I've struggled with weight loss for a while. For 2015 to 2020 I always wanted to lose weight, fantasised about how life would be so great once I lost it, how everything would fall into place. But I never got started. I finally got around to it during quarantine like a lot of people. I implemented a healthy diet and half an hour of exercise every day. Great! Dream life here I come! And drum roll please I lost.... 5 pounds, in a week. Then i started eating again. I had fallen back into the same self destructive spiral: what's the point of trying to lose weight? You'll always be like this etc. Life fell back into misery. I just desired food too much.
Over the next few months I carried on as I was, eating and playing games, rarely going out. Scrolling through reddit. I was miserable often, always about my weight, my lack of social skills, the list goes on. I'd occasionally find myself reading or watching stuff about mental health, eating and habits but I never took it seriously. I thought that while a part of my eating was emotional, it wasn't a huge part. So i never really applied much of the advice I heard/read/saw. The only improvement was that I was being more open about my struggles with my friends, and they were more open about theirs with me. While at the time this didn't improve my overall state it greatly improved my mood on those days I wasn't feeling so good - basically talk to your friends when you're feeling down, if they aren't having it, fuk them, find someone who will life is so much more bearable when you can share the shitty parts with someone.
So a few months passed and here we are, early October and I'm okay mostly, but miserable once every few days, and I don't know why but I end up binge eating, going to my favourite corner shop or stopping off at the local tesco or sainsburys. But one thing from all those mental health posts and videos sunk in: mindfulness. I never actively acknowledged it or actively tried to apply it to my life, but somehow I started thinking about things i was doing and how i was feeling when i was doing them. So I started thinking today why did i just buy 6 pounds of food? I'm trying to save wtf have i just spent that for? The logical reason I led myself to was that I wanted to eat those foods, but when I thought deeply about that, really thought, I realised I didn't desire the food itself. I wanted the feeling of the food, the feeling of being full. Food fills a void in me. I had fragments of this thought over the past week or two but today it seems so clear. My mind seems clear for the first time in a long time. I have a deep emotional connection to food. It makes me feel good. Especially when I'm in mental disarray. I'm always angry at myself for spending so much on junk food, feeling crap at the end of it and questioning why I ate it. But today I realise why despite being later pissed off for buying so much junk food, I always ended up with a bagful. I haven't been buying the food, I've been buying freedom from feeling miserable. Idk what it was but today, it seemed so clear how much I didn't actually desire to eat the food and I felt so stupid for spending 6 whole pounds on something I didn't really want. One of the biggest reasons I couldn't quit junk food and overeating for more than that week was because it's the only way or at least the only real way I've been dealing with how I feel.
(Holy shit I'm like one of those alcoholics in those movies, drowning themselves in hooch after some traumatic event)
Worst part? After eating it I didn't even feel that much better. I just became tired, felt like crap physically and was still miserable. The only thing that improved my mood? Talking to my friends. At first not even about feelings, just talking to them helped me 100x more than the food.
So where does that leave me? I don't know what the future holds, whether or not I'll lose the weight but I'm hopeful, and even if I don't end up losing it at least I've posted this, maybe it'll help someone if it makes sense? Idk either way whether this gets 1 or 1k upvotes, at least it's out here, on reddit so next time I feel like eating my feelings I remember today, how shit it felt after eating and how much better relying on my friends was to cope.
People, we need to consider the mental aspect of eating more. There's a reason I couldn't give up eating. It's my coping mechanism. But by realising when I'm not feeling right and want to turn to food I will try my best to remember to be mindful, realise something isn't right and fix it, not through my destructive habit but by relying on my friends and developing new, healthier coping mechanisms. Weight loss has always been about calories, exercise, hard work etc. But from now on it's about first, no longer emotionally relying on it, then being better than yesterday, improving my diet bit by bit each day and then bringing sone exercise in.
Wish me luck, and good luck to you all. Love yourself or some sappy shit like that.
Links to shit I think is really helpful or some crap :
no zero days truly something to live by
getting back on track, what failing with your weight loss journey actually is (its not eating junk or overeating) Changed my perspective on this whole thing. Let's hope it'll help stay on track and not give up with one little failure.
Also check out r/getdisciplined it has a lot of good shit.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/352HoHd
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