Let me preface this with, I have been a “professional” at losing weight for the entirety of my adult life. I’m 28 and starting at 17 I began a long yo-yo journey in which I shed myself of the chubby girl stigma and instead was given the opportunity to have other adjectives attached to my being. For better or for worse. At my lowest weight, I found myself being 5’10 and 125 to then balloon to what I am now 10 years later somewhere around 250. I’ve been up and down the scale, sometimes in a healthy manner but more often times than not, in an unhealthy manner. Going to such lengths as shoving three fingers down my throat in the girl’s locker room if I ever dared to break down and eat a mini snickers. My relationship with food is non-existent at best and as toxic as cyanide at worst. Exercise became a thing I was accustomed to abusing in the sense that I obsess over the number or calories I was burning and would make I the centerpiece to my day outside of school. Or, I’d have no motivation to leave my bed and would justify controlling my eating instead.
But what is even more trying, is my relationship with my body and myself by association. You see the one thing people don’t talk about as much is the way you are treated once you lose the weight. I used to think that once you lose it, the world would become shinier, doors would be opened for me and suddenly all the opportunities to have a “normal” coming of age experience would find itself to me. What I didn’t expect was the way I treated myself when I was skinny and how that changed the way other people treated me.
Former bullies were all of a sudden inclined to treat me with a modicum of respect. People smiled when I walked by. When I went to the gym, trainers would flirt with me rather than try to sell me a fitness package. But above all, my looks were my most important factor over any other attributes I had. I was literally told the only way I’d make it in life was to marry rich by an internship boss. I rarely got taken seriously for my work or thoughts but instead was easily cast as the women who was better seen the heard. Where I went wrong was associating that I was not worthy of respect unless I maintained my weight loss. Otherwise, I was a failure who wasn’t worthy of any happiness.
This eventually got to me and in the last 3 years I just gave up. It became easier to be heard rather than seen. I struggled in my jobs more than any other time before. And I basically let depression get the best of me as all I could see was the failure who got fat again.
But something happened, I saw an old friend from college “my skinny days” and they didn’t even recognize me. The worst part was she was behind me in line at the grocery store with my credit card got declined. Talk about letting someone see you at your very worst. This was my biggest fear as I’ve been trying to runaway from old me for a while now. In a lot of ways that incident was my worst fear coming to life- but I got through it because I’m finally at a place where I’m not okay with letting others set my standards or feel shame over my struggles.
I’m definitely fat, definitely not even close to okay but after a year of therapy- I’m ready to do this again but with a better mindset and plan.
Reddit, what advice can you give to someone who’s trying again for the 50 billionth time?
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2XEiprR
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