LOSE SOME, WIN MOST?

I had always heard that when you lose weight, the world treats you differently… suddenly you are seen, you exist, as if your body had finally earned the right to occupy space. I thought it was exaggerated - one of those dramatic before–after narratives people love telling. Lose weight and the world rearranges itself around you. Doors open easier. Smiles arrive faster. Conversations linger longer. I never believed it. Until it happened to me.

I have always been overweight. An outlier by every social metric - in school classrooms, college corridors, group photographs where everyone else fit neatly into what beauty was supposed to look like. I was never the stereotypically beautiful structure. Neither slim nor tall. Not the aesthetic society rewards with effortless validation. Just visibly different. So I did what many of us do when we are told, silently and repeatedly, that we are “too much” in the wrong ways - I compensated. I ensured I was good at everything else - Anchoring. Dancing. Elocution. Academics. Organization. Performance. If beauty was not my currency, competence would be. If admiration was not guaranteed, excellence would be. I built presence where appearance failed to qualify me. I may not have consciously obsessed over my looks, but somewhere in the subconscious, there was always an awareness - a quiet calculation of space, a silent adjustment, an invisible negotiation with the world. 

And the most fascinating part? What hurt more was not the gaze of strangers, but the words of those closest to me. The people I trusted with my softness, my fears, my truth also reinforced, directly or indirectly, that I was neither conventionally beautiful nor conventionally desirable. They didn’t call me ugly. That would have been too brutally honest. They said things far more socially acceptable - just not the standard ideals. The kind of feedback that pretends to be neutral while landing like judgment. You learn to absorb such things. You learn to grow around them. And you continue.

Lately, I have lost weight. Nothing miraculous. Nothing overnight. Not because society demanded it, but because of intentional and unintentional changes in my life - a conscious shift towards a more active lifestyle being one of them. And yes, I see the difference. Not in who I am. But in how the world responds to me. There is an acknowledgment now, an ease in social spaces, a subtle shift in how my presence is received. It is fascinating how dramatically social behavior transforms when the geometry of your body changes. And I find myself wondering - what exactly changed? The person I am - no. The way I think - no. My love for someone, my anger, my empathy, my values - no. Only the body holding all of it. Apparently, the world was not responding to me - it was responding to my silhouette. 

We live in a society that insists character matters more than appearance, yet consistently behaves otherwise. It preaches depth but rewards surface. It celebrates authenticity but validates aesthetics. The hypocrisy is almost elegant. What has changed is a curious experience of inhabiting the same self in a differently perceived body. Recently, I rewore an outfit in Feb 2026 that I had once worn in Nov 2024. The same fabric, the same color, the same person, almost the same glances - but different reasons, then, it was judgment and now, it was admiration.. It reminds me of my earlier piece - The Dichotomy of “Table for One, Please!” - where I wrote about occupying space alone and discovering how society reacts differently depending on whether solitude looks chosen or imposed. This feels like its parallel chapter. Then, the world questioned my presence at a table. Now, it acknowledges my presence in a room. It was never about who I was - it was about how comfortably I fit into societal norms.

I am also preparing to run a marathon. Not as some fad but I just want to test myself. If I am brutally honest - to prove someone wrong, to prove a theory wrong. I have always loved dismantling stereotypes, challenging the assumptions people mistake for universal truths. I seem to thrive on defying presumptions about what bodies like mine are expected to do. Perhaps many of us function this way - trying to become exceptions to rules we never consented to. Because society runs on predictions about bodies - what they can do, how they should look, what they signify. Ironically, those who preach the loudest about norms rarely follow them.

Yet through all this, I remain who I always was - the same voice, the same stubborn refusal to shrink myself for comfort. I did not suddenly become more interesting or more intelligent or more worthy. I perhaps simply became easier to look at. And apparently, that is what existence costs. Nothing about me changed. Except the part the world was willing to see.  And no, this is not a story of newfound confidence. That would be too convenient a narrative. Here’s the uncomfortable truth - weight loss didn’t make me confident. I already was. I posted photos then, and I post photos now. I realized it is not just a physical change; it is social reclassification. It revealed the terms and conditions of acceptance. And once you read those, you never look at society the same way again. The experience is both empowering and unsettling. Confidence in a socially approved body is called charm. Confidence in a non-approved body is called bravery. But beneath all this defiance lies a quieter realization. Losing some kilos does not rewrite identity. It neither erases memories of being overlooked nor does it remove the echoes of past perceptions. I have always believed the most beautiful someone can look is when their happiness is reflected in their eyes, giggling with complete honesty, unfiltered and unguarded. That expression - that fullness of being - is what makes someone truly gorgeous. That belief has not changed. Perhaps beauty is not transformation but continuity. Perhaps becoming is not about changing who you are, but about refusing to shrink who you have always been.