I am a yo-yo dieter. I tend to go very extreme and then after a month go back to binging and not exercising. I am a former Crossfit enthusiast who did 2 a days and maintained a fantastic body for 3 years. I got pregnant and had a very high risk pregnancy that led to bed rest and poor eating habits followed by a really traumatic delivery that made me pretty much hate my body. As a result I had major PPD and for a year postpartum ate pretty much just garbage. I would get really motivated and then the next day just completely give up. I was drinking moderately (not a crazy amount, but enough to effect my mental health) and not doing any exercise besides going all out every once in a while when I became motivated. I gained a total of 60 pounds after having the baby.
Now I am a year and a half postpartum, and it feels like I have had a cosmic shift. My entire life feels so different and it actually doesn’t have that much to do with just changing my diet and exercising. I feel like for me, I always heard people saying “just eat healthier!! Calorie count!! Go to the gym!!” And yeah those are the obvious things and I do those things now. For me though, my weight loss journey began with getting my ass into the doctors office and then right into therapy. My OBGYN suggested I get off the continuous cycle birth control pills to see if my hormones would balance out (they did) and then she prescribed me Wellbutrin to give me a little extra help kicking the PPD. At first I continued drinking alcohol 2-3x weekly while taking the pills and saw no progress with anything. After about a month of that I slowly started to feel better and I didn’t even have a desire to drink, which led to way better eating habits and healthier habits in general.
I haven’t lost a crazy amount of weight. Maybe 15ish pounds. But I don’t feel like I am constantly struggling to get a grip on my habits anymore. It all is coming so naturally and I didn’t have to make any extreme diet restrictions or exercise regimens. It actually just feels like my body and mind are beginning the healing process after what it’s been through, and naturally that has led to the weight loss I was so desperately seeking.
I also deleted all forms of social media (besides Reddit obviously but my relationship to Reddit is waaayyyy different than Instagram and Facebook) To me that relationship was extremely toxic. I felt like I got wrapped up in how I wanted other people to see me and how I saw myself. A couple years ago I was watching Bo Burnham’s comedy special and at the end he said something like “live your life without an audience.” And for me, that has been EVERYTHING. I’m not spending every waking moment thinking about what I’m going to post to make myself seem like a good mother/ a healthier person/ a likeable person. I was desperately trying to convince myself that I am those things. When I come home from work, I usually don’t even know where my phone is. I’m simply just with the people I love. I play with my kids more, we go more places other than the couch. And I’m not being sanctimonious about social media, this is all very deeply personal and I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with social media.
It also might seem like this has nothing to do with weight loss, but for me it made a huge difference in how I make choices. Just like examining why I am posting a certain picture, it helped me to examine why I was eating certain things.
TLDR; I had to heal myself from a really traumatic series of events that led to a deeply toxic mindset. No amount of instagram fitness blogs was going to help steer me towards Whole Foods. It had to be about what I needed to fix inside myself as an individual.
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