Tl;dr down below.
First time posting, so I'm sure I messed something up. Posting on mobile.
I started my weight loss journey after seeing this sub and being tired of being tired. I was over 200 pounds and miserable. I was depressed, anxious, and angry all of the time. I was diagnosed with a degenerative arthritis several years back and had been given a short time span before I would be in a wheelchair with limited mobility. The doctors told me that if I lost weight it would extend the time I had left before I ended up there, but for years I did nothing. Well, nothing but eat my feelings, be sad about my life, hate everyone around me all because I hated myself, you know, stuff I'm really good at. It's what the last 10 years of my life had been.
I had divorced a physically and emotionally abusive ex husband and raised a child on my own. Leaving him didn't mean I got to leave the damage he left behind because I slowly went from a size 6 at age 20 to a size 22 at age 30. It was a slow gain that I knew was happening, but I figured if I wanted to change it, I could so why bother. And it continued for years. I would eat constantly, and then shrug and say, "eh, over the summer I'll run and it will be fine" and it was. Sort of. For years. I'd gain 20 pounds over the year, and then during summer lose 10 of it and be happy. (I'm a teacher so I didn't workout during the school year, only during the summer months.) but the problem with that math is that I was still gaining 10 pounds-ish each year.
And then I got married again, and got comfortable. And bless his heart, he never once made me feel like he didn't find me attractive, even after I gained 40 pounds during our first 5 years together... He always made me feel good about myself, but I hated myself. No matter how much he tried to make me feel beautiful, I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror when I got dressed. I was disgusted with what I saw every single day. And you would think that that would be enough, right? Nope. It still went on.
During this time, my husband struggled with alcoholism. Week long benders, totaled cars, dui's and then I have another kid. Great. Now I'm really stuck in this situation. By this point, I was suicidal. I would look at the overpasses as I drove to work and just dream of taking my car off of the side. I was in an awful place and everyone could see it. A casual friend of mine mentioned a support program for friends and family of alcoholics and I decided I had tried everything else to get him sober, why not try this. I had no idea it was a 12 step program that would teach me how to fix myself and how I respond to life. They told me on repeat that the only thing I could control is myself, and that I was powerless over people, places and things.
And it got me thinking, if the only thing I can control is myself, then why can I not control my weight? And at first the normal excuses and reasons came to mind, I have a debilitating disease that makes it hard to work out, so obviously that's out of my control. I work a job where we all just tend to gain weight. It's the culture of donuts and junk food in the staff lounge and catering for teachers birthdays. It was never ending.
But still, these meetings kept telling me you could control only yourself and I just kept coming up with more reasons until somebody finally told me what controlling yourself meant. I get to decide what I want to be like. I get to control my actual self. If I wanted to workout, I could do arthritis based yoga. If I wanted to lose weight, I could just eat better food. And it sounds stupid, but it had never occurred to me before. I had always felt like I was floating on a raft that was being bashed about by my husband's alcoholism, by my ex husband's abuse, by the abuse from my parents during my formative years. I had always been a victim of circumstance and had never controlled how I respond to those circumstances, I always flew with my emotions. And then my husband got sober, and I watched him go through his own 12 step program and realized if the man I love can fight a fight against something stronger than himself, I could handle fighting against my own excuses.
Then I found this sub. And found out about CICO. And thought, "well, here's something I can control. I can control what I put in my own dang mouth. " and I did it. I downloaded MFP, and tracked every single thing I put in my mouth. Obsessively, because I do everything obsessively. And it started working. I started losing weight at a nice clip and I was feeling great about it. And that was new. Because I didn't know what it was like to feel great.
Nobody tells you that you're less anxious when you don't feel like you're on display. Nobody tells you that you don't hate leaving the house if you like the way you feel about yourself. Nobody tells you that you're not as angry because suddenly you don't feel so defensive about even existing. And it was amazing. I hit 30 pounds lost within 3 months and was just under 200 pounds for the first time in years. And then it started slowing down.
I stressed out. I thought I had gotten lazy, I changed my weights and goals in MFP and meticulously counted but still, it stayed slow. And then I realized I needed to start adding in the exercise component. I was still losing weight but I wasn't prepared to go from 5-6 pounds a week to suddenly 2 to 3 pounds a week. It's hard to keep your head straight when you get plateau weeks and/or months. But my husband encouraged me to not get discouraged and to just go with the ebb and flow of life, like they taught us in meetings. This is what I can control.
And I decided during this time to start experimenting with not tracking... I learned from creeping this sub and reading every post I could. and one thing I saw was about how people would lose weight and then stop tracking and gain it back. All I could think was that if I wanted this to be something I could actually maintain, then I needed to break the obsessive tracking, and just learn what feels right. This way so I would learn to be aware of how I respond to food, even after I got to my goal weight. I figured this would help me maintain the weight loss long term. I slowly stopped tracking after a few weeks of making sure I was keeping an accurate count in my head and just maintained awareness of what I ate that day. And it worked.
I eventually started losing weight quicker when I started using intermittent fasting, and within the next 6 months ended up another 40 pounds down, all while eating at my new normal rate, without tracking in MFP.
When I started this journey, my goal was to get to 130 within 1 year. I started in March of 2018. I still have a chance to reach that goal, but during this process I had decided to set a new goal of reaching my goal weight by my birthday, which is in 4 days. And I didn't make it. Which is why I'm posting this, 10 pounds off from where I started. I wanted to share with everyone that you just have to not give up and give yourself grace. I could have hit my goal weight on time, but I definitely loosened up during the holidays. I gave myself the grace to eat at my maintenance calories for over a month so that I can just enjoy being with my family and not focus on keeping a close count on what I was eating.
My sister has been another one of my biggest cheerleaders during this process and I sent her a picture and told her I didn't reach my goal in time and the first thing she told me was to not get discouraged and keep going.
And it hadn't occurred to me to stop. Yeah, I'm disappointed in the fact I didn't reach my improved goal, but I'm not binging over it. I realized around pound 30 that I would never want my children to give up on a goal for themselves, so why should I?
More than anything I wanted to be a good role model for my daughter because, growing up with a morbidly obese parent myself, you are guaranteed to have some body issues. So I keep pushing myself. I can now do regular yoga, I'm happier, I'm healthier, but I'm still not perfect.
I still struggle with looking in the mirror and seeing my stomach flap from having kids. I hate the look of my stretch marks or the cellulite on my thighs, but every time I start hearing all of those tiny negative thoughts on my head, I look at pictures of where I started and realize, I'm never going back to that. I refuse to give up and I refuse to go backward. And that only leaves moving forward.
Because I cannot undo whatever I ate today, but I can certainly adjust for it tomorrow. I had 2 scoops of ice cream at a birthday party today, and that's okay, I'll adjust my food tomorrow and eat a healthier meal to balance it out. I'm not in any hurry to lose the last of the weight. Even if I don't hit it by March, I'm still miles from where I started, and as long as i keep moving forward, then I'll be happy.
Tl;dr: not always fat girl, got skinnier, not at goal weight. Says never give up, never surrender because you don't realize how much your mental health is tied to how you view yourself. Be easy on yourself. Give yourself grace and keep going forward.
