As the title says, I just want to be comfortable in my own skin and not be perceived as ugly. I'm only 24 years old, but my skin is terrible. When I began losing weight I asked my dietician about the pace I should keep at to avoid loose skin. She laughed and told me not to worry because I'm young, and I was relieved.
But she was quite wrong. When I was 320 lb at 5 foot 9 inches, I already had huge stretch marks all across most parts of my body... after losing weight and gaining plenty of muscle over 2 years, and maintaining 2 more, while trying dozens of creams, ointments and diets, I still look a lot like the Youtuber ObeseToBeast after his weight loss, but with much bigger flaps on my chest. Hyperpigmintation runs in my family and I have bands of skin discoloration around my chest from where my folds used to be, though they have gotten better over time and don't bother me anywhere near the loose skin does. My thighs have the texture of a popped balloon skin. I can't do the surgery due to cost and the complications it can cause for me, so I'm stuck with this skin.
My life is better in every way when I'm dressed. But I don't go to beaches or pools without a swimming shirt on. I can't really show off my gains to anyone without a layer of clothes hiding the terrible flaps and wrinkles underneath. When I meet a girl (never been in a relationship before) I can really connect, feel confident and that I look good, but never take it too far because my crippling anxiety about intimacy in this body stops me dead in my tracks. I don't despite myself, and even when I was obese my self-esteem was never super low, but a huge part of my weight loss journey has been inspiration to look and feel sexy shirtless like my bros do. I love seeing other people work on themselves and their bodies, but always feel gutted when someone who has lost around the same weight I had comes out the other side looking like a Greek God instead of a semi-melted action figure. Makes me feel like I lost the genetic lottery hard despite my efforts.
Currently my depressive thoughts go back to the years where my diet spun out of control, where I didn't care what I ate, where I was in constant self-isolation and disconnect from other people and just wanted to sleep and eat myself to oblivion (though largely because of environment and not self-hatred). I keep desperately wishing I could go back in time and start my weight loss before I had stretched my skin too thin, and I've even grown somewhat resentful of my parents who were too busy, dismissive and uninvolved in my health during those years and let me ruin myself while I was in a bad mental state since late childhood... I saw that movie About Time the other day and it just brought up all those feelings to the surface (sounds silly, I know).
Anyways thanks for reading this rant. I know a lot of it is psychological, but even the fact that I can't just be like the people around me who don't have to get over such a confidence hurdle makes me depressed. I always wonder what my life would be like if I'd had the "aha" health moment in my teen years and not after I'd already done irreparable damage to the way I look. Maybe some day I'll risk it all and get the surgery.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/3DKKqQ2
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