I’m 35F, 5’7”. For most of my adult life, I weighed around 130–135 lbs and wore a size 4. For the most part, I was happy with my weight and how I looked. I ate reasonably well and exercised regularly. I was really into running in my 20s and later did 9Round boxing workouts. I never felt like I had to fight to maintain my weight, although I did make an effort to eat well and stay active.
Then came 2023, which was probably the worst year of my life. Within the span of a couple of months, I lost my job, needed emergency surgery a few weeks later while I had no insurance, and then my father-in-law died. I became depressed and started having a lot of trouble sleeping. My doctor prescribed mirtazapine, an antidepressant that could also help me sleep.
What I didn’t know at the time was that mirtazapine can significantly increase appetite and is sometimes even prescribed to help people gain weight.
Between the depression, stress, medication and everything else going on, I gained about 30 lbs. By February of last year, when I was weighed at a ketamine therapy appointment, I was 160 lbs.
I couldn’t believe it. I started counting calories and exercising more regularly, and I talked to my psychiatrist about the mirtazapine. He eventually tapered me off of it.
As of today, I’m down to about 140 lbs.
I know I should be proud of losing 20 lbs, and part of me is. But this might sound ridiculous: it’s been killing me that I still have another 5–10 lbs I want to lose. There are days when I look at myself and genuinely feel like I haven’t made any progress at all, even though objectively I know that isn’t true.
More than anything, I’m just exhausted from thinking about weight loss all the time.
I was tracking everything I ate in MyNetDiary, but I stopped last week because tracking meant I was thinking about food basically all day. How many calories are in this? Can I have that? How much have I eaten already? How much do I have left? Should I work out today? Should I work out more? How many calories did I burn?
I’m so tired of it.
My husband and family tell me, “You look great! You don’t need to lose any more weight!” And I know they mean well. But the problem is that I am still uncomfortable with how I look. I miss feeling at home in my body instead of constantly evaluating it.
At the same time, I don’t want food, exercise, and my weight to take up this much space in my brain anymore. I don’t want every meal to feel like a math problem or every workout to feel like something I have to do to make up for eating.
I’m just tired of fighting with myself over this.
Has anyone else gotten to this point? How do you work toward feeling comfortable in your body again without letting weight loss completely consume you?
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