The first time I tried to lose weight, it was out of anxiety that I would give myself health problems if I didn't change my ways. At 360 pounds I didn't really know where to begin, but vegetarian people seemed healthy, so I decided I would cut out meat and focus on improving my cooking skills, keeping as much of my diet as fresh and free of processed foods as possible.
I lost 100 pounds in 6 months, after which my anxiety faded, and slowly, my results faded too. I gained it all back.
The second time around I found this subreddit and was relieved to discover that I did not in fact 'just have a slow metabolism' and that my weight was under my control if I simply could eat at a calorie deficit. In my late twenties then, I was just about ready to stop being a kissless virgin and to get myself in shape and start dating. I knew that if I could willpower through on about 1200-1400 calories a day and throw in some cardio I could be one of those inspiring success stories. I kept it up for a year, but more and more frequently I would sabotage my progress by binging thousands and thousands of calories in a single day, like an addict who fell off the wagon. The binges started to add up, and the shame weighed heavily on me. I just knew that all of the friends and family I had been constantly talking about my weight loss with and who were always kind and encouraging to me were know ashamed too. I could tell that they now thought I was as much a failure as I did. The binges blurred together into one long 6 month binge where gained back 100 of the 120 pounds that I had lost.
Most recently, over the past year, I started eating more calories than I had the previous time around. About 2000-2400 depending on the day. I'm not as strict anymore. I also have a rule for myself that I have to do 30 minutes of cardio at least 5 days a week. I've lost 120 pounds again and I'm now at the point where I had started drastically failing last time. But I don't spend all of my time obsessing over my calories, and what I'm going to eat, and wanting to spend them all on junk food because I was ravenous, and getting cranky with my family at unexpected nights out. In fact, I usually now end up spending 2 hours cumulatively per day doing cardio, just because it puts me a good mood and I enjoy listening to audiobooks.
One of the most encouraging things for me is one of the employees at the gym I go to caught me checking her out one time and now I often catch her glancing at me when she thinks I'm not looking. I'm still not comfortable enough with myself to start dating but it's a real nice reminder that I'm headed down the right path and I can finally achieve my goals by focusing on meeting my daily goals rather than pressuring myself to go as fast as possible and sprinting towards longer term goals.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/315sYTx
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