Another post about weight relapse

Since I’m on my second playthrough of losing weight (https://imgur.com/a/lPwj0m5), I wanted to share a few thoughts.

As you change your diet and activity to lose the weight, it’s also incredibly important to realize why you were eating or drinking so much before to begin with. It could be bad habits you learned at a young age, not knowing how to read nutrition labels, or like me, eating because it’s one of the few genuine joys in life. 

It’s incredibly hard to reduce and/or take away the foods that once made you happy to actually see progress on the scale, and do this nearly every day until you reach your goal. By the time you do reach or get close to your goal, it’ll probably feel like you just survived a long and hard journey through Mordor or something, and it’ll feel incredible eating at maintenance again*. But there’s a catch once you reach your goal, you’ll probably want to stay there after working so hard to reach it. You’ll have to stick to relatively new eating habits and learn to love it. I still pass by racks of baked goods, pick them up and put them back down without buying them. Those nights going to sleep hungry can’t have been for nothing, unless…

So to get back to me, I relapsed and found myself 70lbs higher than my goal weight one day. Walking in (the loathsome) Walmart I saw my reflection and thought “what happened to me, I’m back where I used to be”. That feeling is devastating but I know exactly how I got there. I fell back in a deep cycle of sadness which has always been a life long problem I’m fighting, so I ate a lot to feel better and slept a lot day in and day out. I don’t want to yap about it but it comes from where I currently live and loneliness that contributes to food always being on my mind, I think alot of people here will be able to relate to this too. My link with my dad has always been like, he sees that I’m sad so he gives me a cookie. So that cookie has been my remedy for 28 years and counting. It’ll take a while to break out of this cycle and cure it for good, you’ll need to try lifestyle changes to escape it and hopefully be happy to move on from it. I want to be clear too, it’s okay to have food you love sometimes when you’re feeling down, just don’t let it consume you. 

One more shocking thing with reaching your goal is that you still might have self image problems. I suffer with that a lot, I never felt thin even though my rib cage started to show under my skin. People were complimenting me and I thought I looked great sometimes but it never felt like enough. It’s crazy to say but I think media has raised us to sometimes not be happy with our own genetics. Whenever I hear old Michael Jackson music I’m reminded of his own self image issues. I never thought I’d relate, but I do. As I was regaining weight I avoided directly looking at myself in the mirror for over 6 months, it was bad.

Anyway this post could go on for actual ever but I’ll stop there, I thought I should just post because it’ll maybe help at least one more person not feel alone with this struggle. Never forget how hard you worked to get the weight off once you’re there.