How would you explain the feeling and perks of being healthy to someone who has never not been fat?

I originally posted this as a reply to this post, but I figured it's worth posting on its own.

I have been obese since the age of 8 and fat since the age of 4, and I have almost no memories whatsoever of my childhood prior to the former age. It's now been almost 20 years since then, and it's also been almost a full year since I crashed out of my first serious weight loss attempt after it, through the immense stress it caused me despite taking it very slowly, cost me my first job. As I sit here at 4 AM typing this after getting a nasty foot injury and collapsing from severe physical exhaustion after another long brisk walk, it's hard to come up with any internal justification to give it another serious go that actually means something to me personally and isn't just an objective fact.

I'm looking at many of the points mentioned in this post and I just cannot relate to them. I'm an introvert who's largely uninterested in other people and quickly exhausted even by my own friends, and vanity means so little to me that I haven't bought any new clothes in the last 5 years because I can always just wash and wear what I've already got. I know I get tired quickly, but I have no internal comparison point for that as I've never not been overweight, and even at my slimmest point early last year I could not find any enjoyable physical activity that would be made better through being slimmer and more energetic.

These things mean nothing to me - if anything I only ever had a phenomenally easy time losing weight when I wasn't thinking of any reasons to do it, but as me vomiting at the gym, becoming stressed and paranoid to the point of getting hallucinations once and ultimately losing my own job showed me, discipline for its own sake could only get me so far. Worse yet, relapsing, fully giving in to my old bad cravings and habits and regaining all the lost weight energized and relaxed me to such a degree that it gave me the confidence and strength to get and keep a new, well-paying job far beyond my skill level. Because of this, I am the happiest I've been in the last 7 years, yet paradoxically, it is exactly what brought me here again, wondering if weight loss is worth trying again. Unlike when I mentally collapsed, I feel objectively ready to pursue it again, but I know that, without a personally meaningful reason to do it, history will repeat itself no matter how slowly I take it. In fact, I feel dirty for saying this, but I feel no shame for getting to this point, staying here for almost 20 years and returning to it after my failed attempt, yet I feel deeply ashamed for trying to lose weight because I had no personally meaningful reason to do it, it made me deeply unhappy and persisting via sheer discipline ultimately caused me so much mental grief that it cost me my job at the peak of the pandemic and set my life plans back tremendously. I know I should do it eventually because I refuse to ignore the objective, "you will die otherwise" aspects of being healthy, but I also know myself well enough to know that discipline and those objective aspects aren't enough for me anymore.

submitted by /u/dniwehtotnoituac
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/kmtb2w/how_would_you_explain_the_feeling_and_perks_of/