Hey guys!
It's officially been a year since I started my weight loss journey last June. Oddly enough my journey didn't begin with an intense push to lose weight but rather to control my spending. Obviously being at 415 pounds I knew I needed to lose weight but my diet began as I decided to become stricter with myself about budgeting. I gave myself very hard daily spending limits for food and as I struggled to follow that I realized I was setting myself up for success in a diet that I could finally follow through with. As weeks went on I realized this was about more than just my finances and committed myself to the health aspect just as much if not more so. However, I know myself and knew if I felt like I wasn't getting the results consistently or "fast enough" it would cause stress on my commitment to the diet so I decided to focus on maintaining healthy habits and being conscious of my calorie intake instead of weighing myself. The thought process was both that I felt building healthy habits and a more ingrained thought process about calorie consumption would serve me more long term and that any natural fluctuations would only frustrate me. This backfired slightly as around October I felt as if I wasn't really losing any weight. My body felt the same, no one had commented on any sort of weight loss, and I was wearing the same clothes. So throughout October my diet resolve was flimsy at best, I didn't go back to fully indulging in every whim but I was no where near as fastidious as I had been.
Cut to late November when I went to the Doctor for an annual checkup, I had been trying to work harder at my diet in anticipation of a doctors visit, but a doctor's visit is an anxiety riddled experience for any morbidly obese person. As with every check in I first weighed myself and was shocked to see I had lost 65 pounds. My doctor was very excited and supportive and kept saying "It seems like I'm more proud of you than you are of yourself!" but I was still in shock, I was used to never succeeding in any diet and thinking this had been a few months to add to the list of failures.
After the Doctor's visit I was galvanized in continuing to lose my weight. I have since started weighing myself once every two weeks, enough to celebrate my progress and assuage my anxiety fueled doubt that I'm losing weight but also enough time between weigh-ins to avoid the fluctuations I know would come with daily weigh-ins.
Quarantine hit just as I finished my Master's program. I had been in final talks for jobs with three companies after doing 2-3 preliminary interviews/assessments for each and all three called me on the same day to tell me my final interview was cancelled and they were freezing hiring. I was distraught, I was stuck at home, I was eating way more because I didn't have school and work to keep me distracted. I told myself that this might just be one of those times where I have to be happy maintaining. In the past I couldn't even maintain so in this kind of emotionally turbulent time maybe just maintaining is good enough for now. I coasted for a few weeks, not allowing myself to get back to a place of binging but not eating in a way that I was proud of either. Finally I realized quarantine wasn't going to end as fast as I wanted it to and I had to learn how to continue on in this new environment. I've adapted to controlling my eating when I'm bored at home too close to my kitchen and I can't go to the gym and even lost 12 pounds last month!
Throughout all of this the hardest thing I've had to come to terms with is that I can't be perfect. I know it seems ridiculous. I weighed 415 pounds, how should I expect my diet to be perfect now? I think that's always been a big issue for me. Diet isn't perfect? Fuck it, you won't be in amazing shape just eat whatever you want you obviously don't have the willpower to eat just chicken and vegetables so just go all the way to the other side of the spectrum! Giving yourself permission to be imperfect is hard, especially in the current age where it seems we are surrounded by perfect people because they can edit everything we see of them.
I am ecstatic I have been able to lose so much weight, but it's not all perfect. My views on my body are much worse than they were a year ago. When I was 415 pounds I was much more in denial about my body, I was able to suppress any thoughts about it. I never thought about how I didn't have any full-body mirrors in my apartment. Now that I'm working on my weight and pay more attention to it I have way more negative feelings about my body than I did 125 pounds ago, which seems counter productive. It is so confusing to me how I felt fine wearing shorts last year in the summer at 415 pounds, I knew I didn't look perfect but it was hot! This summer I've been battling with myself to wear shorts, knowing my legs don't look anything near what I would like them to.
I have been working with a therapist since January 2019. Trying to address many problems which no doubt helped in me jump starting my weight loss and now trying to deal with these new problems as they arise through weight loss. I think many people believe weight loss will solve a lot of their problems and it has been funny to me how more arise as a result, but I know this is the right path. This year has been difficult, but I am so happy I am working on my mental and physical health and hopefully soon moving forward into a good career.
I'm sorry this is so goddang long. I don't love sharing my weight loss with friends and family, of course they have noticed by now and are supportive but something like this makes me feel like I am putting a lot of pressure on myself if I share with loved ones, so I thought it would be nice to put some of my feelings about this journey into the world somehow on this one year mark. I'm not really sure what the point of this post is, other than to give others insight onto my journey. I know I lurked /r/loseit constantly throughout my weight loss as a morale boost. It's nice knowing other people out there are working at the same thing as me, we're not perfect, but that's okay!
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2U1ad1U
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