So, I have been a very active lurker here, reading maybe too much even. I like seeing peoples victories and progress, big or small, just makes me happy to see them, so I come around and read and smile.
But I think it's time I post one of my own. If you can make it through all this, thanks :) If not, that's OK too, I know it's maybe too much.
Hi, my name is Eve(F,30+) and I used to be... Large. I don't want to use exact measurements and I don't know if it's OK here not to, it's just that it's all public on the Internet after I hit that post button and that kinda bothers me.. So maybe I can use BMI instead, since it doesn't reveal the ratios right? Let me know if I need to add something else.
So, my starting point back 3 years ago was a BMI of 45. I believe this is in the category of "Morbidly Obese".. It was pretty bad. I was eating junk food for comfort and boredom. Just tons of it, every day, and my weight was going up up and away very quickly. I had no energy to do anything, always tired laying on the couch in the evenings watching TV re-runs and falling asleep next to a bag of chips. Pains me to recall this time. I was depressed and lonely, avoided all social contact as I believed I wasn't worth being around, just a mess.
So, what changed?
I knew what I was doing wasn't healthy or sustainable in the long run. I knew. But I didn't care. My family were worried and doctors kept telling me to lose weight, whatever right, it's my life?
Then I got into therapy. I had tried it before, but I never connected with the people and it was useless, but I gave it another shot after being pushed. And this time I found the connection. I was able to openly talk about my problems which I won't get into here, not the sub for it, but I mean things like my childhood, all that. And doors started opening, slowly, but surely. And we did start talking about my obesity as well and how it was affecting me mentally and physically. I started trying to diet towards the end of '17, but kept failing. I had the mentality of "1 failure = total failure", so whenever I would have a bad day and eat junk food I would throw the whole diet thing away for a while and think I failed, no reason to continue. Only to then find the motivation again 2 weeks later and try again..
This continued until the summer of '18. I had been "dieting" for 6+ months, "failing" over and over, restarting over and over. But it all changed that summer.. I can't give you the magic words or a simple answer to the question of "how did you do it", but something changed in my head. I just realized I had to change, there was no other choice, I had to do it, for myself. I found the motivation.
So, I started on Keto in June that year and followed it very strictly for a year, going down to a BMI of about 30 in this time frame. I did not exercise or do anything else, just stopped eating carbs and followed the macros for Keto and kept my intake of calories low enough. I wasn't measuring or weighing my food, I looked at the packaging and estimated plus I had an app called MyFitnessPal for scanning bar codes.
At this point progress was starting to slow down, I was hitting plateaus constantly and felt like I needed to change something. I ditched Keto and started just the basic "CICO diet", if it can be called that, basically just limited myself to 1500 a day and didn't go over it. And then at the end of '19 I added daily walks(about 1 hour) to my routine as I had started to feel physically and mentally much, much better and was now able to "get out there".
In March this year I hit the 24,9 BMI "Milestone" which my calculator says is called.. Normal weight. Whatever that means. And right now, in August, my BMI sits at 20.9.
So, that's it then, isn't it? I have no reason to go lower. I've already been slowly over the past few months shifting from a mentality of "lose more" to "sustain". I need to find the point of healthy eating without gaining or losing. Just maintaining. This is what the title of this post means: I am done. It is over. I hope for forever.
Ever since the end of '19 I have been feeling, for the first time in my life, happy. Just.. Happy. I'm working on getting back into school to learn a new profession as I feel motivated now. It's not everything just because I lost weight, dealing with my depression was a huge part for both the weight loss and my mental well being. I don't hate myself anymore and I can look in the mirror without feeling bad about what I see. I'm not going to lie and say it's all "sunshine and happiness" all day every day, it's not. But compared to 3 years ago, damn, I am doing good now.
So, this is my possibly too long Milestone/Progress post.
I realize I didn't mention it in the post anywhere, but a lot of my information for this battle came from this sub. So, Thank You /r/loseit for everything. For supporting me and everyone else, even if I didn't really post here, I was always here, reading and absorbing it all :)
I can answer questions if something was left out, this was kinda just a stream of words coming out of my brain and I probably left stuff too vague at times.
Thank You.
