Sorry for the awkward angle. I had to take it by myself. https://photos.app.goo.gl/x2RiDWa7q9vNWuXJ8
This isn't my heavyist, I don't have a picture from then. Just imagine this but 30lb fatter https://photos.app.goo.gl/EWn6vL6yD938JQwP9
This was a picture of just my face from back then for anyone curious. https://photos.app.goo.gl/jkhbx1s6nLQiLyj3A
Sorry for the way I wrote this. I write how I speak, and even though I've tried to edit that out as much as possible it's still going to be pretty hard to read.
I have autism. That affects people in a lot of ways. Many of the ways it affects me personally have made my weight loss journey for a lack of a better term unique.
My brain doesn't register things like hunger like most people. It takes me a couple days of eating next to nothing for me to feel hungry like most people do, which is one form of a common trait of autism, hyposensitivity. My nutrition is just as strange. For the past year I've been eating the same meal everyday, and I prefer it since it's more efficient for food prep. A lot of autistic people are okay with or prefer a small menu. I happen to be a really extreme example of that.
By now you're probably wondering why I was obease. The answer is it was entirely mental. Eating was the linchpin for all my other self-destructive coping mechanisms, and so when I stopped abusing food the rest tumbled down like a house of cards. Because of that, I can’t really give advice from what I learned from my weight loss. My over eating came from an entirely emotional place and my new diet is only really realistic for me because of the way that autism affects me. Because of how diverse autism is, any advice I could give about health, or nutrition, probably wouldn't be useful even to those who also have autism. What I can share that may be helpful to some though is hearing about those mental reasons of why I was fat.
Before I share this I want to say that I don't think less of people who are obease, or those who are not trying to lose weight. I just want to share my experience improving my physical and mental health for those who wish to hear it. Also I don't want it to seem like I blame others on why I was fat. Ultimately it was my decision, and I wish I had the knowledge and support at the time to make a better one.
Binging I grew up poor, and a lot of the food my parents bought would trigger sensory overload when I eat it. Autistics can be more sensitive to many kinds of stimulation. It can be helpful letting us see, hear, or taste something that we might not have otherwise, but it's a double edged sword. Everyday sounds, sights, and textures can overwhelm our senses. Sensory overload to me feels like drowning. So, because of how many foods would make me gag, when my mom got home with the groceries I would binge on the foods that didn't make me feel sick and eat as little as possible the rest of the time.
Sedentary lifestyle By nature, I enjoyed moving so much that others found it distracting. When I was deep in thought I would either shake my leg, or silently mouth what I was thinking as I thought it. I did it to the extent that my teachers told me to stop because it was distracting, and I would get in trouble for it. It made me self conscious, and I felt wrong. This is called stimming. Stimming helps autistics think, cope with stimulus, or to process emotion. So when I had to repress those behaviors. It took a lot out of me to repress those behaviors, and without them thinking felt like walking through a bog.
You would think that Pe would be better, but it wasn't. My coaches would push me harder than the other kids, and I didn't understand why. It's because I don't really react/feel pain or fatigue as strongly as most people, a common trait in autism. Since I don't react the same way to pain as other people, they believed I was "holding out on them" when in reality they were pushing me, a morbidly obese child, to the point I was about to pass out, and when I tried to tell them that they didn't believe me. I felt like no one believed me, and so I figured it didn't matter if I told the truth or not and told blatant lies.
I wasn't allowed to move in the ways I wanted, and when I got to move I felt like I was going to die, so I projected my hate for my teachers onto exercise and movement in general. So, I didn't do it. It's a shame because if they could have helped me develop a love of exercise earlier in my life.
Social anxiety Obesity was my invisibility cloak. I felt like everything I felt and did was wrong, and talking just reminded me of that. Because I was born without a lot of the social cues most people use every day. Randomly people would call me rude, because I wasn't born with the social cues they had, and that was stressful for me. So when I realized people talked to me less because of my size it felt like a gift. It made me feel safe, being ignored, because I didn't have to worry about offending or upsetting anyone. It was a mask. Autistics use masks, or masking behaviors, to blend in. Even though we might not have been born with a social cue, we can still study, understand, or think up a strategy to "blend in" when talking to strangers. Some masks are better than others, and in my personal experience morbid obesity is the worst mask you can wear.
