{"id":30959,"date":"2013-02-13T08:16:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T16:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=30959"},"modified":"2012-12-20T10:18:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T18:18:15","slug":"single-and-looking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=30959","title":{"rendered":"Single and Looking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?attachment_id=35735\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35735\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-35735\" alt=\"personalad\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/personalad-211x300.jpg\" width=\"211\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/personalad-211x300.jpg 211w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/personalad.jpg 282w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Awhile ago I was helping a friend who decided to bite the bullet and write a personal ad. She asked me how she should fill out some of the sections; one in particular was &#8220;body type.&#8221; The options were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Thin<\/li>\n<li>Overweight<\/li>\n<li>Skinny<\/li>\n<li>Average<\/li>\n<li>Fit<\/li>\n<li>Athletic<\/li>\n<li>Jacked<\/li>\n<li>A Little Extra<\/li>\n<li>Curvy<\/li>\n<li>Full-Figured<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of those seemed redundant to me, but whatever. Now for this particular friend, she was conflicted on whether to use &#8220;curvy,&#8221; &#8220;average&#8221; or &#8220;athletic.&#8221; I told her to pick athletic. I felt like that was a good representation of her body type. Sure she has some womanly curves but she&#8217;s also very athletic and strong.<\/p>\n<p>The whole process sent me down memory lane. I remembered when I filled out a personal ad on Match and OkCupid way back when. I did it several times in my life. The first time was when I was obese. I know that I had picked something a long the lines of &#8220;overweight&#8221; or &#8220;curvy.&#8221; It was a time in my life when I was still lying to myself about just how big I had gotten.<\/p>\n<p>The second time in my life was after I lost about 60 pounds. For a year I had been focused on my weight loss goal and had lost enough weight to start feeling more confident in myself. I decided I was almost ready to be open to a relationship and decided to test the waters out with a new profile.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?attachment_id=35741\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35741\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-35741\" alt=\"60 pounds\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/60-pounds-225x300.jpg\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/60-pounds-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/60-pounds.jpg 453w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By this time, I was perplexed. And much more aware of my body, body type and I was being more honest with myself. I still &#8220;had a few pounds to lose&#8221; and selected something along those lines. There was no shame in that, though, because I felt really proud of myself for losing 60 pounds! I got a lot of responses, a lot more than ever thought I would. I was still talking down to myself, telling myself I was fat and had a long way to go. Getting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oasisoflove.com\/2\/articles.php?id=15\">responses <\/a>that were positive was a nice feeling! I started to wonder:\u00a0<strong>maybe people DON&#8217;T care about weight as much as I thought they did!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The whole process was uncomfortable: selling yourself to a stranger in hopes that they notice you and are interested. What I decided was that people were interested because my attitude had changed. I was no longer the victim, the &#8220;woe is me&#8221; person who felt uncomfortable in her own skin. The big attitude change made such a difference it was astounding!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?attachment_id=35736\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35736\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35736\" alt=\"personals-craigslist-290x217\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/personals-craigslist-290x217.jpg\" width=\"290\" height=\"217\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A little while later, I updated my profile once I was close to goal weight. I hadn&#8217;t met Michael yet. I selected &#8220;athletic.&#8221;\u00a0Being able to label myself as &#8220;athletic&#8221; was a very cool moment for me. I felt accomplished and proud of the weight I had lost so far.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?attachment_id=35740\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35740\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-35740\" alt=\"us1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/us1-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/us1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/us1.jpg 604w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nIf you missed the series, check out the posts from the Body Love Week here for some positive body image inspiration:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permalink to Body Love Week: Structure, Perfectionism, and Authentic Living\" href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=29396\" rel=\"bookmark\">Structure, Perfectionism, and Authentic Living<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permalink to Body Love Week: I Want My Daughters to Be Proud of Their Mom\" href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=28829\" rel=\"bookmark\">I Want My Daughters to Be Proud of Their Mom<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permalink to Body Love Week: Identity Crisis\" href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=28600\" rel=\"bookmark\">Identity Crisis<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permalink to Body Love Week: Learning to Love Myself\" href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=29652\" rel=\"bookmark\">Learning to Love Myself<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the end, my friend met a great guy and the whole question of body type turned out to be irrelevant! And I met a great guy, too, and my body type was irrelevant as well. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>QUESTION: Have you had experiences like this with online dating ads?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Awhile ago I was helping a friend who decided to bite the bullet and write a personal ad. She asked me how she should fill out some of the sections; one in particular was &#8220;body type.&#8221; The options were: Thin Overweight Skinny Average Fit Athletic Jacked A Little Extra Curvy Full-Figured Some of those seemed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,418,44,4861,154,2559,169,1243,2778,2777,298],"tags":[8591,8874,6684,8662,839,4069,6683,3335,892],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30959"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35746,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30959\/revisions\/35746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}