TL;DR-Lost 120 lbs and I’m learning new things that massive weight loss won’t fix.
I’ve [F34] been on my weight loss journey for a little over three years. My click moment came on 9/5/2017 when my second nephew was born. I saw his little face and knew that if I didn’t make a change I wouldn’t be a good aunt to him and his older brother. At 5’1 I was 275 lbs and three years late I’ve naturally lost 120 lbs and am now at 155 lbs with about 20 lbs to go.
I gained a lot of positive things from my weight loss including a more regulated period, improved blood markers, more energy to keep up with my nephews/niece, better mind clarity and overall increase in confidence. I know I’m in a better place, but there are a lot of unexpected things that come along from weight loss that I didn’t know would also happen.
This includes:
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Unregulated body temperature. Most of the summer I didn’t feel hot at all so I never turned on the AC. Though I didn’t feel hot or sweaty my core body temperature was up (since it was actually hot) and I would scare myself because my temperature was high. With Covid I constantly check my temperature so seeing my temp go up, but not feeling hot was strange. On the flip side, I’m actually starting to feel cold. The temperature has been dropping in NJ and it’s difficult feeling this cold. I’ve been living in hoodies, sweats and socks the last three days and still feel cold. Understanding how my body reacts to temperature is challenging.
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Disordered eating. I’m starting to find myself obsessing about everything I eat and how many calories I’m consuming. I’m so scared of gaining weight and am focused on losing the last few pounds that food is starting to be burdensome to me. I’m at a point where I wish I could be given a cracker with all needed nutrients and calories so I wouldn’t have to worry about food. I never realized that food could one day become a scary thing to me, but it is as of recently. I’m mentally exhausted from worrying about this and physically exhausted some days as well. I’m never really sure if I’m hungry or just obsessing about food again. I’m deathly afraid this will morph into an eating disorder.
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Mental health will not be cleared up from weight loss. This is attached to number 2 in a way. Losing weight has helped some of my mental health issues including better confidence since I feel empowered for naturally losing weight, but I’ve also gained new mental health issues. Though I know I’ve lost a ton of weight I still feel like and sometimes see the old fat me so I still react like the old fat me. I’ve started dating a lot more, which is great, but when men or others comment how tiny I am it makes me cringe because I still see myself as a huge person. The old fat me desperately wanted to take up less space and the new smaller me still thinks she’s taking up too much space and again it’s exhausting trying to make my mind understand I’m not the same fat person 120 lbs ago.
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I feel like a fraud and intimacy is so difficult for me. Being overweight my whole life and then losing 120 lbs has left me with saggy skin. On the outside I might look normal, but underneath my clothes I have saggy skin and breasts and I’m incredibly self conscious about it. I’ve struggled with intimacy in the past due to sexual and mental abuse from my childhood/teen/early adult years and not having the actual body I thought I would have has only compounded my intimacy issues. I can’t get fully naked in front of my partners, affection is so hard for me to give and if I do give it takes a long time to handle it which a lot of people don’t want to wait for. There will be times where even a shoulder touch will make me instinctively recoil. I am scared of getting close to someone and them seeing the me under the clothes and feeling cheated out of what they were expecting. I want to someday have surgery, but I don’t even know if it will help.
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Never fully feeling accomplished. Though losing 120 lbs is a great feat I don’t usually feel proud of myself if nothing else I feel immense shame. I let myself get up to over 100 lbs and twice my size so why would I celebrate losing something that shouldn’t have been there in the first place? Other people never have to lose that much weight and are not celebrated so why should I be celebrated for finally doing something that should be normal I.e keeping a healthy weight?
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Being afraid of letting people down. My weight was a huge taboo subject within my family except for my mother. She never hid her feelings of disgust and anger at my weight and would constantly badger and demean me about it. She would spin her abuse through the shroud of a concerned mother (which was somewhat true), but for the most part she was ashamed that her offspring was not perfect. My mother, being obsessed with her own weight and my siblings’ weight as well, is consumed with appearances so having her daughter not live up to her standards was unacceptable. I never felt pride from my mother despite being the first in my family to graduate from HS and college, working for and excelling at two fortune 200 companies, living and growing on my own for close to a decade and being financially free as well. My weight always eclipsed any accomplishment. I felt pride from my mother for the first time when she saw me after five months from isolation due to Covid. I was thin now, thinner than her actually. I felt both content and scared at having made my mother proud for the first time. I’m afraid that if I gain weight that my mother will again see me as an other unworthy of her approval. I feel like if I gain weight or fail to lose more weight that all the pride the rest of my family has in me will fade and I will disappoint them again. I feel like I can’t be normal and let my weight fluctuate ever again. One extra pound is failure.
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When will my weight be normal? My family and friends are always talking about how amazing I look now and how amazing I am for losing weight which is both great and cumbersome. My sister will sometimes say things like she’s still trying to get used to my new face and body and it sometimes freaks her out. It’s aggravating , but I understand what she means. I do ask myself when will my weight not be part of who I am anymore? When will my family and friends look at me and stop remembering the old fat me? Will that ever happen? Will my weight ever not be part of who I am? Will I ever just be normal?
I’m sorry for the long post, but I just needed to get this out in the open. All this has been weighing (haha) on me so heavily (haha again) and I don’t feel like I have anyone I can talk to that can relate.
I don’t expect any responses, but just needed to simply cry a little. I know I need to see a therapist and it’s in the works, but Covid has made me a bit scared to go to a lot of places. I need to get gel though because I’m so tired. Does anyone else relate?
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