I just want to share a couple thoughts of mine, after an introduction. Forgive me if my English is weird, and forgive me because I will be EXTREMELY lengthy and cheesy- read this post like you would read the diary of a cringey 12-year-old girl.
I will talk in absolutes, but please keep in mind that all of this comes from personal experience, so please don't be offended if you don't agree with me. Everyone is different and I just hope that someone can relate. If you don't, that's okay, and I'm open to any opinion.
I'm an Italian 27-year-old woman. I've been overweight since I was 13, but my weight fluctuated a lot - from 135 (which actually looked good, even if I'm 5'1), to a scary 190 lbs during the first COVID lockdown. Now I weigh a mediocre 180lbs, BMR calculators say I'm moderately obese. Many times I went on a weight loss journey, many times I failed and sometimes I won, only to keep the weight down for not more than a couple years. Starting this month, after seeing some really ugly birthday pictures of mine, on a particular birthday that was very important to me, I decided to go on this journey for the last time in my life.
The reason this birthday was so important to me, is because I finally healed from depression. After 10 years of professional therapy, and hard, exhausting work on myself and on personal goals. Of course "healing" is not something that happened overnight. You do small steps, one by one. Then you realize you start feeling things you could only remember from your childhood, happy and sad things. You start seeing colors. You start feeling love. You stop being destructive when bad things happen. You realize you're tired to punish yourself for your mistakes, and that it's useless, childish, destructive. Then you finally pass a university exam, fall in love with a healthy person, start making music or finish a beautiful painting, or you have a beautiful dream. ... and then you realize you're just living with no impediments, that you're having healthy thoughts, that you feel every emotion you should feel, be it positive or not.After all these years I can say for sure that being overweight is linked to depression, but it's the latter that causes the first, and not vice versa, something I hear and read almost everywhere.
Surely, being overweight is very bad for your mood and social experience, but saying that being "fat" is a reason to be "depressed", after all this work on myself, is very very wrong and harmful, a criminal statement if you ask me - since many vulnerable people are subject to it. I was mentally ill because, during my childhood, I wasn't cared for properly, and the adults in charge couldn't have a healthy, supportive relationship with me, during my most vulnerable years. That's it. That's why I couldn't eat in a proper way, that's why I found comfort in bingeing, that's why a healthy, feminine body image wasn't something bearable to my weak mind, and bottom line, something I was so afraid of. Many times I blamed my failures on my weight, and many times, when I wasn't fat, I bragged and felt that my successes were based on my good looking body- a very, very sick mindset. I am one of those people that can hands-down guarantee that if my therapist wasn't there, I would probably be dead.
So going back to simpler stuff. Now that I felt various definite signs that my mental illness is over, and hardships are just hardships, my weight is not something that scary anymore. It's something I've been packing on myself for years, and that I can overcome without being tragic about it. My birthday pictures are horrible and I look fat compared to my friends- so what? That's just fat. That stuff doesn't define your worth, guys.
I realized this is the last step I have to take to get rid of my "old" life. After a couple days of just getting comfortable with tracking my calories, I made a simple diet plan and decided I would follow it the following day. Then I started following it. After 10 days, the weight is definitely falling off. No hunger, no cravings, no wish to binge. (I only miss the idea of eating gelato with my friends lol.). No comparing myself to Instagram models, no wishing I could do this in 10 days instead of 365. After beating depression, everything is just a silly, fun, challenge. I discovered Vinyasa yoga, I'm feeling all of its day-to-day benefits, and I'm loving my body - not just its chance to "look fuckable", but the way I can walk, run, eat...
So, other than just expressing how I feel, I just want to tell the people who can relate to the depression part- if you struggle with weight, if you binge eat and hate yourself for it, don't try to ignore the fact that your problem is not your body, but something deeper that was just hurt and needs to be cared for. Your external image will follow your internal image just once you are ready to approach what probably is one of your most insignificant issues. If you start a diet or a workout plan based on hatred and shame, it will never work, just add up to something bigger.
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