Yes, slightly edited Mr Robot quote as the title :)
Hello everyone. I'm 32F 5'5 1/2 and I've been struggling with with my weight since I was about 13 years old. Looking back, I was a serious sugar and carb addict, and overate these things massively. The night of my high school graduation, I was my highest recorded weight ever: 171 pounds, almost obese. Living in a country in Europe in which most people are fairly slim, this made me the fattest girl in my high school. That same night, I was told that if only I wasn't so fat, I might be one of the prettiest girls of my graduation class.
A rather disordered emotional relationship with weight loss followed. I moved to South Korea shortly after graduation and quickly dropped 15 pounds there without even trying, just from not having an abundance of sweets and bread to eat. But I still wasn't slim. Compared to the finely-boned Korean girls, I was still big and heavy. I started actively trying to lose weight, going on multiple day juice fasts and overexercising at the gym until I binged. Rinse and repeat.
Over the next 10 years, I still bounced anywhere between 135 and 165 lbs. Though this is 'only' overweight rather than obese at the higher end, I had a lot of excess fat on my abdomen, which is unfortunately the most dangerous area of the body to store it in. My emotional health would be heavily dependent on my current weight. I repeated the following pattern during all this time: periods of eating "whatever I wanted", slipping back into my sugar addiction until my clothes no longer fit. Then dieting to get back to a level where I could comfortably fit again, eventually reach a plateau, and binge out of frustration. Yes, I successfully managed never to cross the line into obesity, but I was far from healthy. I don't believe I qualify as bulimic because my disordered eating was infrequent, but I stuck a finger down my throat more times than I'm happy to admit.
Two months ago, in February 2020, after my clothes once again started to not fit me well anymore, I started my most recent round of weight loss. But it's different this time. In fact, it's so different that this time, more than any other, I'm confident that I can reach all my goals, and more.
The secret? Somehow, I've managed to remove negative emotion from the process.
I am an engineer, but somehow, the critical thinking skills that help me to do my job faltered in the face of accepting and working with the numbers on a scale. Somehow, I use natural laws at work all day every day, but would react to unexpected numbers on a scale with crying and a disproportionate emotional reaction, rather than analyzing where these numbers came from.
I'm down to 142 lbs as of this morning, down 8 pounds since early February. It's up one pound from last week, even though I ate between 1200-1500 calories every day, with consistent HIIT exercises and long walks. A year ago, I would have despaired, emotionally grappled with this gain, restricted more and led myself down a path with only a binge as its logical end. This time, I'm going to keep on what I've been doing, and TRUST THE LAWS OF PHYSICS.
Math doesn't care about my feelings. My body only works with what I give it and what I take from it and fat is burned according to simple metabolic processes that are entirely under my control.
That extra pound I gained after a week of sticking to my calorie budget is not an accurate reflection of the progress I've made. How much water weight my body holds on to is NOT under my control, unlike the amount of calories I give it. So there is absolutely no logical reason to stress about it.
And it's exactly this confidence that is making me think that this 'round' of weight loss will finally be it. The healthy, sustainable, reasonable journey into a fitter life.
I know, it's easier said than done. For many of us, our weight is intrinsically tied to our self-worth and our confidence. Gaining weight feels like a failure. Going over our allocated budget for a day feels like failure. I still need to take a second to fight down the panic and to return to a more objective state of mind, but for the first time in my life, reason is winning.
I fully believe that this is the most important aspect for weight loss. Believe that you are in control. Believe that you will lose weight if the CICO balance is negative. Maybe not right now, maybe not even in a week, but at the end of it all, the fat will go if you eat the amount of calories your body needs to maintain a certain level of fat, and no more.
Internalizing that it's all under my control -- and that keeping control is easy so long as I don't let panic, fear, and doubt cloud my judgment -- has been the single most important step I've taken toward a healthier life.
Again, it's easier said than done. But don't give up. It took me 18 years of ineffective dieting to muster up the strength to shrug off an unexpected water weight gain, but I hope some of you can get there sooner.
We've got this.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3cNF6Oj
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