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Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Losing Weight - Reflection and Moving Forward


The first time I tried – and I mean really tried – to lose weight, I was wildly successful. I lost nearly 100 pounds and got myself from 52% body fat to an athletic 18%.  I look at pictures of myself from that time in my life and I can’t fathom how I ever thought I was still fat.  Looking in the mirror now I can only wish I was that “fat” again!

 

While I can speculate what it was that threw me off I won’t pretend to know exactly why I gained everything back (with interest.)  There’s the obvious - I stopped controlling what I was eating, I stopped going to the gym. Yet, all the while other aspects of my life were changing in big and stressful ways.  I’ve never handled stress or change well, so I’d say that contributed to the overall apathetic feeling I developed for salads and push-ups. 

 

In less than 8 years, I went from 260 pounds to 167, then I shot up to a massive 310.  I hover in that area now - sliding from 310 down to 300 and everywhere in between depending on how the day finds me.  I eat without discrimination against fat, sugar or calorie content.  I can’t remember most of the exercises that helped me lose weight the first time around.  IF I go to the gym I spend most of my time in my car trying to convince myself to go in. When I do manage to hit the machines it’s usually for a painfully awkward 15 minutes of feeling like everyone is staring at the fat chick before I scurry out the door and escape home to my Xbox and the Domino’s Pizza delivery app.

 

Things aren’t any different now.  By that I mean…writing this blog doesn’t mean I’ve hit some huge turning point in my life. I haven’t had an epiphany that made me see the light and will make me do some movie montage type sh*t to transform my life.  The gym still intimidates me. The idea of changing what I eat and watching every single calorie makes me nauseous.  The knowledge of how freakin’ hard it’s going to be to lose all this weight again makes me question if it’s really worth it.  Worst of all is knowing that yes. Yes I can lose the weight again. I can get my ass to the gym and eat right and do what I need to do - but no matter how much hard work I put into it, I can also gain all of it back.  The terrifying reality of that complete and utter failure is here in front of me every single day.

 

What if I lose the weight and I can’t keep it off?  What if I have even more loose skin than I did last time around? What if I can’t lose the weight?

 

So many what ifs, so much fear of the unknown. There’s also laziness, for sure. There’s a lack of priorities and no desire to invest in myself because of a cripplingly low self-esteem.

 

Yet despite all of this, something has to change.  I can’t spend the rest of my life holding back and being miserable because of my weight. I need to take a hard look at what I’m doing NOW. Instead of focusing on what I did before, on the person I used to be, I need to assess what my situation is now and how I can make changes.  None of that “small changes” and “one step at a time” crap. I hate that. I hate slow progress.  If I’m really, honestly trying I want to see results.

 

SEEING RESULTS

 

Milestone Markers:

 

Lose 30 pounds:  After I lose 30 pounds, I want a tattoo on my upper left arm to cover scars from my….emotionally turbulent adolescence.  I think this is a great first goal.  While I may not be seeing a huge change in my body yet, I’ll be able to cover up something that bothers me. Hopefully this will motivate me to keep going.  To hold myself accountable, I will contact my tattoo artist and let her know what my plan is. Maybe I can get her in on it and she’ll help keep me going J (A reasonable goal is to shoot for losing 30lbs in 7-10 weeks. I will set my first goal timeline for 10/1/2016)

 

As I reach my milestones, I’ll set new ones.  Don’t try to tackle everything at once because it starts to become really overwhelming. For right now, if I look to lose 30 pound increments, I’ll be setting myself up for 5 milestone markers.)

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