I was 51.5lb down when I returned home for the Christmas break. It was the first time in a year that I'd seen my family and I made the concious decision to forget about the diet while I was there. I had been feeling lethargic and homesick and my weight loss had been slowing. Some of this might read like a diary entry (apologies if it does) but I wanted to share what i learned about myself...
- First off, I gained 5.5lb. Honestly, I'm shocked it wasn't more. I was dreading stepping on the scales this morning thinking I would weigh in at 225lb or more but it rang in at 219lb.
- I have not broken old habits like I thought I might have. Some optimistic part of me thought that I wouldn't want the bad food, but I easily had 4 or 5 takeouts while I was back. In the beginning, I would start with a healthy soup or fruit but as the days went on I switched those out for leftovers or a slice of cheesecake or a cheese sandwich.
- Dieting gives me a great sense of self control and purpose. Counting calories takes a lot of time and energy, but I truly missed knowing how I was doing for the day. I had no sense of accomplisment and equally no will to improve on a bad day.
- My issues come from my mother. My mother is the best person I know and in no way meant to impose her issues on me, but I can see how her life, even still at 54, revolves around food. She had weight loss tips stuck to the fridge which me and my sisters agreed to remove (citing "bad vibes"). She was constantly saying she was giving up bad food in the new year because she wants to lose a lot of weight. No specific goal, just a lot. It made me sad.
- For the first time in my life, I'm not the heaviest person in my family and i have mixed feelings about this. My sisters & I would argue a lot when we were young and one of the insults my middle sister would use is that i was fat. it really hurt me at the time. I hadn't seen both of them for a year and I was surprised when I got home at how much weight they'd both put on. My middle sister, who was always the meanest and, not coincidentally, the skinniest is probably heavier than me now. I never expected to be happy about something like this... we're all adults and get along now, but it made me sad because I hope she isn't as miserable at her weight as I was before I started losing weight. She has always been so gorgeous... she still is. She has been unemployed for most of the year and living back with my mother since the start of COVID. Before that, she had a really good job and was about to move to Australia for a year. I guess i just feel sad for her because she's 26 and I want her to be happy in her mid 20s. We got along really well for the first christmas ever, i'm not sure how much of that was me being away for so long or us just getting older or if it's something else, but now i'm back in another country and i miss them all a lot. I'm proud of what i've achieved but I don't feel a sense of superiority which, i don't know, i thought I might feel after a lifetime of sisterly competitiveness?
- My weight loss was noticable. I made a post a while back worrying that no one had noticed my weight loss. I felt discouraged and a lot of people suggested that people either hadn't noticed because they see me so often or because they're too polite to bring up a subject like that. I think in retrospect both were true. It was the first thing my mother said when she saw me and the first thing she said to my sisters when I saw them was "look how much weight M has lost!". My boyfriend's mother also commented on it.
- Social media is triggering for me. Regardless of falling back into old habits, i had an amazing christmas break. The only times I felt myself feeling terrible about myself is when I went on instagram and started to compare myself to others.
- I can be really horrible to myself. The scales in my family home wasn't working so I could never check in on myself. Anytime I caught my reflection in the mirror I was trying to imagine where I'd put the weight on. I assumed it MUST be atleast 10lb because look how fat my stomach looks. Has my ass always been that big? What if I step on the scales and i'm 20lb heavier - is that possible? I still very much have these hateful instincts inside me. I need to work on loving myself regardless of how I look because even if I reach my goal weight I'm always going to have days where I'm bloated or have sagging skin or catch the wrong angle in the mirror.
- Gaining a few pounds is fine. My biggest takeaway is that being heavier after the Christmas break is OK. I can spiral into negative thought patterns but I don't hate myself. While I owe it to myself to get back to losing weight, i'm also not defined by it.
CONCLUSION: I have a lot of work left to do in 2021. This journey is constantly teaching me new things about myself and about the people around me. i need to put time into self-care. I'm not as dissapointed that I fell into old eating habits as i am that I fell into old self-criticising habits.
I'm setting a new goal to get into the 100s by my birthday in 4 months time. I'm so excited to see where I am this time next year (hopefully at my goal weight!)
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. x
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