jdthediscipleAttractive students no longer receive better results as classes moved online
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652200283X
People that have used to be fat, and then lost a lot of weight, will know how brutally different people will treat you. Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident, and thus you become more approachable. I think there's a lot of bias against fat people, against "unattractive" people, etc.
This also shows in the classroom, work, etc.
Of course, actually being conventionally attractive will come with its own perks. People will go out of their way to help you, and to support you. Over time this could very well boost your ego to also become more confident and decisive.
I think being conventionally attractive gives you a lot more chance practice socialising and my observation is that, people who use that chance get so good at it, they remain very good at relationships even at old age.
Ive seen the opposite in some people.
I know a ~55ish year old lady who is beautiful, but looks 55. I see her adjusting to her new reality and its painful. I imagine she used to be able to get away with being mean and sarcastic because she was so hot.
Now it just causes office fights. "I wont work with X" is something Ive heard.
The interesting part is that I originally only worked with her on the phone, so I always thought she was mean... Then I saw her in person and everything clicked.
In my opinion, a lot of ugly people start off by trying to be nice, then gradually become more bitter and cynical the more they have to take shit from other people. At least I feel like that has happened to me, and I'm not even so ugly (imho). The amount of gaslighting I've put up with from everyone over the years has really been infuriating and has led me to a lot of misery in my life, and also turned me away from the things that might have actually made a difference.
> Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
I watched something like this happen in a friend, but as an outside observer I saw a different explanation: The period when he got into shape involved a lot of changes for the better in his life, including becoming more outgoing, motivated, and disciplined (necessary prerequisites for weight loss in the pre-medication era). He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult. He also started paying attention to his grooming and hair style instead of looking like he just woke up.
For a while he tried to explain it all by his weight loss alone, but over time he realized it was an overall change in everything about the way he carried himself and presented himself to the world.
I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight. Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them. They do feel a lot better though!
> He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult.
I think the problem many __men__ have with that is that an "appropriate" wardrobe looks more uniform and less individualized, basically boring.
I don’t think that’s particularly true. There’s a lot you can do with texture, colours and silhouettes, even within items that are “the same”. I do think most men are pretty unimaginative when it comes to dressing themselves though, and most can’t even do basic things like getting trousers hemmed to fit them properly.
While I can kind of see what you are aiming at, a basic button down and clean pants go a long way. Keep it ironed and clean, and you go even further. No need for the anything that looks like a uniform.
The key point in his change was that he started looking like someone who cared enough to put some minimal effort into dressing himself.
It’s not about being uniform or bland. He went from old worn-out clothes he didn’t care about to wearing clothes that were appropriate for a business casual environment or a casual date. When you start dressing like you care, regardless of how unique and individualized, others notice.
It goes a little deeper than "does not care" though: worn out can also be a symptom of caring a lot. Caring in the way of having a strong desire to identify with the stuff worn, and newly bought stuff just not checking that box. Then any newly procured garb, no matter how carefully selected, perhaps even customized, will feel like being dressed up as someone else. It's like a trap, just not being wired for new clothes. I wonder if there's a connection to childhood dress-up play, as in kids who had good times masquerading as some archetype are less likely later in life to fall into that "that's-not-me" trap regarding new clothes.
I wonder how clean the clothes looked, however. Clothes can be well worn but still appear clean and taken care of. There is a difference between "this is my favorite shirt" and "these are my grubbies I use while cleaning the house".
It's caring about the wrong thing if you're looking to improve your life though. You need to logically reason through norms and expectations and realize you gotta put on the correct costume for the setting, even if you don't identify with it.
Otherwise "Thats not me" will be describing things like "successful career" and "romantic relationships".
I think many men look at clothes like the wrapping paper of a gift. They absolutely don't care what a gift comes wrapped in, it's the content that matters. Choosing wrapping paper or even thinking about it is boring as hell.
So they then project themselves onto women, and are then surprised that expectations are different.
Part of what you signal with your wardrobe isn’t just that you care for yourself. You’re signaling to others that you care about how you appear to them. We can’t expect other people to ignore that signal because showing that you care about how other people see you is a proxy signal for caring about other people.
For many years in large corporations, pretty much the only acceptable dress was white shirt, tie, dark suit, and dress shoes. We were still wearing something like that at. trade shows into the 1990s before things started loosening up.
(Mildly funny story. One big, probably Unix, show the IBM staff showed in logoed polos and suddenly everyone else is like If IBM doesn’t need suits we sure don’t.)
I started dressing nice at work, reasoning that looking sharp would buy me a few seconds or minutes of grace to allow my social deficiencies to catch up - just in case an executive decided to ask me a question.
Of course, that never happened for months, years until the one day I went in wearing cargo pants and a gothy synth band shirt and was greeted by a delegation of executives from out of town engaging everyone in small talk…
I worked for a downtown firm for a while which loosened up dress code a little bit so I didn’t always wear my jacket in—though cargo pants and rock T would definitely have led to an HR meeting. One day I had to borrow a jacket from someone when I had to go to a nearby studio for a TV interview:-)
A data point, though my situation is not even about weight: I used to be skinny fat in my mid-twenties until mid-thirties - so basically still kind of slim but some belly fat and not much muscles. Kind of average, unremarkable.
After a breakup I started being more active again, I went bouldering once a week and gradually got into shape and then really athletic after about 2 years when I started going twice a week. My total weight didn't change at all. I dress just as good as before and have the same overall style. Of course most clothes simply look better on me, now that I'm more in shape. Same good job that I still like. I do go out a bit more. But overall I would say I really didn't change anything except getting more attractive from putting on muscles and losing fat.
