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Ex- Neo Nazis And Skinheads Share The Moment They Realized They Were Horribly Wrong.

Racism and anti-semitism isn't something we're born with. It's the product of influences around us. The people who teach us to think in terms of "us" and "them." Media stereotypes that infuse us with prejudice. Insecurities that tempt us to put others down to feel better about ourselves.

Below are stories told by previously racist and anti-semitic people who have come out the other side and realized how horrible their viewpoint was.

They provide some insight into why people are actually swept into hate in the first place, and how it can be unlearned.


Thank you to all the people who shared their story. Source found at the bottom of this article.

1. Some backstory; I was in a hardcore racist organization from 15 to 20 years old. They recruited me off the school grounds, where I was vulnerable and easily persuadable. I had been in brawl with a few Arab immigrants and felt strong resentment against them and the organization really sounded like they made a difference, like they could stop "them" and others who would "destroy" the country ...this is truly what I thought.

I shaved my head and started to wear the clothes. We used to vandalize immigrant "hotels" (places they live just when they came to the country) and stores. We would regularly get into large fights with immigrant and communist/socialist groups.

I really truly hated those people. Everyday I did something to make their life difficult. Everyday something related to this ongoing"fight" happened. Such was life in the organization. I was content with the hate.

But then there was a moment where that all changed.

I was sitting on the bus on my way home one day. I was listening to some music in my headphones. It was a cloudless autumn day and everything was a healthy yellow and orange color and blue sky. At a stop an African American man and a young boy, maybe 5-6 years, got on. The man was tall and had bad clothes, he looked like he did not have much. They sat in front of me. I immediately became annoyed and started to think about how I hated them, immigrants coming to my country, I thought. He is poor and I pay taxes so he can get welfare. I thought about how his son is going to become a lousy bum and abuse white women. I started to get mad and decided to beat the man up, I was going to follow him when he got off the bus.

I saw him press the button and got ready at the next stop, and just before we stopped I was about to get up and the man turned to his son and said something in a heavy accent that I will never forget in my life.

"I love you my son, be good."

He then gave him a big, hard hug and the boy got off the bus alone. He waved good bye and sat back down, with his hands on his face. I just stared out the window where his son had been standing. My world view came crashing. He was just a father who wanted his son to be good, he loved him just like my father loved me. For some reason this changed everything for me. I know this is a very small thing but I started to think about how he wanted a better life for his son. He was a man that had changed everything for his family.

I sat on that bus for hours, it kept going around. I thought about how wrong it was to do the things I had done. I left that city the next day and started over. I am much happier now. I don't feel the hate in my heart every day anymore.

throwawayforgood12

2. This story is difficult to share. I am telling it at the request of my son.

I was raised as a racist. We lived in Southern California near a lot of racial minorities. My father was a union leader and I think his hatred of minorities came from his job, because the union was mostly white guys and they saw the minorities as trying to take their jobs. Whenever we would drive around and see them in the street, my dad would always point them out and talk rudely about them.

I grew up and had kids of my own. I was doing the same thing to them without realizing it. One day I came home and found my 14 year old daughter messing around with another kid who was Black. I threw him out of my house and beat him in my driveway.

The cops were called and I went to prison for assault. (Continued)


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In prison, I saw how ethnically divided everything was, but my counsellor was the one who basically shook me out of it. She helped me realize that continuing this hatred would really only hurt my own life.

I tried to avoid the racial groups in my prison. I stayed on my own and earned my GED. In my classes I met a lot of minorities who had also never graduated high school, like myself.

You know, I don't think there was really a single moment. It took a while for the subject to come up in my sessions, and I remember my counsellor asking me if I actually knew anyone of a different race, and I really didn't. I had always avoided them my whole life. So that was the start of my mind changing.

I listened to my counsellor and got to know them and realized what a hard life they had had. Before, I thought that they were just lazy and sold drugs for easy money. We actually went through a lot of the same struggles in our education.

When I got out, I started a construction company. I make an effort to hire both former cons and also minorities. I am trying to make up for the kind of things I have done in the past.

erhywerhwer5hw

3. I was a huge racist neo-nazi, and I was visiting the holocaust museum because, as I thought at the time, I wanted to see a "shrine" to how the "great and powerful" Aryans had killed Jewish people. Goodness I was such an idiot. I actually thought it would be fun. Then, I saw a little girl's dirty shoes from one of the gas chambers and I totally lost it. Something inside me snapped.

