(tw: suicide mention)
For as long as I can remember I've been trying to lose weight. From approaching chubbiness as a kid to first becoming obese as a teenager to rapidly becoming underweight through disordered eating to becoming morbidly obese as I became an adult, I have been at war with my body for more than half my life. I thought about my body more than I thought about anything else in those years: the shame, the guilt, the constant obsession, the fantasy of what it would be like to have a body that I desired. My life went on. I moved away from home and went to university. The day I finished my degree I sat in the graduation hall picking through every other student in the audience, hoping that I wasn't the fattest person in the room. Out of the hundreds there, when I found one other student who looked heavier than me I felt nothing resembling relief. The night before graduation, I had made a plan to kill myself if nothing had changed by the time I turned 25.
The truth is that by that point I didn't believe anything could change. My mind and body were out of control. I was too anxious to leave my apartment, too depressed to leave my bed. Eating -- alone, mindless -- brought me solace. Even then I wasn't naive enough to think that my weight was the sole root of my problems, but it was the most visible and constant of what I considered to be my personal failings. And I was still ashamed to talk about it or look for help. As I grew fatter and more miserable, I still had friends and family and successes and support. There were still things I wanted to do, or remembered that at one point when I had feelings I had wanted to do. Somehow I kept going.
When I look back now, dissociating from my body in those years is how I survived. I never left those struggles behind but as much as I could I left my body. My mind and I moved to a new city and started working on our next degree, body and emotions in tow. I was always just a look in the mirror away from falling apart.
About a year ago I moved on to my next degree and my next city. I was at my highest ever weight last Christmas: 280 lbs. I can't put my finger exactly on when things began to change. There was a class I was taking at the top of a hill and suddenly I was walking more. I took up journaling again. I helped a friend move and was too anxious to Uber home so I walked across the city. Another friend needed a place to stay during lockdown and we started cooking together. One morning I woke up afraid to leave the apartment again and I didn't blame myself. I told myself that it was alright to just do what I could when I could -- and I believed it. Since last Christmas I've lost 38 lbs. The numbers on the scale are encouraging but they're not what I notice most. What I notice is that the first thing I feel in the morning these days isn't guilt. I look in the mirror and I'm happy with what I see -- not just where I'm headed, but my body at this very moment. I live in it.
I don't know how exactly I got here. It takes effort, yes, but I was trying my hardest to lose weight for years. Having people around me who support me and who model (somewhat) healthy habits has been hugely empowering. I'm starting to have conversations about my body with them. Of course, the pandemic gave me a chance to disrupt some of my worst habits and made room for new ones. But even before covid, I think that the emotional work I was beginning to do laid the foundation for the sustainable weight loss I'm now achieving. I've learned patience and the importance of being on my own side, including my body's side.
If you've read this far, maybe you can relate to some of these experiences. I'm writing this because for so long I tried to lose weight in a way that separated me from my body. I want to acknowledge the hopelessness and harm that accompanied my weight loss efforts for so long. I feel a little silly writing all this out, but like I said, I'm starting to have conversations about my body. So I thought I'd start one here, about hope and losing weight in an emotionally healthy way.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/39iXLTK
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