LONG POST BUT I HAVE A POINT TO MAKE :)
So I wanted to share with you all some new insight I got. Growing up as a kid, I always heard the mantra, "Take on something new, give up something old" from my dad. When I would start adding new hobbies, responsibilities, or challenges, he would ask me, "So what are you giving up?" It was a good way to remember to stay balanced.
Back in 2017 at age 37, I lost 20lb. It was a long, difficult, consuming challenge but at the time I was a long-term single woman and didn't have a lot of demands on my plate. Well once I got down 20LB, my world suddenly changed very quickly: my mom was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, I met my husband a few months after that and we were married within 13 months, and my older dog started really declining and requiring a lot of care. The 13 months between meeting my husband and marrying him were a huge whirlwind: he lived an hour away, I was working 12 hour shifts and getting up at 0500, my dog was steadily going blind and incontinent. I'm a dispatcher and I work a very stressful job. My husband and I had just under 4 months to plan a full wedding for 100 guests; it was an incredibly busy, stressful time.
During this whole time, my weight started creeping up again. I tried so many, many times to get back into calorie counting and food tracking. I still was exercising and still doing a lot of food prep. But I just could not seem to stick to calorie counting and food tracking. Like many brides, I wanted to lose weight for the wedding but I didn't lose more than a few pounds.
]We got married and my husband moved in. He was 47, I was 39 and both of us had been long-term singles who never lived with someone before. It was a big adjustment, and at the same time my dog was rapidly declining and needing a great deal of care before we finally decided to let him cross the rainbow. The first year of our married life was full of a lot of change; during this time, I kept trying to restart my diet but I could not stick to it for the life of me. I was constantly berating myself and feeling like a failure that I could not muster the willpower to lose weight.
I also had some bad bouts with my regular migraines in 2020. Back in January, I had a migraine so bad it knocked me out of work for two weeks and ever since then, exercise has triggered migraines. I also threw my back out so badly that I had to wear a corset for three days and it took me long minutes to lie down, I strained my neck muscle so it was hard to turn my head, and I developed plantar faciutus!
Then COVID hit and I slunk into a two month eating binge. I ate so fricking much during those two months that it is a wonder I didn't burst out of my clothes.
Well, about two weeks ago, I don't know, I just kinda decided, "Okay, I'm ready to lose weight." I decided to try a new calorie counting app, reasoning that I had given up on MyFitnessPal so many times that I had negative emotions about it. I tried the LoseIt! app. To my very surprise and happiness, I have been going strong for two weeks and feel very motivated! I've lost three pounds and I can already see new ab definition, a stronger jawline, and other physical signs that I am losing bodyfat.
The ONLY real thing I see that changed is that the whirlwind of the past three years has finally settled down for me and I have more mental space to devote to the work of losing weight. My husband and I are settling nicely into marriage, my mom is doing well, work has slowed down, we are adjusted to the changes of COVID as much as can be, and I just finally feel like I have some breathing room in my life I can devote to weight loss.
Against the advice of my father, I had spent the past couple years adding and adding and adding to my life without giving up anything. I don't think my inability to stick to weight loss was driven by laziness: I think I was just plain stressed out and overstretched and I simply did not have the bandwith to add the work of weight loss.
As Americans, we tend to strongly believe that you can do everything you want as long as you are organized, disciplined, and scheduled enough. There are those people who can manage an extreme amount of work and commitment without going nuts. My former Crossfit instructor was one of those guys - he could work a 70 hour week and still workout 90 minutes a day and follow a strict diet. In fact, when I was in the height of wedding planning/dog peeing/work stressing frenzy, he started berating me for "not trying hard enough" at fitness and I broke down in tears. Problem was: this guy was the exception when he believed he was the standard that all people should follow. The reality was he lived an extremely disciplined, structured lifestyle that most people could not, nor would want to follow.
Simply put: I just didn't have enough margin in my life over the past couple years to devote to weight loss. Losing weight can be a very consuming process: you need mental space, energy, and time to pursue it. But now, thankfully I do have that margin. And I am seeing those results!
So thoughts for you all, what are you giving up to make room for weight loss?
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3g79shg
No comments:
Post a Comment