At the end of 2014, when I was 21 years old, I decided that I needed to lose weight. I had recently lost my grandfather to cancer and I was very depressed as a result of his death. I had also begun to worry that I would suffer the same illness if I didn't make serious changes in my life. Quitting smoking was the first thing I did. The second thing was getting a gym membership.
I wasn't serious about the gym at all, at least in the beginning. I had a bit of money from my student loan and I purchased a few personal training sessions, like 3. Those first 3 were very hard as I struggle with anxiety and low-self esteem, but my trainer was very intuitive and knew how to push me past my limits. Being a 230lb, overweight, exceedingly anxious young woman, I couldn't even walk the perimeter of the gym without worrying that people were looking at me. My trainer pushed me to work out in the busiest parts of the gym in those three sessions. I was embarrassed and it was scary, but I did it. Then when those 3 sessions were up, she convinced me to buy six months of training. Of course, I was hesitant but I put the down payment on it and figured since I had 10 days to cancel, I could easily just cancel the next week... well, I never cancelled.
I worked with my trainer for six months. It was nothing short of a miracle that she was able to help me cut through my near-debilitating anxiety and poor self-esteem. In no time, I felt like I could work out around hundreds of people without feeling like anyone was looking at me, and even if they were, f**k 'em.
Working with my trainer, I lost almost 100lbs. Weightlifting became my passion. I was eating clean and drinking 3.5 litres of water per day. I was building muscle and I felt amazing. The year after I lost the weight, I became a certified personal trainer. Unfortunately, the gym I worked at decided to remove PT services and we all lost our jobs. I opted to go back to university at that point.
I kept the weight off for about 3.5 years, but eventually my anxiety came back (this time it was health anxiety/hypochondria) and I started gaining weight back like crazy. I would become focused on a health issue that I didn't even have and to relieve my anxiety about it, I would eat copious amounts of food every day. I'm now roughly 200lbs and I've finally started to exercise again after 4 months of being sedentary. I haven't lifted weights since summer and at my current weight, age and activity level, I decided that it's probably best to start off slow. So I have been doing 45 minutes of yoga in the mornings, followed by a 30 minute full body circuit workout at night (no equipment, just body weight for now) and 10 minutes of light bedtime yoga followed by meditation before going to sleep. I'll probably integrate weights into my routine once again when I have built up some stability or when the body weight exercises become easier. I truly feel like I'm starting over from scratch.
Eating is where I have the most difficulty. I am trying to cut back and not eat as much fast food, and I seem to be doing ok with it so far, but sometimes I binge when my anxiety gets bad. This is what caused me to regain the weight in the first place. In addition, while I drink a lot of water, I also drink way too much Diet Coke (2 cans per day) and I know I need to stop but when I try to cut it out I get headaches. Eventually I'll cut the Diet Coke out, but the first step was increasing my water intake. I'd like to do this slowly so as not to cause myself a massive failure.
Having to start over after having achieved the body I desired SUCKS, but I have accepted it and I know that being angry at myself isn't going to change my current weight. Only I can do that.
Has anyone else gained it all back and lost it again? What was your experience like? What steps should I take to ensure that I don't lapse on my weight loss again?
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