It just took that one moment for me to realize how stupid I was being.

Today, I couldn't be happier. I also happen to be married to an African-American woman and she is the love of my life.

projectimperfect

4. I was a skinhead since I was a kid..about 13. We ran in a gang and listened to both racial music and also non racial music. We were a bit mouthy etc about race, but the place we grew up in was totally white. There was one Chinese lass in our whole school of about 1,200 people. It didn't take me too long to realize that the "they took our jobs" talk was a load of crap, as there were no ethnic people in our town and no jobs. So I did grew out the explicit racist thing pretty quickly. Still, I harboured some deep-seeded beliefs about race, and usually thought of non-white people as "the others."

It was only really when I went to university that I actually encountered different races. I got to work beside Black and Asian guys, played football with Africans and Greeks and generally had a great time and met great people who I still keep in contact with. At that point, even though I didn't consider myself outwardly racist, I couldn't imagine me having Black friends, or going on holiday with a group that included several Muslims, which I did do a couple of years back.

There was a moment, for me, that turned everything around. (Continued)


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I went to live in another city, and was just myself..talk to anyone. One night I got a cab. The driver was a Muslim in full Pakistani cultural gear. I thought, people are people and have the right to do or dress how they want, but I don't think we are going to have a lot to talk about, not much common ground. I gave him my address and sat back to chill out.

Guy turns round, you a Scot (Scottish)? I said yeah mate. Then he starts chatting about when he first came to England in the 60s before the majority of Pakistanis, he used to get picked on at school. The other guys who were picked on were Scots and Irish. So they formed a gang of the eight of them. From that day they could go watch football, go out at night, and generally stick up for each other. He said, that was a long time ago, and I still get a shiver when I hear Scots or Irish accents. Now he teaches kids at the mosque not to dislike white Christians, and the best ways to mix and interact. We sat for 20 minutes when we arrived at my house and just shot the breeze.

I think that's when the last bit of bigotry left me.

Allydarvel

5. I moved to London when I was 6, from Poland. Back in Poland everyone in my community was racist to a degree, so I never really thought about it. I was raised with the (false!) knowledge that Muslims were the cancer of the Earth, Black people were just the poor, scum of society, and this was just accepted as a truth. Racism and Xenophobia in Eastern Europe is pretty bad.

Anyway, I moved when I was about 6, maybe 7, to a housing estate in South London, and what I saw disgusted me at the time. The amount of minorities around where I lived was huge. I remember just starting secondary school (age 11) and quickly falling into a group of friends who were primarily European, all of which shared my uneducated views. Like I said, I was poor and so were they, and so we put the blame onto anyone we could. It's just how it was. For the next couple years I was constantly in trouble for fighting and making trouble with other kids, and they were almost always black. I was a real jerk at that age. At 15 one of my friends was stabbed by a gang member, and I just felt angry and let down, blaming other minorities more than ever.

When I got a bit older, and I was studying at college (not university, the two years before university is called college or sixth form in the UK) there were no other Eastern European people in my class. I was one of 3 white people, the other two being English, the rest being black or Muslim. I felt isolated, until I was forced to sit next to a kid called Tristan. (Continued)


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He was involved in gangs, selling drugs ect, and for the first week I didn't talk to him at all, but I realized that actually, despite what I saw in him when I first met him, he seemed like a nice guy, so I started talking to him a bit, and I realized that all the things I'd been through getting caught up in violence, drugs and everything else that came with being a young poor impressionable Polish immigrant, I could relate to him. Anyway, he became one of my best friends, and my 18th birthday was coming up so I told him he should come along to it (parents got some money together and hired out the top room of a pub near where I live). Well, you can imagine what happened. My attitudes had changed a bit so I didn't think much of it at the time, but my old friends started getting violent towards him and his girlfriend who he'd brought. I saw all those people from a different light, and I haven't spoken to them since.

I'm in my second year at university, and I'm still trying to kill any pre-judgement of people that hangs over from how I used to think. If anything, the people I prejudge most are Eastern European.

throwaway08934

6. I never ran with a group of racists, but I harboured some really racist views for a long time, listened to RAC (basically Nazi punk rock) a lot, and frequented the Stormfront (White Nationalist Community) boards.

