--- First for some Backstory ---
10 years ago I embarked on what proved to be both my proudest achievement, and my most gut-wrenching failure. After 21 years of being overweight, I finally committed to a diet and lost 75lbs, dropping from 240 to 165. It took roughly 10 months. 10 months of going to the gym 4 days a week, measuring what I ate, raw determination and a fundamental shift from the quick and easy gratification that food had always provided me, to the delayed gratification of eating right and respecting myself enough to say "no, I shouldn't have this donut." I had never felt so proud of myself.
After a year or so, I slowly started putting the weight back on. I went back up to 230, then down to 185, then back up to about 200, where I stayed pretty steady for a good while. I tried countless diets/workout regimens in this timeframe and ended up failing after a week or two each time. The mounting weight (no pun intended) of this pile of failed diets began to stack up as a more and more convincing case that I just didn't have what it took to do this again.
My lowest point came 2 years ago. I was coming out of a bad breakup the same week that I began a coding bootcamp, which put me through the ringer emotionally. For those who aren't aware, a coding bootcamp is a 3 month intensive program where you work virtually non-stop to become a software engineer. I was pushed to the very edge of my mental limits, and something had to give. In my case, the "something" was my diet and otherwise caring about how I looked or felt.
A year later - still without the job my bootcamp had all but promised me, I was feeling like a complete and utter failure. Nearly all my cohort-mates had gotten hired except for me, and on top of it all I was heavier than I'd ever been. My weight had climbed to nearly 260 lbs - 20 lbs higher than my starting weight 10 years ago (and almost 100 lbs heavier than my lowest). I began seeing a therapist to help me through my self esteem issues. On the day of my first session, the whole car ride over my mind was going a mile a minute, thinking of what I would talk about. She began our session with "Hi there". I responded by sobbing uncontrollably.
--- And Now for the Happy Part ---
Cut to now. Therapy has done wonders for me. So has getting my first job out of my bootcamp. I've been working full-time for the past 7 months, and for the first time in a long while I'm feeling positive about myself. I've gained perspective after my breakup, and I've learned to look at these last 2 years as an incredible achievement in stamina and hard work, as opposed to the day-in/day-out misery it used to feel like.
For the past 2 weeks I've been eating clean. Portion control - Not eating after a certain time at night - limiting my sodium and added sugars - taking the stairs when I could have taken the escalator.
What failed for me in the past was my mindset. That pernicious perspective that tells you you're not successful until you achieve your final goal -- that perspective that crams shame into every crack or crevice it can, so that when you eat a single m&m you feel like a total failure. Unfortunately we live in a society that tries to sell you a better (thinner) version of yourself - telling you you're not ok until you look better than you do.
As trite as it may sound, it really is about the journey, not the destination. Every step you take in your walk -- every walk you take in your journey toward a healthier lifestyle -- these are successes.
And in those moments when I find myself face-to-face with the sum of my failed diets - the "failures" which look at me as if to say "Who do you think you are? What makes you think this time will be any different?" I look around at everything I’ve done in the past two years, and I know in my heart that if I can turn my life around in those ways, I will do this, too.
TLDR - Hang in there. Love yourself, and be proud of the steps you take toward a healthier lifestyle, no matter how small.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/c7lr5g/losses_and_learnings_and_hopeful_advice_for_the/
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