While we often tout the benefits of losing weight, sometimes dropping hundreds of pounds can impact a person's life in surprising ways. When business consultant Dawn Brooks lost 165 pounds after weight loss surgery, she ended up losing her husband as well.
During a HuffPost Live discussion about the PBS documentary "All Of Me," which documents the lives of women who met through the size acceptance movement, Brooks shared how losing weight has impacted her life both physically and psychologically.
"I've lost a lot of other things too," Brooks told host Nancy Redd. "I've lost friendships, I've lost a husband, I've lost my identity as a fat person. I am a different person and I am--I think differently, you know? I think differently than I did when I was 400 pounds."
She explained, "my husband and I still do see each other. We're really good friends and he's a great guy -- he just loves fat women. He absolutely adores fat women, and I don't fit his profile at this point. So he went his way. I've gone my way, and we still see each other. We're great friends, but the bottom line is that his needs are not being met by my physical being right now."
Continued below.
Dawn Brooks: Before And After Her 165-Pound Weight Loss
"One of the things that I've done throughout the years is that I've been involved in the size acceptance movement," Brooks said. "I've been involved in doing all kinds of promoting of 'accept yourself at whatever size you are.' It's really trying to change the perception of people who see fat people as being fat, dumb and lazy."
She also discussed the challenges, both mental and physical, of losing large amounts of weight. "Until you go through it, you don't understand it and you don't really understand what can happen to you psychologically."
She continued, "It's a wonderful concept to want to lose 200 pounds and to be somebody different, but internally, you have to change your mindset and you have to really change how you think about yourself. Oftentimes, people lose hundreds of pounds of weight, only to regain it. It's going back to a safe place, because if that's the place you know best, that's where you stay."
"Right now, I'm as stuck as stuck can be. I'm waiting for my mind to catch up with the 165 I've already lost and I still have another hundred to go. But I'm just doing it along my own time frame right now."
Joining Brooks and Redd in the conversation were the documentary's director, Alexandra Lescaze, and two other women profiled in the movie, Judy Sinclair and Zsalynn Whitworth.