Hi LoseIt!
I feel a bit sad that this is a milestone for me, and that I should be so happy about it, because it never should have got to this level in the first place... This morning I weighed myself and I am officially out of the Obese BMI category!
As a child, I was slightly chubby, in a cute way. As a teenager, I thought I was fat, though looking back, I really wasn't. I just was never naturally 'skinny'. In university, I gained weight, and then lost it in an intense final year where I went back and forth from my desk to the gym. During this period, I was in the best shape I'd been maybe ever, and weighed 64kg. This isn't that low for my height, BMI-wise, but I looked good - I didn't look like I needed to lose any more. But at the end of that year, I had a bit of a breakdown and went on antidepressants. I struggled during my Masters, gaining more weight. Then I lost a bit during a year out where I worked and travelled. I was happy enough, hovering between 67-69. But when I started my PhD, I just gained more and more. At my highest, I was probably over 90kgs. I hated myself - I've hated myself for a long time. And until recently, I didn't feel like losing ALL this weight was a mountain I could ever climb.
But now that I have a stable job, a home, as well as the support of the same amazing boyfriend that saw me through that whole PhD and never found me disgusting (like I found myself), I feel a bit more ready to take this on. I am sick of hating myself, not fitting into any of my clothes (I refuse to buy clothes above a size 12/M, which, as you can imagine, is quite limiting at my weight), and eating self-destructively. At some point in the near(ish) future, I want to look good in a wedding dress. I want to have kids. I want to regain my old confidence.
About a year ago, my GP recommended joining a group like Slimming World. I remember feeling aghast - in my mind, that was a group for fat, middle-aged women. Along with all the self-hate there was clearly also some part of my brain that was in denial of quite how big I was. But going it alone wasn't working for me. I woud lose a few kilos, then slip, and one slip for me meant throwing the whole plan out of the window. I'm trying to change that attitude.
So on 3 October this year, I attended my first SW meeting, and, to my surprise, quite enjoyed it. I have not lived in my current city long, and there is a nice social aspect to the whole thing. Since then, I have stuck to plan, and it has not felt like a deprivation. I've found that I'm thinking about my weight and about food a lot, still, but I much prefer thinking about it in my optimistic frame of mind, and thinking about how I'm inching closer to my goal, than going round in self-hating circles. This has been a big thing for me: realising that I can either obsess about my weight in a self-destructive way that changes nothing, or I can think about it more or less constantly, but knowing that I am slowly making improvements. I think I have to accept that I will never be one of those people who can maintain a healthy weight without thinking carefully about what I'm eating.
I do feel slightly daunted about the next stages, particularly when I get closer to my goal, because I know it will be harder to lose weight, and harder to eat at deficit, especially for someone that has trained themselves to enjoy the feeling of being 'over-full', has spent a long time eating abnormal portions, and genuinely loves food. But, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I might get there.
I weigh myself every morning at around the same time, and have been tracking my weight using the Libra app. The SW scales don't agree because my official weigh-in is in the evenings, just after I've had dinner, and I seem to gain about 2kg over the course of the day! So I know this isn't really 'official' and won't be for a little while, but I'm excited and I wanted to share. I'm even more excited about the prospect of being in the 70s bracket, which I haven't seen in about 4 years. Onwards and upwards (or downwards on the scale)!
Thanks for reading, sorry for the long post.
TLDR: feeling more optimistic about weight loss than I have in a long time; now out of BMI category - 9ishkg/ 20lb lost through healthier (low-fat) diet and Slimming World weekly support groups.
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