I’ve been following this subreddit for a while and thought I’d share some insights I’ve gained over the past 7 months regarding communication with my body. For reference, I’m a female, 5”5, and I currently weigh 189lbs.
I’ve been overweight my whole life. I’ve been obese for the last 15 years (I’m 33, F). I lost a solid 65lbs my sophomore year of college (230–>165) and slowly regained that weight by the time I graduated. I’ve been holding steady at 235 since then, with short periods of weight loss (10-15lbs) but I always end up back at 235lbs because nothing has ever stuck.
In November of last year, I was diagnosed with prediabetes and decided I wanted to add some type of fitness to my routine. I hate the gym and I hate indoor exercise so I started running with the C25K program. I have never been a runner. The farthest I’ve ever run was a mile in high school PE, and I don’t recall that being a pleasant experience. The C25K program changed my life. I’ve been running steadily since November and average about 2-3 miles, 3 days a week. It’s not far and I’m not fast by any means, but it’s done wonders for my physical and mental health. I also really enjoy the fact that it’s not a huge time commitment. I devote about 30-45min 3x a week and I don’t have to drive anywhere. I just step outside my front door and I’m back in half an hour.
The other thing running has done is changed my relationship with my body. I used to hate my body. I hated looking at myself in the mirror, I hated how weak I felt, how out of breath I felt walking up a flight of stairs. In looking back, I think I hated that my body couldn’t do the things that my body was meant to do. Running has provided me with a new found respect for my body and the amazing things it’s capable of. Once I started running, I noticed my body encouraging me to be more active in other ways. I walk everywhere, I go on hikes, I do yoga. I’m still overweight (technically still obese) but I’m no longer allowing my body to control me.
The other thing I changed was my eating. I’ve always been relatively healthy in my food choices (I don’t drink soda, don’t eat fast food) but I eat a lot and rarely feel full. I initially started by loosely counting calories. I didn’t log them in an app but I kept track of them in my head (I have a decent knowledge of calories from years of trying to lose weight). My goal is to eat somewhere around 1500 calories a day, but some days I eat less and some days I eat more. I don’t beat myself up when I have a bad day and I try to listen to what my body needs. I suppose it’s similar to intuitive eating, although I don’t know enough about it to say. Some days I wake up and I feel hungry for breakfast, and some days I wake up and don’t feel hungry until 2pm. Overall, I listen to what my body tells me. I saw a post recently about babies. It talked about how as babies, we are naturally intuitive eaters. We eat when we’re hungry and we stop when we’re full. At some point, our eating habits adjust to our parents schedules (we eat breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, dinner at 6, etc). I used to let food control me, and now I let my body control the food.
Ultimately, it’s calories in, calories out. But I think it’s important to pay attention to what your body is telling you. And on days where you feel like you hate yourself, or you look in the mirror and want to cry, try to remember to be grateful for your body and for the amazing things it’s able to do. Hell, even at 235lbs, I’m amazed my body was able to propel me up 3 flights of stairs to my walk-up apartment.
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