Carlos Romero's apartment is marked with remnants from his former life: a giant television from his days playing World of Warcraft and a pair of jeans the width of an easy chair. Remnants of that time — when he weighed 437 pounds — mark his body too: loose, hanging skin and stretch marks.
"I lift weights and work out and work hard, but there's lasting damage," says Romero.
Yet for all the troubles he had dating when he was obese — all those unanswered requests on dating websites — shedding weight left him uneasy about how much to reveal. "If you were to say to someone on the first date, 'I lost 220 pounds,' you're indicating that you had a very serious issue at one point and that you may still have that issue," he says. "So it's not something I put on a dating profile because I don't want people to judge me for it."
The stigma of obesity is so strong that it can remain even after the weight is lost. Holly Fee, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University, has conducted some of the only research on dating attitudes toward the formerly obese. In 2012, Fee published her findings in the journal Sociological Inquiry.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Varney, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/healt...after-weight-is-lost]
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