I think this is my first post in this community but I've been an avid commenter for the past year or so on my weight loss journey. I just wanted to share a little bit of my journey and the steps I've taken in self love and self care, to cultivate a life that I wanted.
In the past few months I've been within 10lbs of my goal weight, but this morning I got down to 133. One hundred and thirty-three pounds. Three pounds away from my UGW and 50+ pounds away from the worst times in my life.
For a while I felt like I wasn't really seeing a lot of the changes in the mirror, but this past week I was having a few drinks and in the mirror in the bathroom, I had a moment where I really realized that it actually did happen, that I really did lose the weight. I really have lost 50 pounds. It seems surreal, or dreamlike. It blew my poor drinky mind, honestly.
Like most of you I had reasons for gaining weight. Mine was undiagnosed PTSD. I was living in a terrible situation, agoraphobic, depressed and suicidal, binge eating my feelings. I couldn't walk a mile. I was high and drunk all the time.
I remember wondering if I was ever going to get my life back. If I could ever crawl out of the dark, lonely cave that was my life. I was too embarrassed to ask for help or acknowledge how ill I was mentally.
It started sooo slowly, three years ago. The first ten pounds came off when I stopped eating McDonalds for every meal. (not exaggerating.)
Last year, around 175, I decided to get really serious about losing weight. I went on a vacation with my boyfriend and his family and felt out of place, despondent and ugly in a bathing suit. Just feeling really bad about myself and unable to enjoy myself because of it.
When we got back in September, I started looking on r/loseit and r/CICO. I started off doing strict 1300/day and doing some cardio at the gym. I was really, really out of shape! Most of the time I felt out of place and nervous in the gym but I kept going. I lost ~20 pounds before New Years.
Around January I switched gyms and decided I was really tired of counting calories. I started jogging on the treadmill and doing some stuff with hand weights. I got really into weights and lost another 15lbs! But I ended up hurting myself in May. I sort of stopped trying to lose weight around this time - I was about 140 and wanted to practice maintaining at that weight.
I really wanted to get down in the 130's by my birthday so in late summer I started counting calories again. I upped my calorie intake to around 1425 and started doing yoga and running. That's brought me to today, standing at 133, looking around and feeling like I'm in a dream. The difference between 140 and 133 shouldn't feel that huge, but to me it does.
Every time I reach a new low weight it makes me reflect on the journey of how I got here. I was in such a dark place for so long. It's not that loosing weight fixed any of that - losing weight has been a symptom of the self love and self care I've been crafting over the past few years as I heal my body and mind. And I could talk for ages about how exercise (especially yoga) has made me feel empowered and present in my body in a way that I thought was lost to me forever.
I never thought I would be able to do this. In fact I was 100% sure that any sense of a life like the one I have cultivated now was lost to me. The first step was to stop staring up at my goal, which seemed so far away, and instead focusing on each single step I could take each day that got me there.
This has basically been a super long post just talking about the past few years for me but I feel such a sense of accomplishment and pride in how I've taken back my life. I feel so much stronger and more powerful emotionally and physically. This sub and so many others ( r/CICO, r/1200isplenty, r/EatCheapAndHealthy, r/yoga and more) have been instrumental in providing a community that I could talk about what I was struggling with and find resources.
I hope someone out there can relate to this! And if you're standing at what feels like square one, remember that all you can control is each choice, one at a time. It may take some time, but the time will pass anyway, and you can stand and look back at the long journey behind you and feel really, really proud of yourself.
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