If you don't want to read my wall of text, here is my ish right off the bat: losing weight feels like letting my parents win because I want them to love me no matter what I look like and that insidious need from my childhood derails my progress every time.
I get that being obese is ultimately shooting myself in the foot, but I can't let my weight go. It happens every time: I'm motivated, and doing the right things, and eating right... and then it's all my mother wants to talk about. Or I'm in a good place, and she will send me articles about how unhealthy I am and how this person or that person Lost 100 Pounds in Three Months(!).
To be clear, the only reason I want to lose weight is because of my health. I legitimately love myself at every size. I have a great, supportive group of friends and when I want a partner, I have one. I have something to offer the world, and it kills me that my parents can only see my weight. They're intensely critical of my "false bravado" because they can't fathom how someone Like Me could possess natural confidence.
And look, for what it's worth, my parents are actuzlly good people. I know they love me, even if they're embarrassed to be seen with me. They're human, and they have their own trauma and hang-ups, and weight is just that thing for them. Obesity runs in both sides of the family, and my family is made up of outliers: we've always been in shape, always been athletes. I'm the only one who visibly struggles with weight in my immediate family.
Third grade is the earliest I can remember my mom being worried about my weight. When I look at the pictures now and see that I'm on the gangly side for an 8-year-old, I'm mystified. Spandexy gaucho pants were popular when I was about 11, so I had a pair that I loved but only wore once because my mom said I looked pregnant. I wasn't even at the middle of a healthy weight range.
I'm about 5'5", and I did gain some weight when I went through puberty. I "bloomed" to 110 lbs in 7th grade, but by 10th grade I was 140. My old brother had been calling me "Fats" and "Fatso" in lieu of my name for about three years by 10th grade, so at the time it felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and my younger siblings liked to say how embarrassed they were to be seen with me.
My parents deny it now, but once they were mad at me and said they couldn't even stand to look at me because of my weight. It was one of those things that was so cruel it irreparably fractured our relationship. Like I couldn't trust them anymore. In any case, they put me on some ephedra-based diet pill, and I lost 20 lbs, and they praised me a bunch and suddenly I was their precious daughter again.
Another facet is that I was never really allowed to wear anything outside of jeans and tshirts and sweatshirts because it would be "inappropriate" to dress more fashionably. That was my mom's code for "you're too fat to wear that." My sister was a risqué dresser and it was acceptable because she's petite.
My weight rose and fell over the next few years, but I played 5 sports so I was very strong and very fit. For a couple years my body fat percentage was 14%, which is just insane to me now. I started gaining weight seriously when I stopped playing college sports after my sophomore year. I was having chronic back issues and was always in pain, probably due to all of the sprains and torn ligaments and broken bones over the years. I was recovering from injuries slowly, was experiencing constant fatigue, and the only sport I still had passion for was rugby (which my parents never wanted me to play, lol). The last three years of my athletic "career," I had 7 concussions. My body said it was time to stop.
So I quit sports and started eating food, which it turned out I loved SO MUCH, and now 8 years later I'm 280 lbs. Yeah, that's a big jump, but I'm happy when I look in the mirror because I can see and feel my body and everything I've done with it, and I can see a reflection of how much fun I've had letting myself go these past years.
But at this weight, bless my heart, my body is functionally incapable of performing at capacity. My knees and back hurt after 20 minutes of standing in once place, walking through the store to get groceries hurts so bad I start sweating from the pain on top of sweating from the activity, and though I'm metabolically healthy, I know that will change for the worse as I get older.
ALSO if I see someone doing badass parkour or learning how to do backflips, I want to be able to do those things! Or at least have the option, because your girl gets motion sick.
Like I said earlier, every time I get in a good space, my mom will notice that I'm looking a little thinner or somehow sleuth out through context clues that I'm eating healthier and go WAYYYY overboard on the praise.
It just completely shuts me down. They'll brag about my personal or professional accomplishments, but won't include a picture of me in the "what our family has been up to this year" part of the Christmas card.
I feel stupid that I'm so in my head about this, but I guess I'm hanging onto my weight because it's like the one piece of love my parents never gave me.
That was a long-ass post and you da domb if you read this far, but that's where I'm at. I have been fantasizing about moving across the country so I can shake off these chains.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/fp6gb2/losing_weight_feel_like_letting_my_family_win/
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