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Incredibly Clever Scenes From Famous Movies And How They Were Made

Some scenes or stories in movies/tv are particularly hard to figure out. They require a whip-smart visionary team of directors, costume designers, cinematographers, casting directors, producers, actors, and stunt coordinators who have a deep understanding of how to achieve the right feel and look of the piece to make it come alive. Here, we explore the making of eight of the most legendary scenes in film/tv history. Enjoy!

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

In "Death Becomes Her", Meryl Streep's character, Madeline, learns of an immortality treatment, and jumps at the chance to outdo her long-time rival. 

In the transformation scene, they wanted to show a sense of youth appearing on Madeline's body. If anyone knows anything about gravity, it is that gravity + time = sagging. So, what better way to show this than to have Madeline's breasts perk up as though she were a 20-something youngin' who needn't even bother with bras. 

via GIPHY

At first, the props department tried to create an inflatable bra mechanism, but that failed to do the trick. Instead, they came up with this clever idea to pull it off. 

Meryl Streep's assistant but his hands into her shirt, which was strategically very flowing, so as to conceal his hands. Then, at the right moment, he pushed them up, so as to create the illusion of perkier breasts. 

That there, folks, may be the luckiest assistant in the entire world. 

Source

In Mission Impossible III, there is a particular scene around the 1.5 hour mark, in which Bronway (Eddie Marsan), injects a capsule into Ethan (Tom Cruise)'s head. 

The scene is extremely aggressive (it is, after all, a torture scene), so Tom Cruise's head is not dealt with in the gentlest of fashions. His head is jerked back by his hair and a gun is shoved into his nostril, ready to inject the capsule. 

Only, there was one problem:  in order to make it look like a legitimately aggressive torture scene, the gun was pressed into Tom's nose in an aggressive fashion. It hurt. A lot. So much so, that Tom had to talk to the director about it. 

So J.J. Abrams came up with an idea. 

They would angle the camera so the person holding the gun's arm was out of the shot. Then, he gave the gun to Tom, and used makeup to paint Tom's hand to the skin tone of Eddie Marsan. Then, Tom pressed the gun against his own nose. This way, it was a lot easier to gauge how hard he could push without causing himself pain. 

The same goes later when Musgrave puts the phone to Ethan's ear, then Ethan bites Musgrave's hand. The hand that Cruise bit was not Billy Crudup's, but again was his own hand.

What's that? You want another fun hand fact? How about this...

At around twenty-seven minutes) The doctor's hands extracting the capsule from Agent Farris' head at the IMF headquarters belong to J.J. Abrams.

Source

In the episode titled "Lesbian Request Denied", in Orange is the New Black, we learn a little of the backstory of one of the most loved characters on the show Sophia Burset. 

In this episode, we learn about what Sophia's life was like before, during, and after her transition from male to female. The actor who plays Sophia, Laverne Cox, is also a transwoman. In the episode, we see Sophia before her surgery, when she was New York City fireman Marcus Burset. 

The casting director and series creator were tasked with finding an actor to portray "Marcus", which is difficult, considering how much he would have to look like Sophia, as a man. 

Jenji Kohan, series creator, approached Laverne to tell her that they were looking to hire someone. In an interview, Laverne said that Jenji said to her, "I don't want to traumatize you, by having you play a man again." You know, because I tried to play one for many years in my real life, and unsuccessfully. 

But, I'm an actor. I can play this … I got this. I can do it.

"So … we talked about it, we did a hair and makeup test to get Sophia's looks throughout her transition together. One of those looks was her as [Marcus], as the firefighter, but Jodie didn't think I looked masculine enough to play [him]," Cox continued. "And so it was decided that someone would be hired. I did my best to butch it up, and it wasn't butch enough, apparently."

Despite Laverne's stellar acting skills, it wasn't working. 

That's when the casting director discovered a fact that changed everything: 

Laverne has a twin brother. M.Lamar auditioned, and despite not being an actor, was an obvious choice for the role. He did a great job, and looked the part, perfectly. 

Steven Spielberg's Jaws contains one of the most unforgettable opening scenes in the history of film. The scene, Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) leaves a beach party to take a quick dip in the water. Treading through the water alone, she feels a tug. Then another. Then, audiences watch in horror as Chrissie is violently dragged through the water before disappearing under the surface forever. 

In this scene, audiences don't see the shark a choice Spielberg explained in Making Of Jaws

I thought that what could really be scary was not seeing the shark and just seeing the water; because we all are familiar with the water---very few of us have been in the water with a shark, but weve all gone swimming. And the idea of this girl going swimming and the audience going swimming with her wouldve been too extraordinary if, like a leviathan, the shark had come out of the water with its jaws agape and had come down on her…it wouldve been a spectacular opening for the film. But there wouldve been nothing primal about it—it would just have been a monster moment that weve all seen. 