Overbearing expectations I had to try so hard to do things that others seemed to do easily that I believed I had a weak will, that I was broken. I developed unrealistic expectations for myself and gave it my all, and I would always fall into depression when I could never achieve what I believed I should have based on the actions of others, and when I got depressed I would eat to try and fill that empty feeling.
Inferiority I felt like the world was telling me I was wrong for being myself. It made more sense to me that I was wrong than the world being wrong, so I believed it. Eating became a form of self punishment. Eating made me fatter, and the fatter I was the easier it became for me to blame that for being the reason I was "wrong”. It was something I could change. The fact I had a choice made it barrable.
Start of weight loss
My weight loss started when I learned my grandmother went to the hospital due to heart trouble. That really got to me. I layed in bed that night, digesting what I had heard.
My grandmother had always encouraged me to strive for what I wanted in life and had always encouraged me to lose weight. She talked to me about how much a healthy lifestyle improved her life, how much better health felt. I always listened, and I tried to lose weight, but I would always fail in the end and revert to my old ways. I felt terrible. My grandmother was lying in a hospital bed during Christmas, possibly her last, and I couldn't give her the only gift she had ever asked of me. I decided that night that, no matter what happened to her, I would give her that gift.
I wrote down all of the habits I wanted to change, and one by one changed them, focusing on the next one when the previous became part of my routine. Routine is important for a lot of autistics. For some, it's to the point they need to schedule every part of their day. Others just don't like surprises. Some don't need a schedule at all. For me, I like keeping a balanced schedule because, if I don't, it's easy for me to get depressed, or unproductive. People who can't respect my schedule, I have to cut out of my life. This routine helped me to lose weight because, like I mentioned before, I'm the kind of autistic that can consistently schedule having the exact same meal every day. Keeping my calorie intake consistent, and my meal prep easy.
week 1 When I was doing research before I started my weightloss I had watched an episode of My 600lb Life. The show's doctor said something to the effect that, after an addiction is taken away, one's emotional issues come to the surface. This happened to me after I started my diet. I have insomnia (about 70% of autistics have some kind of sleep disorder) and, in the hours I lay awake at night waiting to sleep, memories kept playing in my head. Sometimes, I would think of the same one for weeks, just trying to gain some meaning from it. Sometimes, it just took a few minutes. But, in the end, I would always find some kind of wisdom in it. That's how I learned why I was obease.
At 6 months in I decided to buy a cheesecake, not to celebrate, but because I used to eat entire cheese cakes at my heaviest, and I needed to see if eating a slice everyday would make me want to eat as much as I would have before I started my diet. After eating my meal the next day I took a bite and, while it had the same taste, it didn't feel the same.
That scared me. It took me a few hours to figure out why. For so long, I had used food to find a sense of fulfillment. I was scared that I couldn't do that anymore. Now that I saw food as fuel instead of as treat, I couldn't just make myself feel better by eating junk. That scared a part of me. The rest of me was ashamed of that fear.
About 8 months in I decided it was about time to incorporate resistance training into my life. So, I bought some weights. I'm pretty poor, and weights are pretty expensive, so I just got a dumbbell and 55lb of weight, but it's good enough. I thought I would hate lifting--that's why I put it off so long--but I actually enjoy it. Going to failure is enjoyable since I like repetitive movement and I don't feel "the burn" except during endurance exercises, because of my hyposensitivity to pain.
That's pretty much every stand out moment in my weight loss journey. The rest of the time my weight loss was a non-event, like a download going on in the background of my computer. I know it's a bit ironic, given the context, but I don't mind it when people say "if someone says their weight loss was easy, they’re a liar." I get that what they mean is that there are reasons why people are obese, as there are reasons for every habit a person has, and changing is the hardest thing a person can do. Change takes admitting you’re wrong and asking yourself how you can become better--admitting that the way you live doesn't match your goals and asking yourself why that is.
I don't mind that phrase because before this year I had tried to lose weight. Each time I did, I felt like I had one hand shackled to a wall, with a key just out of reach. I felt helpless. I would struggle for days in vain, going nowhere, despite knowing what I needed to do. I needed to cut my hand off, to let go of what was holding me back my entire life, so I could live, but I was scared. I felt like I needed it. It made me feel safe. So, I tried everything except what would actually work; being honest with myself, and admitting I was wrong.