I realized eventually that being filled with hate all the time, was having a really negative impact on my life. at the same time that this thought crept into my head, I started working in the oil patch in Northern Canada. I ran into a lot of people who were extremely racist, who said things that even I didn't agree with, and even met some guys who identified themselves as neo nazis.

It struck me that there was one thing in common for each of these guys.

One of the common things these guys shared, is that they were extremely uneducated and, often, of little intelligence. Maybe someone knows some smart racists, I never have actually met one.

It got me thinking, about my future, about the kind of people I wanted to be around, about the people who I wouldn't have in my life if they knew I had become a full on racist, and about having a bunch of idiots as my sole peer group.

I really didn't want that, so I worked hard on changing. I threw out my Bully Boys c.ds, I went back to school, in a course with many different cultural groups, and realized that most of the time, these people that I hated were a lot more like me then they were different from me.

And towards the end of my course, I stopped at a car accident, where a car full of middle eastern people had flipped off a road. They had kids and the mom inside, and they were in pretty bad shape. (Continued)


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When I looked at them, and saw their eyes, and the fear and pain, I knew, that we are all people. I could have never left those people to die, I could have never hoped for a different outcome for those people than for people of my own skin color (this didn't happen right away, it took a few weeks from the accident). I still have racist thoughts pop into my head (driving in Vancouver can do that), but I catch them, and realize it is just a reactionary response, built up from years of habitual thinking, and they don't usually last all that long.

I work as an EMT now, and it has been the best thing for me. It is a constant reminder that we all have the same fears and the same response to emotional and physical pain. And it has worked, I no longer think of myself as racist there are things I'm still ignorant about, but I'm working on it. Nobody's perfect. It's all about the ability to step back and realize where that thought is coming from. It requires being willing to self-critique which is never an easy thing.

That family in the car ended up being o.k, the paramedics and fire crew arrived on scene and extricated them, they were hurt but no one died, and I got inspired to make my own positive mark on the world, and picked my career.

[deleted]

7. While I was not a KKK member, I used to support David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK who ran for Louisiana governor, because of his racist views. I had preconceived ideas about racial minorities, and often told people that I hated how Black people would walk in the middle of the road, and were quick to anger. Mostly, it just felt good to look down on someone else.

I later came out as gay but remained a racist. I changed my mind when I moved from Louisiana to California and took gender/race/sexuality study classes. Wow! That really turned things around for me. I realized I was racist because I didn't understand other cultures and motivations of minority groups. My new perspective was further enforced when I, too, became angry at stuff that happens to minorities and felt the need to act out.

Also, as a side note, I also read that the whole "walking in the middle of the road" thing for people in low-income neighborhoods is because humans are territorial, and people who live in the projects don't have true sense of ownership. So public things become their territory. Pretty interesting.

throwaway1112391


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8. In my Primary school years I was nearly suspended due to racist comments towards a person of color in my class. I was a brat (to put it mildly) as a kid. Probably down to coming from a rich family that became a broken, welfare needing home in the matter of months. Acting out, you know.

As I got older I got drawn into the whole racist / anti-Semitic view because of my grandparents. Farm folk from a village in Kent, England with about 15 inhabitants. Nice people seriously, they just hated Jewish people, and anyone from a differing racial or ethnic background. Ironically my Grandfather was born in Guernsey, the Channel Islands so wasn't actually English.

The Neo-Nazi idea was one I could relate to. I used to walk around with military boots and trousers, biker jacket and bandanna. I'd listen to really abusive racial music, have a general disgust for the 'cancer' on this Earth as I used to see it as. I admired how the Nazis had become such a powerful government through racist policies. This somewhat supported my ideals.

Where I lived at that time was surrounded by Indian students, studying for medicine at University. I used to have a go at the groups of them, push them around. Some would cross the road to avoid me. Like a group of 10 avoiding just me. I was 6 foot and 260lbs back then.

Now this is the twist, throughout the neo-nazi esque years I had been into watching a lot of gay porn secretly. But I was homophobic as all heck. When I eventually worked out I was being a dick because I was projecting the hatred of myself outwards. I changed. I came out to my parents and grandparents who all supported me surprisingly, just as long as I didn't flaunt it.

Now for the grand ending: I'm engaged to a half Irish Half Algerian, gorgeous man who has been with me for the most wonderful three years of my life.

LupusetVulpus


Source

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.