There needed to be a way that audiences would clue into the fact that Chrissie was being attacked by a vicious monster that was lurking under the surface of the water. At the point when Jaws was being developed, CGI was very new. Spielberg didn't want to use it, because he thought it would ruin the movie (the technology didn't have the capabilities to make things look realistic). 

So, the crew was posed with an interesting dilemma  how do we get it to realistically look like Chrissie Watkins is being attacked from below by a shark? 

To achieve this, they attached a harness to Backlinie. For the initial tug under water, they attached a cable to her that dropped down from the stomach-area of her harness, and fed that cable down to an anchor that was laying at the bottom of the ocean, and back up to where Spielberg was sitting. 

According to Backlinie, "The first jerk-down Steven [Spielberg] did.... he just sat and when he wanted that pulled he just would pull."

For the side-to-side thrashing from the shark, more cables were attached to Backlinie's harness, then threaded through two pilings on either side of her, and stretched out to the beach. There, a group of men on each line would pull the two ends of the cable and run back and forth along the sand, to pull her to and fro. 

Source

To ensure Backlinies safety, she was outfitted with a special string that she could pull to release herself from the cables if it got too intense. 

It was very cold," Backlinie said, of the experience. "I was in for two to three hours at a time."

Another interesting detail of this scene is how they created the gurgling, drowning sounds that you hear during Chrissie's attack. For that, they asked Backlinie to stand in front of a microphone, turn her head up, and they poured water down her throat. 

Her dedication to that one scene is astounding. After Jaws, Susan Backlinie quit acting and went into accounting are you surprised? 

Sources: 12

The shower scene in Psycho is perhaps one of the most famous scenes in all of film history certainly the most famous shower scene. Though it is less than 3 minutes, the scene was so precisely measured that it took over 7 days to film and includes 70 different camera setups. 

Psycho was released in June, 1960, and shocked audiences for its incredibly disturbing murder scene of a woman in the shower. 

However, the film's creator, Alfred Hitchcock, was faced with a huge dilemma whilst creating the moment movies had very high censorship at that time the scene could not contain a shot of any genitalia or breasts, and couldn't actually show the stabbing or any knife wounds. 

Hitchcock and his team of wizards used considerable artistry to accomplish the murder scene within these confines...

1. Hitchcock decided to use a 50mm lens, which gave the scene a slightly less glossy feel Hitchcock wanted audiences to feel like they were seeing the events firsthand. 

2. Because of this, Hitchcock decided that the shower scene would be too disturbing in full color, so opted for black and white film. Also, black and white film is far less expensive, so that could have been a factor, though it's not confirmed. 

3. In order to create the illusion that audiences were witnessing a far more graphic scene than was actually shown, he took an impressionist approach. Several small cuts were strung together in quick succession. These rapid cuts created a fast paced tone that paralleled the adrenaline rush and confusion that the protagonist was experiencing at the time of her murder. It also capitalized on a natural human tendency to "fill in the gaps" with our own imaginations. If you show us a knife, a woman screaming, and some blood in the bath water, we will naturally fill in the gaps. 


4. Another major hurdle in creating this scene was properly lighting the shower water, so that it felt very visceral, and protecting the camera from the water. The props department created a special shower head that, when the camera was tilted at a specific angle, the camera could look straight up at the shower and not get wet. 

5. To show audiences that the woman was being stabbed without actually showing the stabbing, the camera focused on the blood that was trickling through the bathtub and down the drain. Though matching color wasn't important, (because it was in black and white), Hitchcock was very concerned that the blood be the right viscosity. After testing movie blood and ketchup, he settled on chocolate syrup. 

6. To create a realistic stabbing sound, the special effects crew stabbed watermelons with large knives. 

Source

In Saving Private Ryan, the "storming of Omaha beach scene" has been hailed by historians, and by the men who survived the event, as the most accurate depiction of war in film. 

The actual event, known as D-Day, went like this: 

On June 6, 1944, 156,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers landed on the a 50 mile stretch of France's Normandy 50 coast, which was fortified by German soldiers. 

It was among the largest military assault in world war history. This event was the beginning of the end of WWII. 

Spielberg didn't want to rely on massive special effects to create the grandeur of war, which would ultimately make it look glossy and fantastical. Instead, he wanted to create a portrayal that was visceral and real, so viewers could have a real sense of what the horrors of war were like. It was a massive undertaking. 

So... how did they do it? 

Trying to find a location that could accurately pass as Omaha Beach was difficult. The actual Normandy Coast is protected as a historical landmark, so filming there was out of the question. Yet, they wanted a place that was an exact replica of the location, including sand and a bluff similar to the one where German forces were stationed. Production designer, Tom Sanders, found Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe Strand in Wexford, Ireland. Perfect. 

