Hi, r/loseit! I am an 18-year-old female who has posted on this sub once or twice before. Awhile ago, I posted my story on how I was always overweight or obese as a kid and decided to turn my life around last year. I’m not sure how to link my other posts here, but it can be easily found in my profile if you want to see why I’m apologizing. It was awarded a silver. And it was also locked not very long after I posted it.
I feel unworthy of that silver. I feel I’m unworthy of getting any sort of praise. Backstory: I was overweight/obese my entire life. My highest weight was 230 pounds at 17 years old and 5’2.5. I was consuming around 2300 calories at that time, all fried and junk food. I changed my habits literally overnight and went from one extreme to another in 24 hours. Dropped down to 800 calories with mild daily exercise, sometimes moderate if I climbed 6 stories to get to my office. I ate (and still eat) mostly clean and whole foods. I’d been drinking only water way before this, so cutting out soda and juice wasn’t a problem, thankfully.
I caused a bit of a stir on here when I posted the full, detailed story. It seems everyone was shocked that I had dropped down to 153 pounds in 7 months. That’s about 11 pounds a month on average, 77 total. I was losing 4 pounds each week at one point. I didn’t know that was abnormal. I thought any weight loss was good. This sub taught me it wasn’t good, considering I wasn’t super morbidly obese and had a capacity to lose 30 pounds a month. I was 153 pounds in March. I started my weight loss August 2018. Maybe it wasn’t the rapid weight loss that alarmed you. I think it was my way of doing it. I’m going to tell you the things I didn’t explicitly state in that post, and why I understand your frustration with me.
800 calories is too low, and I understand that now. I maintained a diet of 800 daily calories for maybe 4 or 5 months before my body began derailing. Mind you, I was doing intermittent fasting (16:8) and am still doing it now (18:6). Every time I reached above my head or stood up to quick, I saw black spots in my vision and got incredibly dizzy like my blood pressure dropped to a deadly level. Or rose, I’m not quite sure. I should’ve started eating more when I felt it the first time, but I figured “Hey, it was once and it went away after a few seconds, there’s no harm.” And the first time it occurred, I didn’t know it was from not eating.
I was stupid. I kept on eating like that. 800 calories WITH exercise. Every single day. Even on the holidays; I would not eat anything until my family came over and brought their holiday goodies. I ate “reasonably”: thanksgiving, I only had a couple servings of Spanish rice (the only meat I eat is chicken so no turkey for me), a bread roll, and a few tablespoons of filling out of the leftover apple pie. I weighed myself the next day, was up a pound. I absolutely lost it, because I didn’t know jack about fluctuation and that the sodium in the rice would cause me to gain a little. I cried (actually cried) and limited myself to 600 calories that day as a punishment or redemption.
I went to Graceland a few weeks later. My mom and I drove there from Houston (10 hours), so I made sure to pack my health foods in the ice chest and stay on track the entire trip. 800 calories even if I felt dizzy while touring the place. Fasting at my set time even if I got hungry afterwards from all the walking. One night, we got back to the hotel after hours of walking. I was starving, but it was past my time to eat. I began my fasts at 9 pm. It was 9:03 pm. My mom had grilled chicken from the Hard Rock Cafe. She told me to eat it. I told her no, that I had to wait because I couldn’t break my fast. She said I wasn’t allowed to leave her side until I ate it. I was really upset and kept saying no. She persisted and shoved it in my hand. Did I cry? A little. And I gobbled that whole serving down. I was starving to death. I think literally. When I got home, I’d lost a few pounds.
I was kinder to myself at Christmas a week later. Had a couple amazing frosted cookies and rice. I didn’t weigh myself afterwards because I knew the consequences. I waited a day or two. Was still up a little. I didn’t take it out on myself. I just got back on track and lost it all and then some soon after. Still 800 calories.
Before I knew it, I was 160 pounds. This was in February, around my 18th birthday. I started getting ill. I was in driving school and had to take a jacket with me because I had these constant shivers and was always freezing, though the building was warm. My eyes looked kinda sunken in. At this point, I was around 900 calories a day at most.
My mom went to her own doctor for a checkup and told him how I lost my weight (I wasn’t there, it was just casual conversation). He was alarmed and told her to tell me to STOP doing that, because I was under-eating and eventually my organs would begin shutting down. She relayed this to me. I was a little scared, yes, but not nearly enough.
March of this year, I decided that getting to 1200 calories a day is not that bad. It was difficult, and I did plateau. When I made the “uproar” post that month, I was at 1100 calories. People congratulated me, but most were very concerned for me, especially when I said I had been at 800 at one time. Some said that I had symptoms of an eating disorder and that the mods should take care of the post because of harmful content. Some even went to my other posts and comments and dug up some details I didn’t expose here.
I get it now. And I’m sorry that I caused such a panic here. I’m very sorry, and I mean that with my entire heart. I’m sorry that I worried some of you, and I’m sorry that it seemed I was trying to promote an eating disorder. While I was never “hospital” sick, I was almost there. My mom even threatened to take that extreme if I kept on.
Now, I’m consuming 1200 calories. I am quite active on r/1200isplenty and r/intermittentfasting. I still exercise and sometimes exercise twice a day to tone my skin up. I am 145 pounds as of today, touching 5’3. I’m slowly but surely losing and am almost at my target weight of 135 pounds. I don’t feel sick anymore. I feel okay. But I feel really bad and sorry that I made it seem I was promoting something toxic. I don’t feel worthy of the silver it was awarded. I should have never made that post sound the way it did. I should have showed the ugly behind it all. I should have told you how I hurt myself and what I did to finally do things the right way.
Thanks to you all, I know what is healthy and sustainable now. I’m doing okay. I’m so sorry to everyone, for that post. I love this sub and I love all of you. I don’t ever want to make a borderline eating disorder seem okay or sustainable even for a month. It’s not. I am sorry.
So again, I sincerely apologize. And I thank you all for getting me to finally wake up and open my eyes. Today, I’m stronger.
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