23 / genderfluid / 5'4.25" (163.20cm) / SW: 204.80lbs (92.90kg) / GW: 146.20lbs (66.32kg)
TL;DR: Grew up with a bad relationship with food and with my body, spurred on by my family. How do you deal with other people's unsolicited weight loss advice, and reconcile it with your own relationship with food and your body?
I have grown up with a horrible relationship with food and with my body. I'm sure I'm not alone with that.
- My mom: We never lived together after I was a toddler, but I saw her every other weekend for years starting when I was about 12. I have a very vivid memory of when I was like 16 and she was doing a follow-along workout DVD. I was definitely overweight, and she was pretty much like 10 inches around. "If you just workout like I do, you could lose all of that in like a month!" She was on a lot of Adderall and a vegan who rarely ate anything, and I had like an extra 30 - 40 pounds hanging around on me. Sure, if I ran around like a hamster on a hamster wheel for 3 - 4 hours a day like she did at the time, I probably would've lost weight, but I also would've been miserable and unhealthy.
- My dad: We lived together until I went off to college at 18. He gave me a wonderful genetic gift: Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (underactive thyroid + autoimmune disease). However, we have different symptoms for the same disease AND he's had way more time to get on a stable dosage of medication than I have. Even while he was overweight when I was a child, he'd always make nitpicky comments about what I was eating or how much I was exercising. Now that I'm living with him again (#pandemic), he's been making those comments again. He literally takes like 10 mile walks more days than not, but definitely eats a lot of unhealthy, processed foods. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but he uses the exercise as a reason that he can eat anything that he wants and then talks about it all of the time. "I can't eat that because it will cancel out my walk." It's just an unhealthy mentality for me personally, and I really wish I didn't have to hear it everyday.
- My great-grandma: She raised me pretty much single-handedly from ages 3 to 12. We didn't have a lot of money and she babysat other kids for income, so basically it was a lot of soda, Hamburger Helper, etc. If I wanted seconds, I had to eat fast and grab them before they were gone. There wasn't much healthy food in our home, and it was never a priority. She was morbidly obese, and I can't remember every hearing her talk about weight, but she was my role model and that skewed my thinking a bit in terms of how much I should care about my weight.
- Dietitian: I had a few appointments with a well-respected dietitian in my area during the beginning of the pandemic. It was kind of good to know that I'm not alone in my thought processes, but she was big on HAES and intuitive eating. Maybe that works for some people, but I've intuitively eaten my way here and I *cannot* just give myself free rein to eat or I will binge on absolutely everything. It's a good thing I don't live in a gingerbread house or I'd be out of house and home. Luckily, I stopped after a few appointments when I realized how much it was screwing up my brain.
- Personal: It look me a long time to come to terms with being genderfluid, but now I'm really happy with my identity. The big thing is that I would *much* prefer to have a masculine form, and I was assigned female at birth (AFAB). It's hard to look for progress during this process and still notice these lumps of fat on my chest that I desperately wish I could chest press away!
I'm trying to think of weight loss the same way I think of medications: individual susceptibility exists. What works for one person may not work for me. However, it's like no one else has ever heard of that! "Oh, this worked for me, so it'll definitely work for you!"
It feels like everyday someone is trying to offer me some absolutely useless, often unhealthy, advice, which I know won't work for me or at least not until I get my thyroid medicated properly (advocating for yourself in the medical field is *difficult*), and I just want to like shake people and tell them to go away with their unsolicited advice. I hope to have an endocrinologist clinic call me this week to set up an appointment in the near future, but it's just a waiting game for now. I think it's making me extra grumpy because I'm just staring at my phone hoping it'll ring, even though I abhor talking on the phone!
Anyways, wow that was way more ramble-y than I thought it would be. Thank you if you've stuck with me this long!
My question to you: How do you deal with other people's unsolicited weight loss advice, and reconcile it with your own relationship with food and your body?
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