Whilst in Ireland, they hired 1500 actual Irish Army Reservists to portray the role of soldiers in the film. These men all had the look and experience to fit the part. 

Next came the costumes. Designer Joanna Johnston started the project under the impression that she would be able to find a bunch of old WWII uniforms and alter them to fit the actors. Wrong! It turns out that barely any of these uniforms have survived past their time, so that was a near-impossible feat. 

But, they wanted authenticity. So, Johnston and her team recreated 3000 authentic uniforms. She then found the company who made the original troops' boots, and ordered 2000 pairs. That's a whole lot of war-wear!

To bring a sense of authenticity to the organizational and military tactics of the crew, they hired former U.S. Marine Core Captain, Dale Dye, to direct the thousands of extras on set. 

In pre-production, they put the core actors through a miserable bootcamp that bonded them as a unit, in the same way that soldiers under extreme duress would be bonded. It also prepared them for the very realistically harsh conditions on set. 

Spielberg through away his standard method of creating a storyboard for the film a visual aid that would guide the look of each shot. Instead, he wanted to create the camera crew to have spontaneous reactions to the scene as it unfolded. It allowed for viewers to feel the chaotic and unpredictable energy of war in a realistic way. 

Spielberg wanted the look of the film to be desaturated and low-tech (again, no glamour). 

To achieve this, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski actually removed the protective coating from his camera lens to give the picture a softer, diffused look, and put the negative through an additional process to extract more of the color. He also shot in such a way that all movement blur was removed from the shot adding an extremely crisp, jarring look to the explosions. It feels a lot realer when you can see individual drops of water and bits of dirt. 

Now this is where it really gets into Spielberg's near-obsessive attention to detail... 

Spielberg's special effects team created a technology that would allow actors to die from gun wound with perfect timing. They put a sensor on the squib packs (packs of blood that explode) of every actor being shot, that would detect when another actor was firing their gun, take distance and speed of bullet into account, and explode at precisely the correct time. 

A major choice that set this scene apart from other wartime scenes in movies is the sound. While most movies that feature a battle scene have a sweeping, epic score underneath, Spielberg decided to use nothing. There wasn't music playing during the real WWII, so it wasn't going to play here either. At certain moments during the battle, the sound of bullets whizzing and bodies falling cuts out altogether, to mimic the shellshocked state of Tom Hanks' character, Captain Miller. The sounds are replaced by a slow, haunting sound, like the sound of pressing your ear to a seashell. To simulate this, sound designer Gary Rydstrom recorded the sounds of the beach, played them over a speaker, and recorded them through in a microphone through a long tube. When asked about the sound, Rydstrom said, "It's like a psychological tea whistle." 

In order to create the horrors of actual war, the casting department hired dozens of real-life amputees that would more convincingly portray the injuries acquired throughout the battle. The props department made 1000 meticulously detailed dummies that littered the beach illustrating the massive amounts of bodies along the shore in the real battle. They washed these bodies in hundreds of gallons of fake blood. 

Saving Private Ryan won 5 Oscars that year, including best director for Steven Spielberg. 

Sources: 12

Most people remember the dragon attack in Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 4. When Daenerys finally unleashed Drogon on Westoros against the Lannister forces, they swung low and blasted a breath of fire onto unlucky soldiers below resulting a whole lot of crispy bodies. If you were impressed by the scene itself, just wait until you read what went into making it. 

In a behind-the-scenes feature from HBO, the shows creators and crew discussed the extreme dedication it took to make this scene a reality. There were hundreds of soldiers and 27 wagons bathed in fire, a process that required fancy camerawork from numerous cameras, including a camera with the ability to fly through the air at 70 miles per hour, another attached to a drone, and one on an off-road pickup truck. 

But the really wild thing, was how they executed the fire blast on the actors. Twenty stuntmen were hired to run away from the approaching dragon. As they did, they ran over explosive charges, which set off the fiery explosions, made to look like they were from the dragon's mouth. The stuntmen were ACTUALLY set on fire, (wearing fire protective gear underneath their costumes), and writhed around on the ground for twelve seconds before someone put them out with a fire extinguisher. 

This episode set a world record for the most stuntmen simultaneously set on fire. 

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is a scene in which the protagonists are inside an old memory of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Joel is the size of a child. This wasn't done using CGI. 

Instead, the set department and camera crew worked together to make it look that way with real-life illusions. 

The set department built a room, called an Ames Room. The room looked like it had a straight back wall, but in reality, the wall was on an angle. 

Rooms like these are the reason that these two friends look disproportionate to one another. 

This is how it works:


Voila! There you have it. 

Sources: 1, 2, 3

Thank you for reading!

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.