bought one of those super-powerful fans to dry a basement carpet. Afterwards, I realized that it can point straight up and that it would be amazing to use on myself post-shower. Now I squeegee my body with my hands, step out of the shower and get blasted by a wide jet of room-temp air. I barely use my towel at all. Wife thinks I'm weird."

    – KingBooRadley

    Remember

    "In 1990 when I was 8 years old and bored on a field trip, I saw a black Oldsmobile Cutlass driving down the street on a hot day to where you could see that mirage like distortion from the heat on the road. I took a “snapshot” by blinking my eyes and told myself “I wonder how long I can remember this image” ….well."

    – AquamarineCheetah

    "Even before smartphones, I always take "snapshots" by blinking my eyes hoping I'll remember every detail so I can draw it when I get home. Unfortunately, I may have taken so much snapshots that I can no longer remember every detail I want to draw."

    "Makes me think my "memory is full.""

    – Reasonable-Pirate902

    Same, Same

    "I have eaten the same lunch every day for the past 4 years and I'm not bored yet."

    – OhhGoood

    "How f**king big was this lunch when you started?"

    – notmyrealnam3

    Not Sure Who Was Weirder

    "Had a line cook that worked for us for 6 months never said much. My sous chef once told him with no context, "Baw wit da baw daw bang daw bang diggy diggy." The guy smiled, left, and never came back."

    – Frostygrunt

    Imagination

    "I pace around my house for hours listening to music imagining that I have done all the things I simply lack the brain capacity to do, or in some really bizarre scenarios, I can really get immersed in these imaginations sometimes I don't know if this is some form of schizophrenia or what."

    – RandomSharinganUser

    "I do the same exact thing, sometimes for hours. When I was young it would be a ridiculous amount of time and many years later it’s sort of trickled off into almost nothing (almost). It’s weird but I just thought it’s how my brain processes sh*t."

    – Kolkeia

    If Only

    "Even as an adult I still think that if you are in a car that goes over a cliff; and right as you are about to hit the ground if you jump up you can avoid the damage and will land safely. I know I'm wrong. You shut up. I'm not crying."

    – ShotCompetition2593

    Pet Food

    "As a kid I would snack on my dog's Milkbones."

    – drummerskillit

    "Haha, I have a clear memory of myself doing this as well. I was around 3 y/o. Needless to say no one was supervising me."

    – Isitjustmedownhere

    "When I was younger, one of my responsibilities was to feed the pet fish every day. Instead, I would hide under the futon in the spare bedroom and eat the fish food."

    – -GateKeep-

    My Favorite Subject

    "I'm autistic and have always had a thing for insects. My neurotypical best friend and I used to hang out at this local bar to talk to girls, back in the late 90s. One time he claimed that my tendency to circle conversations back to insects was hurting my game. The next time we went to that bar (with a few other friends), he turned and said sternly "No talking about bugs. Or space, or statistics or other bullsh*t but mainly no bugs." I felt like he was losing his mind over nothing."

    "It was summer, the bar had its windows open. Our group hit it off with a group of young ladies, We were all chatting and having a good time. I was talking to one of these girls, my buddy was behind her facing away from me talking to a few other people."

    "A cloudless sulphur flies in and lands on little thing that holds coasters."

    "Cue Jordan Peele sweating gif."

    "The girl notices my tension, and asks if I am looking at the leaf. "Actually, that's a lepidoptera called..." I looked at the back of my friend's head, he wasn't looking, "I mean a butterfly..." I poked it and it spread its wings the girl says "oh that's a BUG?!" and I still remember my friend turning around slowly to look at me with chastisement. The ONE thing he told me not to do."

    "I was 21, and was completely not aware that I already had a rep for being an oddball. It got worse from there."

    – Phormicidae

    *Teeth Chatter*

    "I bite ice cream sometimes."

    RedditbOiiiiiiiiii

    "That's how I am with popsicles. My wife shudders every single time."

    monobarreller

    Never Speak Of This

    "I put ice in my milk."

    – GTFOakaFOD

    "You should keep that kind of thing to yourself. Even when asked."

    – We-R-Doomed

    "There's some disturbing sh*t in this thread, but this one takes the cake."

    – RatonaMuffin

    More Than Super Hearing

    "I can hear the television while it's on mute."

    – Tira13e

    "What does it say to you, child?"

    – Mama_Skip

    Yikes!

    "I put mustard on my omelettes."

    – Deleted User

    "Oh."

    – NotCrustOr-filling

    Evened Up

    "Whenever I say a word and feel like I used a half of my mouth more than the other half, I have to even it out by saying the word again using the other half of my mouth more. If I don't do it correctly, that can go on forever until I feel it's ok."

    "I do it silently so I don't creep people out."

    – LesPaltaX

    "That sounds like a symptom of OCD (I have it myself). Some people with OCD feel like certain actions have to be balanced (like counting or making sure physical movements are even). You should find a therapist who specializes in OCD, because they can help you."

    – MoonlightKayla

    I totally have the same need for things to be balanced! Guess I'm weird and a little OCD!

    Close up face of a woman in bed, staring into the camera
    Photo by Jen Theodore

    Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.

    Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?

    But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.

    It would be so great to be sure there is something else.

    But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.

    Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:

    "Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"

    Sensations

    Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy

    "My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."

    PeachesnPain

    Recovery

    "I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."

    "My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."

    "It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."

    good_golly99

    Take Me Back

    "Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."

    "I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."

    rayrayrayray

    Free

    The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy

    "I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."

    TooReDTooHigh

    This is why I hate surgery.

    You just never know.

    Shocked

    Giphy

    "More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."

    Admirable_Buyer6528

    The SOB

    "Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."

    "Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”

    1-cupcake-at-a-time

    Colors

    "My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"

    Hannah_LL7

    "I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"

    huntokarrr

    The Fog

    "I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."

    "I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."

    Fluffy-Hotel-5184

    Through the Walls

    "My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."

    "She's quite alive and well today."

    Hot-Refrigerator6583

    Well let's all be happy to be alive.

    It seems to be all we have.

    Man's waist line
    Santhosh Vaithiyanathan/Unsplash

    Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.

    The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.

    Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.

    Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:

    "People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"

    Redditors didn't see these coming.

    Shiver Me Timbers

    "I’m always cold now!"

    – Telrom_1

    "I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."

    – r7ndom

    "140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."

    – mr_remy

    Drawing Concern

    "I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."

    – dee-fondy

    "Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"

    "Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."

    – LizardofDeath

    Unleashing Insults

    "I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”

    "It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."

    – alanamablamaspama

    Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight

    "The loose skin is a bit unexpected."

    – KeltarCentauri

    "I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."

    – KatMagic1977

    "It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."

    – Jaew96

    These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.

    Shopping

    "I can buy clothes in any store I want."

    – WaySavvyD

    "When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."

    – ganache98012

    No More Symptoms

    "Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."

    – colleennicole93

    Expanding Capabilities

    "I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."

    – Ramblonius

    People Change Their Tune

    "How much nicer people are to you."

    "My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"

    – LiZZygsu

    "Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"

    "And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"

    – awholedamngarden

    It's gonna take some getting used to.

    Bones Everywhere

    "Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."

    – Princess-Pancake-97

    "I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."

    – bekastrange

    Knee Pillow

    "Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."

    – snic2030

    "I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."

    – Strongbad23

    More Mobility

    "I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."

    "Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."

    – dma1965

    People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.

    But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.

    That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.