I am new to posting to this subreddit and for my first post I wanted to get super personal. I apologize that this is so long, I have found that no one in my life likes my answers to, "how did you do it?" I've stopped being able to share my answers, because people aren't interested in what I really did. How I lost 80 pounds is an incredibly life changing thing for me, so I was hoping you all would appreciate these answers more.
So....how DID I do it?
In May, 2018, I started my weight loss journey. At the time, I weighed a little under 260 pounds. I was always told I carried my weight well, people often told me I looked like I weighed 50 pounds less than I actually weighed at any given time. My body image and self esteem fueled my perspective of myself and I struggled with a lot of body dysmorphia. A couple years before I gained so much weight, I was recovering from Anorexia. My mental image of myself was skewed and I blamed other people for it.
For reference, here is a comparison photo of my weight loss:
http://imgur.com/gallery/vI69TDJ
(I am not sure if the link will hyper link, as I am on mobile.)
I've dieted a million times in the past, so I wasn't completely new to the process. I had tried every diet you could think of, I exercised in so many different ways, and the weight wasn't really coming off. Leading up to May 2018, I had come to the conclusion that I would eat whatever I wanted, because frankly, I deserved it.
In my mind, I was never going to truly lose the weight I wanted and this misconstrued conception developed a very unhealthy attitude towards food. I fostered this mindset that I was "fighting" my body to get healthier and that it was self destructive to try and change it. I developed this "treat yo self" mindset in which every minor set back would be rewarded with food to compensate for the inconvenience. I was eating my feelings and validating it with the thought process that, "I will love myself regardless of what I look like."
This mentality caused me to gain over 100 pounds in less than a year.
Around May of last year, I decided to try diet and exercise again. This time around I did something different.
I had to cycle through dozens of highs and lows to realize that I was loving myself wrong. I had to stop rewarding my negative emotions with food. I had to stop seeing it as punishing myself when I exercised. Instead of seeing diet and exercise as a fight, I had to embrace it as a form of healing. In a lot of ways, I had to reprogram my brain to accept that loving myself meant wanting to do better for myself. I had to address the fact that I was misleading myself in believing that "I'm sexy all the time" did not excuse making unhealthy choices. I was neglecting the part of losing weight that entails accepting I'm not always going to lose it immediately. I had to consistantly remind myself that I could "treat myself" without it being an unhealthy decision. Most of all, I had to stop seeing food as good and bad and see it as healthy and unhealthy.
The biggest weight loss hurdle no one told me about was that I had to reroute my brain to a completely different outlook on life. I had to stop thinking, "punishment is key" and start thinking, "moderation is key ". It took several months to realize that the one unhealthy good item I had was okay, but that I could not keep having more of it. I trained my body to be satisfied with smaller portions by reminding myself that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.
I realized that I didn't have anyone or anything to blame for my lack of motivation or progress. I didn't gain weight because of the weather. I wasn't able to lose weight because I was big boned. I didn't love myself right because I didn't love myself, not because someone else didn't love me right. No one made me eat that entire plate of pasta. It wasn't my coworkers fault that I ate 3 slices of the pizza she bought me. I didn't gain weight this week because I drank so much water, it was because I had Taco Bell 3 days in a row. I stopped blaming other people and things and took responsibility for my own actions.
At the same time, I stopped judging myself for those actions, too. I stopped beating myself up for eating too much spaghetti at lunch. I stopped calling myself a fatty for enjoying the chips and cheese I snacked on. I gained the knowledge that the more I insulted myself, the more I was fueling the superfluous, gnawing need to eat my feelings.
Once I stopped judging my actions, the real journey began. I only cut out small things, so that I wasn't completely restricting myself. First, it was just soda. Then sweet tea. Then chips. After I cut back on the overindulging, I started craving the good things. When I did eat oreos, they made me feel physically sick. I stopped weighing myself every day and took measurements once a month. I thought longer about my side options when I ate out, rather than giving into the instant gratification of unhealthy foods. Eventually, making healthy decisions became a habit, because I wasn't making the unhealthy ones anymore.
I didn't take any weight loss supplements. I didn't try any crazy diet fads (except for a 10 day keto stint which ended in my body having severe hormonal imbalances). Alot of people stop asking for my advice when I tell them this: What I REALLY did was remind myself after every meal that, "Progress is NOT linear" and that loving myself is not always as difficult as I think it is.
TLDR; My weight loss secret is learning to love myself the RIGHT way.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2Qvcdx7
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