I'm a vain person, it's true. Maybe it's the Leo in me, but I do worry about what other's think of me to a point. Even though I say I never realized I was fat until a kid called me fat, I knew it in the back of my head. And because I knew that I was fat, I was always a self-conscious about how I looked. Of course I never did anything to improve how I looked, I just kept doing what I had always done.

Walking through life as a fat man, there are certain places that made me feel more uncomfortable or self-aware of myself. To me, these places represented all the things that I was not: fit; healthy; thin; athletic; active; attractive;etc... I would walk into these places or events and immediately feel like I didn't belong. Not because of how anyone would treat me or look at me, but because of the images I had in my mind of who belonged there, and I didn't fit any of those images.

Here are some of the places or activities I would go to where I felt the least comfortable with myself:

• The gym - I know, you need to get to the gym to get fit, but I couldn't get past the idea that the gyms were full of fit, tone, muscular gods and goddesses.
• Health food store - What's a fat guy doing in a health food store, there are no Oreo Cakette's there!
• GNC - Kind of along the same lines as the health food store. Why would a fat guy need any vitamins or supplements. Only healthy people take those, right?
• Salon - where my wife goes and I do some computer work on the side. I have this Hollywood image of salons, all the stylists are gorgeous and all the clients are models and I'm not either of those.
• Robeks - This is a food chain that serves healthy smoothies, wheat grass shots, stuff like that. Again, why would someone of my size be going to a place like that?
• Dick's fitness section - it was obvious I didn't use any of the stuff in the fitness section so I didn't belong there
• Any pool - A pool is what made me finally realize I had to do something.
• Police station (my dad's a cop, it's been a long time since I've been to one for any other reason) - Here I am looking like Chief Wiggum while walking around cops who look like they're ex-SEALs.
• The Pentagon - selling to the Government requires me to go to D.C. quite often. Some of those trips are for meetings with DoD personnel in the Pentagon. Just like the police station, here I am walking around people who are in the military who have to be fit for their job. I used to be one of them, but I'd let myself go.
• Conferences & working the exhibit booths - Ugh, having to stand in a booth for 8 hours a day for 2 or 3 days next to a booth where the vendor hired booth babes to work it really sucked!

Losing 29 pounds has done a lot for my self-confidence. I no longer worry about being a fat guy in a skinny place, I feel like I belong anywhere I go now.

During my weight loss process, I have come to realize that all of those fears and the preconceptions I had about those places were all unfounded. There are skinny people, fat people and in-between people everywhere you go and, for the most part, people don't judge or think "you shouldn't be in a place like this". I don't think I had ever been kicked out of a place because I was too big.

I'm not really sure what the overall point of this post was going to be about besides sharing some places I've felt uncomfortable going to when I was 200+ pounds. I don't have any great advice to share other than don't judge people.

I could probably go into a whole discussion about me having self-respect issues that are at the root of my fears I've shared, but I won't. Instead, I'll just leave it at sharing and ask if anyone else has felt this way and what places made you feel like that.