It made a hell of a difference for dating. Before I felt mostly invisible but since then got approached in bars all the time, which rarely happened before. After some time I got way more confident - but when this stated I sure wasn't yet. Some woman even told me into the face that I lacked confidence after they approached me and realized I don't have the personality and/or confidence matching my appearance. They certainly only approached me because of my appearance.
The people only loosing weight are probably held back by other things. If they changed everything but their weight they likely wouldn't have more success either. I would say I had most things figured out already before and It seems I was held back only by having an average build. Just getting fit absolutely made the difference for me.
Sounds like a body recomp- well done!
Edit: no idea why downvoted but it refers to staying roughly the same weight while building muscle and reducing fat. And having tried it, it’s hard! I stand by my “well done”
Thanks! I really feel I had it easier than most though because of genetics I guess. I see others train much harder for less results. I didn't even change my diet much except shifting to a lot more protein-rich food. I have lots of respect for people loosing a lot weight and having to work way harder than me for it.
If I were to guess I imagine the downvotes are due to the use of an upvote being preferred over (albeit it well intentioned) comments of "well done" in HN threads (in order to keep signal to noise ratio high)
Fair, I mostly was thinking it would be nice to give people who want to try it themselves the term that’s most often used.
It’s hard - you have to eat around maintenance level calories but you also need to make a high percentage of them protein and also keep enough carbs that you don’t bonk if you’re doing any cardio (I like jump rope myself). Just cutting or bulking gives a little more flexibility.
>After a breakup I started being more active again...
Was it the changes or the breakup itself? Most men don't get "good" at dating until they become a certain amount of jaded. Hence the stereotypical freshly divorced man mopping the floor with the dating pool. The changes sure wouldn't have hurt, but still.
The breakup after years of relationship certainly was a big change in my live. I broke up but I don't think that made me jaded. I get what you mean though, I would say I got a bit more jaded after getting more confidence and that helps now. But that was long after I noticed increasing interest from women.
> Before I felt mostly invisible but since then got approached in bars all the time, which rarely happened before.
Physical attractiveness is extremely relevant in the context of cold approaches in a dating environment. I won’t disagree with you there.
However getting approached at bars is very different than working with someone in an office setting or having your papers graded in a university setting.
> I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight.
This feels like it could be a correlation vs causation thing. Its a lot easier to put effort in if you see it getting results. Is it that they suddenly put effort in triggering all this or is it the weighg loss made the investment of putting effort in return results where previously you'd need a much higher level of effort to see results making it only seem worth it after the weight loss?
Or is it the weight loss resulted in higher self confidence giving all sorts of knock on effects.
I think its really hard to tease apart cause and effect here. Would the same changes be possible without the weight loss or have the sane results is kind of a hard question to answer.
>For a while he tried to explain it all by his weight loss alone, but over time he realized it was an overall change in everything about the way he carried himself and presented himself to the world.
All of what you're saying is just looks. Clothes, posture, etc. all matter and we all know some exceptions to the rule, but people make clothes look good and not so much the other way around.
>Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them.
Not everyone looks better if they slim down. And if you do it the wrong way, or don't update your clothes to not be baggy, or just plain have excessive expectations, it's going to be disappointing. Losing weight just gets you to the baseline of where you might not make people want to look away or find reasons to not like you. If you're short, then you'll still be short after losing weight. If you're ugly in the face, you'll still be ugly, if not more ugly. I know you're talking about men because even overweight women have lots of options. Dating is also nearly impossible for average men now. You shouldn't assume that weight doesn't make a huge difference based on a few examples of guys who can't get dates. Think of it more like not being fat is to make others not immediately blow you off for that one reason.
I think there are too many variables to really control for well on this one. Obviously someone who does what your friend did is going to have many factors changing how people interact with them and it will accumulate into and even larger total effect.
I lost 100lbs very rapidly. The difference in attention and little social things was noticeable almost immediately. Same style of dress, moderately kept hair, but otherwise decent personal care on both sides of the weight loss.
What is interesting though to me is that I hit my goal weight right around the time some major life events happened and I pretty much was operating at the lowest self confidence levels I ever had in my life. I was less social and much more withdrawn than before.
I still would notice the “second glances” from folks I never got before, and even friendly greetings etc that were a bit weird at first to me.
I don’t think you can really translate these changes into dating success or whatnot without other life changes though. They just Lower the difficulty level - you still need to put the work in.
>Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident
Having been one of the people who experienced this (well the inverse, scarily skinny to lean and muscular), the confidence comes entirely from people in your life congratulating you, followed by strangers and new people just having a baseline positive glow towards you.
I don't know who came up with that line, it's repeated a lot, but I am almost certain it came from someone who never experienced the transition and soothed their ego by telling themselves it's all just a state of mind.
Having been overweight my entire life until recently, this is accurate. The "it's just your newfound confidence" argument misses the mark completely.
The baseline level of basic respect you receive from strangers such as simply making eye contact, holding doors, or initiating small talk changes almost overnight. It is a very bitter reality to wake up to when you realize you were basically invisible before.
I dress like a hobo so that everyone fucks off and nobody wants anything from me. Sometimes I go somewhere and people walk away, giving me personal space. It's amazing.
Height as a man is also a huge bonus, at least in the cultures to which I’ve been exposed. There are examples I can think of men not being conventionally attractive, but just in the top quintile of height, and receiving special attention in dating and leadership opportunities.
I remember reading some study that (in men) height compared to your peers at 16-19 highly correlates with confidence.