Hello, I just needed to get some of my thoughts about my almost 3 year long weight loss journey out. Sorry it's long
I've been on this subreddit for almost 2.5 years. Mostly, I lurk except for the occasional comment. After struggling with my weight my whole life (I'm 19 years old), I decided to lose weight in September of 2017. I gained weight after struggling with three autoimmune conditions. I don't blame them for my weight gain, but they messed with my appetite and I was focused on feeling better, not necessarily my weight. I got up to 203 pounds. I wasn't happy with my body and felt out of control with my eating.
A little backstory about me: I was homeschooled up until high school. During high school, I attended a charter school where I only actually went to school two days a week and the rest was independent study at home (so still kinda homeschooled). I think I have always relied on food as a comfort for loneliness and a substitute for relationships. It didn't help that my dad loved to go out to eat and eat junk food, and my mom had a history of bulimia and binge eating. Again, no blame. Plenty of people grow up with a weird, maybe not so healthy, food environment. My past unhealthy relationship with food, paired with my health issues starting at 12 years old left me with food as a crutch and weight gain as the inevitable result.
So fast forward to 16 almost 17 year old me, who decided to lose weight. I'm not really sure what the catalyst was that sparked my weight loss. I didn't hate how I looked anymore than I had at any previous moment in my life. However, whatever caused me to attempt weight loss, I am grateful for it. I found this subreddit and started to count calories. Despite being young and not having the healthiest food role models, I didn't develop an unhealthy obsession with counting calories or body image. It was honestly pretty chill. I took each day by day and didn't beat myself up when I went over for special events (birthdays, holidays, vacations, etc.).
Finally, around my birthday in 2018 and one year anniversary of weight loss, I had lost 50 pounds and decided to take a break from dieting and try my hand at intuitive eating. I didn't really have a deadline to get back into dieting, but it ended up being January of 2019 (how original right?). Well, little did I know 2019 would turn out to be the worst year of my life. I struggled with binge eating, which I had never dealt with before. Things were stressful at home, I was graduating high school, and trying to decide which college to go to. Basically, the whole year was a wash. I was consistently trying to lose weight, but didn't succeed in losing anything. I took another break during Christmas (a shorter one this time), and decided to try and get back into things January 2020. The beginning of this year was rough (still is due to Covid-19). However, I finally feel like I'm in the swing of things again and losing weight.
Basically, all of this caused me to feel like a failure. I would tell people I was trying to lose weight, but realized I wasn't actually losing any. It felt like I was out of control. However, yesterday I looked at My Fitness Pal and all of my data since the beginning. I realized that losing 50 pounds in a year is a great accomplishment! And although I haven't been losing weight for 1.5 years, I have been successfully maintaining. This might be a longer journey than I expected, but I'm proud that my weight loss wasn't up and down, but down and flat. Hopefully, I can stay strong and lose the last 10-15 pounds. I'm still working on my relationship with food and the other stressors that caused my binge eating, but I'm feeling hopeful about the future!
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2UupkSd
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