Hi, guys. First post. I'm just putting this into words to hold myself accountable to the more emotional aspect of things. Sorry it's so long. I just joined after lurking off and on forever.
This is round two for me. I went from 184lb to 135lb 5 years ago over the course of 6 months, and now I've started again at 199lb. It's the highest I've ever been. It scared the shit out of me because I used to tell myself, "Well, I'll never let myself get to 200." I'm on the cusp of obesity at 5'10".
Last time I lost weight, it was one of the most unhealthy things I've ever done. I immediately restricted myself to 1200 calories max, and often times would end my day around 800-900cal. If I wasn't under 1200, I saw it as an absolute failure. On top of that, I was doing power walk/jog intervals for 5 miles a day every single day. When I would get tired and sore mid-run, I would say all kinds of horrible things to myself in my head to keep going. I was trying to eat as little as I could while burning as much as I could, no matter the cost to my overall or long term health. I wanted to punish myself, and that's how I did it.
I have Marfan's Syndrome and Ehler's-danlos Syndrome, which are connective tissue diseases that include extreme hypermobility and overextension in joints, and a couple of heart issues. I knew I was doing more harm to my body than good. I knew that what I was doing was about losing the weight as fast as possible, as opposed to doing it in the most practical, safe, sustainable way possible. I actively avoided diving into why I had such an awful relationship with eating and exercise habits and how I felt about my body and why. My brain has always operated in extremes, and not addressing that is probably the biggest reason of how I got where I am today.
For the last few months, I've been really trying to delve through all the emotional parts of my weight loss and body image journey. I've been working so hard to face those demons and figure out what a healthy mindset would look like when all I have ever done is bounce between giving up on my body through being overweight and giving up on my body through starvation.
Three days ago, after taking very consciously small baby steps like healthier choices, mindful portions, and short walks for three months, I finally felt comfortable enough to start tracking calories again. I don't trust myself enough yet to start tracking distances on my walks yet, but I know I'm making huge strides emotionally in learning to make progress without turning it into a means of self-harm. I've set my calories to lose 1lb per week, which was the second slowest option in my app, and I'm really proud of that. The projected time frame for my goal weight is something like 10 months, and I'm okay with that, too.
I just want to do this in a healthy way. I want to be a healthy person, and it just finally clicked to me after all these years that I was never going to be physically healthy until I took a hard look at my emotional and mental and physical health individually, and the relationships between each. And this is genuinely the first time in my life that I can remember where I feel genuinely proud of myself without feeling that underlying anxiety of what if I'm not doing enough, what if I fuck it up, what could I be doing more, how could I make this hurt the most. I'm just proud of myself with no strings attached, and it's so amazing that realization make me bawl my eyes out. And that pride doesn't come from staying on track for my calories or making sure I'm being more active, it's just from the fact that I feel already how much healthier my mind is in this process than last time, that it's out of love than harm.
So, here's to 2020 and a year of self love.
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