First post ever! Apologies in advance for the “TLDR” material.
Let me start by saying I am so happy to have found this corner of the internet. Whenever I’ve gone through tough times in my life, finding a community that somehow understands my struggles has played a huge role in my recovery.
A little bit of background about me, I’m a Female, 31 years old, 5’3. SW: 170 CW: 158 GW:120.
Like a lot of you, I’ve been dealing with being overweight/obese for most of my life. I hit my highest weight when I was 15, at ~210 pounds.
Coming from a family of slim beautiful girls, and living in a culture where looks are everything, this certainly made me feel “less worthy”. It was back then when I first decided I wanted to change my life.
By the time I turned 16 I had managed to lose 60 pounds. I did this with the help of a professional who taught me about calories, nutrients, metabolism, and helped me find healthy replacements for my then poor food choices.
Here’s when things started to derail. You see, naturally, I hit a plateau at this point. And though I’d lost a ton of weight and was healthier than ever, I never really had any other motivation for losing weight than to “be skinny and beautiful”
At 150lbs I still hated my body, maybe even more now that I was getting stretch marks all over me. I wanted to push this Plateau so badly that I started overworking and over restricting myself, which eventually led to me quitting, convincing myself that I was “never gonna be beautiful, so might as well stop being miserable and make myself happy with what I loved the most: food”
Lucky for me, I didn’t gain all the weight back, but I did gain some, and after seeing a trend and getting really worried, I went to a new professional. This time around I became literally obsessed with losing weight, to the point of not following my doctor’s meal plan because I thought it had “too many calories”. I lost weight alright, I went down to 114lbs -my lowest ever. But as you can guess, I couldn’t keep it off.
This was a tumultuous time. I was depressed, engaged in self destructing behavior, and eventually (at 19) I diagnosed with Disordered Eating and BPD.
After my mental recovery, I gained a lot of weight again. This was almost unavoidable due to some of the medication I was taking and other circumstances. I think I had hit ~185lbs when I realized I had to get it together or this would backtrack all my personal progress and send me back into a depressive episode.
That time around I lost the weight in a more healthy way, and I managed to remain in an “OK” weight (~140lbs) for a few years.
But of course, life happens: Marriage, Office Job, Devastating Hip Arthritis Diagnosis followed by a very unsuccessful, traumatizing, painful and life changing surgery from which I never recovered fully and that left me using a cane to walk. Then divorce.
Trigger Warning
As a depressive person, I honestly don’t know how I managed to not kill myself during this time. Losing my hip, then my husband, living alone in another country and struggling to walk from my bed to my bathroom in my very very tiny apartment.
But I pulled through like never before. Maybe it was the years of therapy, maybe I just had no other choice. And eventually I met the love of my life, I landed the job of my dreams, and had a beautiful and healthy daughter.
I finally found a GOOD reason why I want to lose weight: I want to be healthier. I want to reduce the pain on my legs so I can play with my kid, live a better life, and stay strong. My disease is chronic and degenerative, so If I don’t do this, I’ll probably wont walk at all by the time I’m 50.
The 12 pounds I’ve lost so far have already made such a huge difference in my mobility. Not to mention my energy levels!
I’m sad that I had to go through all of this but happy I finally understood that we really need to treat our bodies better because we only have one life. And that my goals should be oriented towards that: a healthy and well nourished body.
I guess the saying is true, you never know what you have until you lose it! Now that my body is a lot more fragile I really see the importance of taking care of myself! And this has made my weight-loss almost effortless because I feel happy and proud of treating my body the right way.
And the added bonus: teaching my child healthy habits so that she doesn’t have to suffer later on in life like I did.
Thanks for anyone who made it through this unbelievably lengthy post!! Wishing you all success in achieving your goals.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/lyrif3/why_im_confident_this_time_around/
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