Hopefully posting this the right way.
Let me preface by saying I know BMI is not everyone’s favorite metric but since my CW (~165) seems reasonable for my height I felt comfortable using it as a goal.
I’ve been a lurker here for a while but have never posted anything. My story is a common one to most of you on this sub – I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t overweight. Even as a little kid I was charitably referred to as “sturdy.” Around 8 is when it started to slide into worrisome territory. At 13 I was just under 5’ tall and weighed ~150 pounds. That was the year that 2 boys in my math class decided to make pig noises whenever I walked in. Terrific. I joined Weight Watchers, which was a good step in theory, as WW can and does help a lot of people, but at 13 all it taught me was the logic that if I skipped lunch I could have candy for dinner (spoiler alert, that’s a bad plan).
Over the 4 years of high school I grew a whopping 8 inches, but also packed on over 100 pounds. Senior year was especially bad as I had mentally “checked out” and various stressful situations basically ended with me binging McDonald’s in my car before hitting up the video store for the next Buffy the Vampire Slayer dvd. It doesn’t feel like it was so long ago but I remember how hard it was to find clothes – the trend at the time was those babydoll shirts with the ribbons under the bust and I definitely wasn’t going to find one that fit. The only store in the mall I could feasibly shop at was Torrid – a sister store to Hot Topic that specialized in punk / rockabilly looks that did not fit my “please for the love of god don’t look at me” aesthetic. It was even hard to find shoes, which seems so ridiculous. I felt like I had no friends, had never been on a date, and a girl in my scout troop complained to the leader that I “took up too much room” in the car on the way to a camp. I felt hideous and worthless. My mom (who has also struggled mightily with her weight) was terrified – she knew I was heading down a dangerous path but she didn’t have any clue how to help me without making everything worse.
The summer before college my parents took me on a cruise. During one of the longer legs I was going a bit stir crazy in the room so I decided to hit up the gym. I braced myself, and stepped onto the scale.
256.
To this day I don’t know why that number bothered me so much more than the others before it – maybe it was because I couldn’t round down to 250 anymore. I was shook. I was starting college in the fall, it was supposed to be a fresh start not more of the same crap!
I wish I could say that I immediately flipped a switch and dropped the weight like that (snaps fingers) but who are we kidding? In college I learned some good lessons and some bad – you can still lose weight if you “only” eat bagel bites and also go to the gym, but you will feel really really terrible most of the time.
When I graduated college, I think I weighed around 220 – small and subtle changes of eating less junk (though still more than I should have) and moving more. After college I found some activities I really enjoyed – frisbee, hiking, and, for me, the most important step – I started to be nicer to myself. I tried to challenge myself to try new things, and meet new people, and not being so afraid of failing.
Right before quarantine I was hovering around 190 and I decided now was the time to really push – no Chipotle to tempt me – no fancy chocolate bars from the gourmet store irritatingly placed on my walk home from work. I’m lucky enough to still have my job with relatively little disruption and my husband is a great cook. I’ve been trying to really think about my choices instead of taking my easy way out. When I go into the kitchen for a snack I ask myself “do I actually want this or am I just bored? Or thirsty?” 9 times out of 10 I walk out with a glass of water and no snack. I try to take regular breaks from whatever I’m doing to do some quick exercise – jumping jacks, push-ups, whatever I’m in the mood for.
I’m not 100% done but I’ve never felt closer. I know that it will be a lifetime commitment to maintain and make sure I don’t fall back into my old ways but today I was just so happy.
You all are so inspiring – it’s a long process but you’ve all got this!
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/i9dth9/today_for_the_first_time_since_i_was_8_years_old/
No comments:
Post a Comment