Growing up, I (25 f) was allowed full reign to eat whatever I wanted. I wasn't taught to cook, or eat healthy. I was a very picky eater, and I refused to eat vegetables. I didn't play sports or go outside, I preferred to stay inside playing games. I was never considered a chubby kid, but I was always in the higher end of a normal bmi or slightly overweight. My father always called me fatty, even though I was a normal size. The name calling started as a toddler, and it gave me issues with body dysmorphia later on. I would eat nothing but junk food and sweets and chocolate milk. I was made to finish my entire plate every time I ate, even when I was full, and learned to ignore my fullness cues. I would eat entire pizzas by myself at 9 years old. I would eat and eat and eat just because it felt good, not because I was hungry,.
At 13, I had a brief phase where I stopped eating and became very underweight, and at that point I became very obsessive about my body and I got a satisfaction from eating less and losing weight. I still thought I was fat, and I wanted to lose more weight, but ultimately I was forced to eat and gain the weight back (thankfully). I maintained a normal weight, until 2 years later when my father passed away suddenly a few days after my 15th birthday. It was very traumatic and led me down a path of emotional eating and binge eating. I'd eat 5 bowls of cereal every day, plus lunch at school, plus a giant meal from McDonald's, snacking here and there throughout the day. I relied heavily on food for comfort, while at the same time hating my body and wishing I could just lose the weight. I didn't know much about weight loss, other than not eating = losing weight, but I couldn't stop eating no matter how much I tried. I attempted different diets like Keto, but I couldn't stick to them. I felt so addicted to refined sugars and carbs that cutting them out felt like torture, and every time I'd lose weight I'd just "celebrate" by buying one of my trigger foods and inevitably gaining the weight back by falling off the wagon.
By 21 years old, I was at my highest weight ever of around 162 lbs, which for me is a BMI of 32, in the obese category. One day during the summer of 2021, shortly after I turned 22, I started to learn about CICO and how weight loss actually works. Unfortunately, I was not learning about healthy weight loss. I had fallen down a rabbit hole into a community of people sharing very unhealthy dangerous methods of weight loss, and I had a warped perception of calories. I ended up eating between 400 and 900 calories a day for half a year, with a few "high" (aka barely enough for a toddler) calorie days here and there. I lost over 50 lbs, but I became completely obsessed with weight loss. I weighed myself 3 times a day, I was obsessed with taking pictures of my body and watching the scale drop every day, and I became increasingly paranoid about calories. At one point, I was even scared to drink water due to water weight. During this time, I had changed nothing about my eating habits and I was surviving off of fast food and sweets, which, in addition to the dangerously low calorie intake, was starting to affect my health a little.
Once I reached a BMI of 21, I decided to try to eat "healthier". I had no idea how, I didn't know how to cook and I was too scared to try because too many ingredients and being around too much food overwhelmed me. So, I started eating easy things like greek yogurt and fruits, and taking vitamins. I started feeling better, but this began a binge-restrict cycle. If I ate one of my old comfort foods, I decided "I might as well make this a cheat day and start over tomorrow." My mindset became very black or white. On the days that I wasn't binging on junk food, I was restricting my calories very low to make up for it, or fasting. I became scared to eat the healthier foods if they were over 150 calories , fearing that I would gain more weight. So I ended up restricting myself to things like sugar free jello, fiber one bars, etc that had very little nutritional value. I lost an additional 10 lbs very slowly through this cycle, but it was absolute hell. ALL I thought about 24/7 was losing more weight, and food. I obsessively counted calories, it was so bad I would try time and time again to delete the calculator app on my phone to keep myself from counting but I couldn't stop. Even if I had already counted up my calories, I would still do it over and over "just to be sure". My bmi was around 20, but I wasn't satisfied at all with my weight and I would cry constantly out of frustration. I am only 5 feet tall, and not very active. It is extremely difficult to lose weight without dropping my calories very low, but I have the appetite of someone twice my size, and a raging sugar addiction.
Last year, something snapped, and I ended up gaining between 15-20 lbs in a few months. I tried to fight against it over and over by engaging in my old habits, but I started to realize that the harder I fought against it, the more I ended up binging and gaining weight. This is what led me to have a change in my mindset. I started to look at my mother and her habits. She is in her 40s, stuck in the same cycle of binging and restricting. She does keto, but she is so restrictive about it that she ends up binging later on. She weighs herself every single day, and is torn apart by a few pounds of water weight. She doesn't even eat fruits or vegetables, because she thinks that they make her gain weight. I realized that if I don't try to fix my habits now, that will be my future. I don't want to spend the rest of my life stuck in this cycle. I had to surrender, and stop trying to obsessively control my food and my weight. At first, the weight gain was so difficult to deal with, and it still is. But, it opened my eyes to my true priorities.
I want to learn how to eat without binge eating. I want to learn to eat foods in moderation, rather than feeling hopelessly addicted to them. I want to treat my body with kindness and give it foods that are nourishing and satisfying, not destroying it and forcing myself to survive off of jello, or forcing myself to eat thousands of calories in donuts until I'm sick because "I need to finish everything today". I want to have a healthy lifestyle and move my body for the sake of my mental and physical health, not just to burn calories. I want to learn to appreciate food, not to overindulge for a dopamine hit, or to deprive myself. I realize that I've never had a healthy relationship with food or my body, and I want to change that. I know there may always be part of me that wants to be deathly underweight, and at the same time there will always be a part of me that wants to eat a dozen donuts in a row every day. But neither of those desires come from a place of self love and acceptance, they come from a place of shame, self hatred, and pain. No amount of weight loss will make me love myself if I am doing it out of self hatred and starving myself, and no amount of comfort food will take away the pain and trauma in my life.
So, that brings me here today. I am now creeping up on an overweight bmi. I have around 20 lbs to lose to get to my ideal weight. But, my goal isn't just to lose the weight I gained, but to create a healthy and happy lifestyle for myself, and to learn to love myself in the process. I will avoid daily calorie counting and just focus on making healthier choices, and listening to what my body actually needs. I already know how to count calories, and I know that if I go down that path again it'll just awaken the obsession. I will be working to incorporate exercise to feel good and make myself stronger, not to burn calories. I will not wear my Apple Watch when exercising, so I won't be tempted to focus on how many calories I've burned. I will weigh myself once every few weeks, or not at all and just focus on measurements instead. I will focus more about what foods feel good in my body rather than what feels good to me emotionally. I will teach myself to eat normal portion sizes. I will write down my trigger foods that I struggle to control myself around, and I will set hard boundaries with those foods. I will break my obsession with food. I will work every day to rid myself of perfectionism and realize that I will slip up sometimes, but when you slip up, you keep going.
I don't want to be in this cycle any longer. I want to create a healthy and sustainable lifestyle for myself. My goal is to lose these 20 lbs in a healthy and sustainable way, but I've also accepted that things could change along the way. I'm aware that things like muscle growth can affect weight. If I end up building a healthier lifestyle where I don't feel restricted, I don't feel out of control, I am eating foods in regular portions that are satisfying and make me feel good mentally and physically, and I am physically active in a way that is sustainable and enjoyable to me, whatever weight I end up at will be my ideal weight.I know this sub has people from all kinds of backgrounds. Maybe someone will relate to my story, and if you do, know you are not alone and we can create a new life for ourselves free of disordered eating. Hopefully one day I can look back at this post and feel proud that I turned my life around.
