TW: sexual assault, ED. TLDR at the end.
I have lost just under 50 lbs over the last year - diet and lifting weights, so my body has changed and gained muscle in addition to losing fat.
I have been losing weight via cico starting in Jan of last year through October 2020 (lazy keto in the beginning, now focus more on CICO vs. macros). Since September, I’ve been aiming at building muscle while not counting calories, and I maintained while gaining muscle. My main goal was to stop counting calories as much and see how I did - and I succeeded and I was happy with it!
...But after finding out some family history and my mother receiving a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, I wanted to take my calories into consideration again and enter a purposeful deficit for my health. I’m still overweight (BMI 31). I still have weight to lose. I have lost 6ish lbs since January while working out.
I am more proud of my body now than I’ve ever been! I feel good knowing I can go on a 16 mile hike and not be sore the next day because my body is strong. I feel better in the clothes I wear. I feel more confident to wear a sleeveless outfit (where prior to last year, I haven’t been since high school). I enjoy the feeling of being strong and seeing my body change.
We’ve all read it before - losing weight doesn’t fix the mental issues you’ve always had. And I agree! I have a lot of self-esteem issues and losing weight did not make them go away. I do think taking ownership of my body and my health gave me confidence. Knowing I was the owner of what my body could and would be was so empowering to me, versus the old mentality I had of “this is how I am, there’s nothing I can do”.
I love wearing matching sets to the gym or finding an outfit for mundane tasks out in the world because it makes me feel confident and good about myself to be “put together”. When I was younger, I never put effort into how I dressed. As I got older, I wanted to find my style and be more fashionable, and doing so gave me so much confidence. But I didn’t realize how much my extra weight was a shield for me from other people. Ever since I crossed the 40lb lost threshold and starting buying newer clothes that properly fit me, I have started getting a noticeable amount of unwanted attention. I get approached at the gym. I have men purposefully block me while I am walking to force me to talk to them. I was buying wings after a gym session (so I looked sweaty, hair all the wrong way, mask on, smelled, whatever) with headphones in, but that didn’t stop a man easily twice my age from asking me to removing my headphones so he could tell me how much he liked that I “worked for my body.”
I’m not bragging. I hate the attention. I dressed up as a heavier person for me and now I feel like I can’t anymore because I feel unsafe. I was sexually assaulted twice as a kid, and receiving more unwanted looks/comments from men than I am used to just makes me feel unsafe. It makes me want to hide my body behind oversized clothes so I will be overlooked. It makes me want to never go out in public. It makes me want to gain the weight back. It doesn’t happen often (maybe once a month) but it’s enough to make me anxious and self conscious and insecure.
On another side, I notice other women’s bodies more than I ever have before and it’s 100% comparison (which is always the thief of joy). I feel like I can’t be happy with myself because my body “doesn’t look like hers”. Or maybe I shouldn’t order the shake I’ve been saving up (calorically) for all week because the girl serving it has the body I wish I had. This feeds into borderline ED thoughts and I sometimes have to remind myself that I deserve food and that underrating leads me to binge and takes me further away from the goals of HEALTH that I have. I know that sustainable weight loss and health come from small lifestyle changes. Starving myself or denying myself foods that bring me joy (in moderation) is not the way to change my health in the long term. I still have those thoughts and I wished I didn’t. My body is different than the ones around me - that doesn’t make me or anyone else less than, and comparing myself to others is unfair to me and to them.
Constantly paying attention to what I eat and my body has made me more obsessive over it, in a way I wasn’t before my mom’s diagnosis - I am sure my anxiety over her diagnosis is transferring over into my body image. And it’s slipped away from insecurity about my body to insecurity over my relationship, minimizing all of my loving bf’s affections to the way I look, and how I’ll lose him because there are women more (_________) than me. He has genuinely been more supportive of me than anyone (been with him since before I lost weight), none of this is coming from him and I genuinely mean that. He loved my body before and he loves it now - but he loves ME first and who I am. And while I can say that and know it objectively, my insecurity tells me it’s a lie.
I think I’ve seen a post mention something like this before but I wanted to share it again in case there’s anyone that needs to hear it (or hear it again): Losing weight won’t solve your mental health problems. Losing weight has shown me how much I need to work on myself, as it gave me something else to be anxious and insecure about instead of my weight. I’m about to hit a major milestone (50lbs!) and don’t feel celebratory because my mental health is just so not there.
I am looking into a therapist because I need to talk about my mom, I need to work through the emotional baggage there, I need to work on building a better relationship with myself. There is strength in knowing when you need help, and more strength in actually asking for it (can’t tell you how many times I’ve said I need a therapist but haven’t actually seen one).
If you’re struggling with your mental health, whether you’re in the middle of your journey, a lurker, you’ve fallen off track, or you’re thriving in maintenance, I hope you seek out the help we all deserve as humans. 💙
TLDR: lost weight and became insecure about things other than my body. I know I need to see a therapist, and I’m going to - because losing weight won’t magically solve my problems and because I know I am worthy of help.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3trJRW2
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