Hi. This is an awkward post. I think it might be triggering for people with eating disorders.
About two years I started losing weight with the help of r/loseit, and I went from 225 lbs to 143 lbs in about a year. It was exhilarating. And fun. And hard. And then I put most of it back.
Right now I weigh about 198 lbs. So almost as much as I started. It kinda sucks, as you may imagine, and I was afraid of that happening. But it also made me finally face the issues I have when it comes to food. The issues that have nothing to do with not knowing the mechanics of losing weight. My history with weight loss is similar to that Mark Twain’s quote about smoking: losing weight is easy! I’ve done it a hundred times!
About two months ago I went back into therapy — this time, to specifically talk about food. It is hard, and it makes me face a lot of uncomfortable thoughts, as therapy is prone to do, like my fear of food and longing for it, my tendency to show care through food, to myself and others, to find comfort in it, as well as my unconscious belief that not eating is the final goal (thankfully, I’ve never achieved that) and my hidden desire to make things as hard as possible in order to prove that I’m not weak.
When I started counting calories, it was easy at first — so I started making it harder. 1800 cals is comfortable? Cool, let’s make it to 1200! 3 workouts a week are nice? Cool, then six should be the goal. That’s not hard enough? Let’s try eating at least 120 grams of protein and 25 grams of fiber every day, and balancing the three at the same time, while also feeling guilty if we don’t lift more than we did last week! Let’s meal prep for the week and force ourselves to eat the disgusting mushy Monday oatmeal on Sunday! In the end, it got unbearable and unsustainable.
I’ve been discussing the reasons why I want to lose weight with my therapist. It has a lot to do with vanity, of course. But I also want to feel healthy. I want to be active. In 40 years, I want to be that grandma that goes hiking with her family and mocks her grandkids for being too slow (not really, but you get the gist). We discussed what is comfortable and what is realistic for me. We’ve settled on 1800 calories — the thing that was comfortable in the beginning. Not striving to eat less. Not trying to lose the weight as fast as I can. Not making myself uncomfortable just for the hell of it. No mandatory workouts for now. No protein tracking and fiber tracking and TDEE spreadsheets. Just 1800 calories of food that I enjoy. More if I’m honestly hungry. I’ve started learning to tell when I’m hungry, and it turns out that I can notice it about 30 minutes before I actually want to eat! I’ve always thought I’m just one of these people who naturally don’t feel hunger or satiation, unless I’ve been starving or stuffing myself.
I don’t want to oversell myself. I don’t want to be too naive. I will still have days when I overeat, and days when I drink tequila and finish it off with fries — I do that like once a few months, it’s not something to really stress out about! Today was my first day back to tracking food, and I don’t want to share it with anyone, haven’t even told my husband, but I wanted to share it with reddit.
I don’t think there’s a moral to my story. I’m not sure I could have gone into therapy about that earlier, because I was perfectly aware of the option (I’m a psychologist myself, even if it’s a different kind!), on some level I was also aware that my eating behavior was not healthy. But if you needed a sign to go into therapy — consider this post your sign. Different things work for different people, some peeps have a great time tracking anything and everything without becoming obsessed, but I can’t say that about me right now. Or maybe never. I’m okay with it, I think. I will probably never be a bikini model, or some kind of amazing athlete, but I’m going to continue untangling the mess that are my food-related thoughts, and that’s the best I can do. Wish me good luck.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2MqZb51
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