F(19) SW: 265lbs CW:243 GW: 160
So, for a bit of context (skip to the end with the bold text if you just want tips no story): I've been overweight/obese my entire life, and have had very low self-esteem and self-image for most of this time. My family and especially my father made this worse for most of my life-- the former constantly scrutinizing my weight and telling me that I need to lose weight without any guidance or help on how I might do that, and the latter being a neurotic, narcissistic gym freak who was never happy with anything I did and constantly disappointed in my appearance. There was a point when I was 15-16 when I made more friends and played sports at school, and started to accept/love my body for being strong and healthy despite my family constantly making me feel as though it was something to be hated/modified/scrutinized... but then a series of horrible events meant I had to move multiple times away from the home I'd always lived in and a support network I'd just found, to a new country (the US) with a different culture and, to be blunt, horrible horrible food. I became very depressed, to say the least. I think I was somewhere in the 160-180 range at the time and went up to 235 in the two years I was there.
When I graduated from high school, my mom paid what was, in hindsight, an inordinate amount of money to put me on a medically assisted weight loss plan over the summer. I think I was eating ~1200-1400 cal daily, I was taking some medication daily and had a shot of something (I honestly don't remember what it was, but it, along with the other medicines I was on made you burn fat faster somehow?) once a week. I went from around 235 at the time to 204 in two months and honestly, I felt great! It was the first time in my life I had consciously put effort into losing weight and it actually happened. And it was the beginning of me kind of being okay with my body again. All I had to do was not gain it back at university, and not waste my mom's hard-earned money.
Clearly, that didn't happen. Combining the newfound freedom of living on my own, being able to purchase my own food, finally being able to legally have alcohol and binge drinking with friends at least once a week at uni in the UK, a problematic relationship with food/eating, and covid-- I gained it all back + 35 more lbs.
So it's January 2021, I weigh more than I ever have in my life, and I realized that my mental health was starting to suffer not only because of the isolation of lockdown but because the self-loathing and hopelessness and neuroticism that I've always associated with my body and with food was coming back. Over the year and a half I've been at university I've grown a lot and the things I've learned and people I've met have helped me to really understand my trauma and myself. One of the outcomes of this is I've come to terms with the fact that I have probably suffered from some form of disordered eating for a while. To be clear I am NOT self-diagnosing myself with an eating disorder, but I've recognized that I cultivated a very unhealthy relationship with food over the years and it's not sustainable. Food became something I didn't deserve because I was fat, but couldn't stop eating because I was fat.
On some days I would try to see how little I could eat and I'd make myself so upset and so hungry that I'd then binge whatever I had in, anything to make me feel better. On other days I'd be so angry at the world for telling me I couldn't eat what I wanted to; I love to cook, and food is and always will be one of the main things connecting me to my culture and to my home, so I'd fill my days with decadent meals and really, really enjoy them. Those days were good days. But then, eventually, I'd feel guilty about it all and try (and fail) to restrict myself again as a way of making up for it.
So, here we are: the juicy bit, the bit with what I actually did with all of these realizations and my newfound determination.
I did some research and started tracking what I was eating with MyFitnessPal. For a week, I didn't change what I was eating and simply tracked my normal eating patterns to get an idea of what got me here. I realised that the main culprits, aside from a lack of activity due to lockdown, were bread, alcohol, pasta, whole milk, and cheese. So now, I only buy small loaves of bread on or before the day I'm going to eat it, and I plan ahead for it in my calorie allowance. I buy semi-skimmed milk (I hate skim it's milky-water you can't convince me otherwise) and measure it when I use it. I don't buy cheddar anymore unless it's for a specific, special meal, (I use parmesan instead for most of my former cheddar applications) and I always measure soft cheese (cream cheese) when I use it. Lockdown has helped with the alcohol but social drinking will come back and I will have to be more mindful in future about it. It will be a matter of planning, I suppose. And finally, the pasta was a matter of portion; I don't ever eyeball pasta portions anymore-- it's risky business.
I already had some nutritional knowledge from watching my mom diet her whole life and being on that medicated diet and my own academic curiosity about biology, but I needed to know what would work for me.
I joined this subreddit, I watched youtube videos, I did some calculations. I know some things about myself and that those things will not change, so I needed to make a diet plan that would conform to those things, not the other way around. They are:
1) I can't intentionally do intermittent fasting. Being in the fasting window really triggers me and takes me to that place where food becomes a reward for good people with good morals. I can't do that, so it's out of the question until further notice.
2) I love to cook, and I love the artistry and the craft of food. This is both a strength and a weakness; I want to make and experience exciting foods, and at 1500-1600 calories and three meals a day, that gets difficult. But two meals a day? then it's a lot easier. So, I drink ONE coffee in the morning (I can get very sensitive to caffeine so I never have more), and lots of water, and that keeps my appetite at bay until lunch, at which point I will have something very light (300-500 cal; think salad, healthy charcuterie trays, nice sandwiches) because I don't typically get ravenously hungry in the daytime. Then, I can have a magnificent dinner of my choosing (within reason :P).
3) I hate cardio. So I will not be forcing myself to run, no matter how good it is for me. I will be walking as much as I can, and doing yoga because yoga makes me feel strong, happy, energized, and focused.
4) I hope someday to do more strength training at a gym, but the gym has always been and still is a huge source of anxiety for me. Knowing that, I will not force myself to go because I'm not yet mentally prepared for it. I want to be someday, but right now the stress isn't worth it. I also couldn't even if I wanted to because of lockdown so that helps.
5) In the past, the scale triggered a lot of anxiety and dread and self-loathing. I would get very caught up in the number, especially when it wasn't a number I wanted to see. So, I bought a mechanical scale that reads in Stone and kilograms, because I'm more used to Pounds. As a result, the readings are inherently inaccurate, so I'm not actually able to obsess over decimals even if I wanted to, and the units are unfamiliar so I don't have that automatic emotional response. But, I still have a way of cumulatively seeing a difference in weight as the little needle more frequently points to lower and lower numbers. I also measure myself once a month so I can have another metric to track progress.
Other things I'm doing:
- I don't beat myself up if I'm over 1500 cal by 100-200 calories. I know I'll be okay, and that there will eventually be days where I'm less hungry or when I walk a few extra miles to balance it all out. Likewise, if I'm not hungry and only ate 1300-1400 calories today, I don't sweat it, especially if I spent the whole day inside doing uni work.
- I always drink water before I eat and throughout the day, because half the time when I'm feeling hungry I'm actually just thirsty, and when I am hungry drinking water helps me feel full and satisfied. I also try to drink at least 2l of water every day, but aim for 3.
- I stay moisturised. When I get out of the shower, I massage and moisturise my entire body. It feels like a genuine act of self-love/self-care, and in addition to all the water I'm drinking my skin has never been so soft. It also keeps me familiar with what my body looks like, which for me is part of my journey towards appreciating/accepting it for being so good at being a body, yknow? Also, I know I have a lot of weight to lose so I think the least I could do for my stretched out skin right now is keep it healthy throughout the journey so it can shrink along with me.
I hope that explaining all of this might help someone else to rationalize a plan that really makes sense for them and is sustainable, especially if you maybe have something in common with me. Thank you everyone on this subreddit for helping me get to this place!
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