I can do it. AGAIN.

Hi!

This is both a confession and, hopefully, something that can help others that, just like me, fell of the wagon completely. I'm a 5'7" female, at 31 years old. Between November 2015 and April 2016 I lost 40lbs, from ~180 to ~140. I was so proud, I was estatic and I swore to any and all Gods that I would never ever ever be fat again. For more than 3 years that was true and I felt great. And then life threw me for a nice horrible stressful 2019 and lo and behold, when I went to the doctor in late February of 2020 I was once again at 180. FUCK.

My brain started yelling at me like crazy "What had I done, why had I ruined all the hard work, how could I?" I was so so ashamed of myself and my failure. Piling on all that guilt and anger on top of my already miserable situation made me feel like I should just give up. I was doomed to be fat, this proved it, didn't it? I couldn't even do something as simple as not stuffing my face....

But there was a tiny little voice somewhere in that missery and chaos that said "Hey, look. You did just fine for years, when you where okay, not depressed, stressed out and scared 24/7. You need to sit down and look at what went wrong ASIDE from your diet. WHAT triggered all this? What made you eat the wrong things for comfort, why did you feel the need to do that? And we got this, yeah? We did it once before, we know what to do now to do it again, yes?

So I sat down and took a long good look at the past year. My moms illness had gotten a lot worse and its a progressive one with no cure, the place I had worked at for six years at that point had just got a new boss again and I came home crying more often than not because the work enviroment had gotten so bad. I was not given the permanent position I had been promised for years, throwing a complete wrench in my husbands and my plans to buy a house because w/o a permanent job I could not co-sign on a loan. Somehow we still managed to buy a small house in May, but at that point I worked six days a week, no vaccation and and on top of moving houses on that schedule, there was no time to care about when or what I ate. In Novemeber I gave my two week notice and left and slept for a month, more or less. My body and mind was burnt out completely. I was supposed to be estatic and happily set up our new home, instead I hid in bed for days. No wonder I had absolutely no energy left to care for my diet....

I can still recognize that it was my actions that caused the weight gain, but I refuse to attach any shame or guilt to it anymore. I did what I did. It happened. It wasn't a good choice, but I've learnt from it. Now I know that when my world falls apart I still revert to comfort foods, candy and overeating. That is a lesson I have to work on, propably for the rest of my life.

It took another couple of weeks before I was in a place where I felt I could try to start undoing what I did. I downloaded MFP again, set a goal of 1200kcal/day, just like I did last time, bought a small mountain of vegetables and bit the bullet.

Since mid March I've lost 11lbs. Im already a quarter of the way there, again. I am so so proud of myself, with IF and calorie counting I am once again working towards a happy and healthy self. Without the guilt and shame. I am still overweight, but each and every day is now a small step in the right direction. The big angry voice telling me I failed is silent. The small hopefull one is still there, whispering "We got this!"

I will not let this be the road block at the end of my weight loss journey, I rather look back and see it as a bigger bump among the smaller ones on a long road stretching behind me.

submitted by /u/Meenite
[link] [comments]

source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gd98t3/i_can_do_it_again/