I was thinking about summarising some of my thoughts about my weight loss journey here to both hold myself accountable, reflect on the past and get some feedback and insights from this community. Brace yourselves for a wall of text.
As a little background: I have been struggling with weight loss for many years and had two big successes during my life. One was while I was still at school where I have lost almost 30kgs in a short period by mostly sleeping throughout the day, playing games during the night and not eating properly or not at all. I was about 16 years by that time and back then heavily struggling with depression without having any professional support from a therapist. It has been a very unhealthy and unsustainable way of losing weight and did nothing good for my mental health, as most of you hopefully will agree with. Needless to say, I have gained everything and more back over the years.
The second time was almost 5 years ago, where my motivation stemmed from wanting to lose weight to feel attractive and loveable for one of my crushes. I used CICO and MFP throughout this, along with exercise and a newfound love for lifting weights. This subreddit and r/progresspics have been a tremendous support as well. Again, I've lost around 20kgs and I was quite happy with it, but thinking back I still remember feeling like the same old "fat" me, not having any mental change regarding my self-esteem and self-love. Yet, looking at pictures from that time now, I would give anything to get there again. After a tragic end of my relationship with this person, I spiralled back into depression and have since gained everything back. This was when I got serious with therapy, after self-admitting to an open psychiatric clinic and then continuing therapy over 3 years.
Fast forward to 2020, I am at my highest weight ever (108kg at 170cm), still struggling with depression, and still struggling with self-esteem. So what has and hasn't changed? I am now in a healthy relationship with a wonderful person that is supportive of who I am now and where I want to go. I have moved to a different country to pursue a master's programme that I have been dreaming of. I have emotional support by official student counsellors and I am actively looking for a therapist now. All "ingredients" that sound promising and valuable to motivate me for my weight-loss.
But is it really about weight loss? I would guess no.
My recent successes have been either unhealthy or motivated by some external source, so they haven't been coming from within. With within, I mean out of a healthy relationship with my body and mind. My goal is to not just lose weight, but learn how to be kind to myself. It's not about a diet, it's about a lifestyle and conscious choices that reflect how I care about myself. I don't want this weight loss to take up all the space in my life, to a point where this is the first and last thing that I am thinking about daily. I hope that therapy will get me there, but in the meantime, I need to gain different perspectives on this to help me manage my life.
Here are some questions that I have:
- How can I make peace with the weight loss defeats of the past?
- How can I become more patient when it comes to weight loss to stop obsessing with "how I could look like at one day"?
- How can I stop myself from aiming of losing as much as possible in the most rapid way (1kg per week)?
- How can I disconnect my unhealthy association of a fit body with being loveable and attractive?
I understand that most answers to this will probably be therapy, but any little thought, advice, story, ... is appreciated. And even if my little wall of text is just here to show that I'm not alone with these thoughts and struggles, to know that others feel similar, this will also give me some closure hopefully.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/g9izoe/thoughts_about_weightloss/
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