Sincerenity

Trigger Warning: ED, body dysmorphia, weight loss

I am going to share with you my weight loss story. I am going to be vulnerable and open as I share my experience. I’m hoping this story will be relatable in some ways.

I can’t remember a single day of my life where weight loss wasn’t on my mind. I remember being 10 years old and trying to lose weight. 10 years old. When I look back at pictures, I really wasn’t that big at the time, but I thought I was. All the other girls in my class were so thin and skinny. It never crossed my mind that we were CHILDREN. I wasn’t even close to being fully grown and was trying to lose weight.

There were so many things. Comments from my “friends”, my family, watching Disney channel, clothes shopping, magazines…. They all added up. I was encouraged not to wear certain clothes because of my weight. I was told I was looking good and people asked if I had lost weight, at 10 years old!!!

I was never a skinny or thin teenager, I was a little chubby but it was the cute kind of chubby that I was mostly ok with. It was never super bad but I was still always trying to lose weight. In high school I was very active in marching band nearly every day of the week that helped.

Then I graduated from high school and it started to go downhill from there.

After high school, I moved a few hours away to go to college. I watched the scale creep up to 200 lbs. At this same time, my anxiety was getting worse and worse. I didn’t know it at the time though. I didn’t know what was going on with me.

My request to go on religious service was declined because of my weight. I really didn’t think my weight was that much of an issue, but this hit me hard. For the first time, someone made a big decision for me based on one fact: my weight. My personality, work ethic, goals, or anything else didn’t matter in the decision. They knew nothing else about me.

After my first semester of college was over, I moved back home and went on my first official diet: Whole30. I also got a personal trainer. I honestly didn’t really see any results from the personal trainer, and Whole30 took too much time and effort. I lost 15 pounds in a month but it all came back and then some the moment I got off the diet.

I got approved to go on religious service a year after I graduated from high school, and that is when I gained most of my weight and developed disordered eating habits. Over the course of a year and a half, I gained 40 pounds. During that time, I was living in the southern part of the United States… An area filled with food. Lots of it. And it’s all fried. I had nearly no control over the food I was given and quickly learned that food was very, very comforting. It was a very, very stressful time in my life and my anxiety was at it’s worst it has been at that point. I struggled a lot. When I was eating, I was safe and comfortable and happy. Thus began the association to food with comfort.

Which, is not a bad thing. I believe there is a time and place for food to be a comfort. However, I was beyond that. It was my only coping mechanism. Any chance I had I was eating as much as I could.

After my religious service, my weight continued to increase. The scale crept up to 260.

I tried Keto. Same thing as the other diet: it was too hard to maintain and took too much time and effort. I lost a little, I think maybe 10 pounds? I gained more the moment I got off of it. Plus, Keto made me feel sick. Keto flu is NO JOKE. I was on Keto on and off.

I got my first professional job. Yes, eating was still very much my coping mechanism.

I got engaged and married to the most amazing man who I had known for many many years. He has never commented on my weight. My wedding day was the best day of my life, but I was so self conscious of how I looked in my dress and I was worried how all the pictures would turn out. On my wedding day, I was beyond happy, but in the back of my mind I was upset at myself that I hadn’t done more to lose weight before that day to look and feel better.

Then we went on our honeymoon and went on a cruise. I was self conscious the whole time. I’m always self conscious but especially then. Our cruise was amazing but it was always in the back of my mind. I was just wishing I had done more before to look and feel better in my body.

The scale kept creeping up. The pandemic started. I transferred to a different department in my job that I had no idea would be so difficult. It challenged me emotionally so bad. I had dealt with anxiety for years at this point, but now depression came along with it.

When I look back, this was the darkest time of my life. I was seeing therapists, got diagnosed with severe anxiety, got on anxiety/depression medication, almost quit my job… It was so, so bad. Add the stress, fear, and panic the beginning of the pandemic brought with that. Yes, food was my coping mechanism.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I saw an opportunity to transfer to a different department within the company and things got a lot better mentally.

I got off the medication, I only ended up taking it for a few months and I don’t think they did anything honestly.

I was on and off Keto so much I lost count.

The scale kept creeping up until it passed 300 pounds. Wow. I never thought I would let it get there.

My husband and I moved into our own house, I got a good job at the same company I had been with for years, and one day I looked down and the scale said: 311 pounds.

Are you kidding me?

Honestly, I didn’t feel like I was over 300 pounds. I also avoided mirrors so much that I honestly didn’t really know what I looked like. Then I went to a concert with my family and we took a picture infront of the poster and something about that picture…. It really showed how prominent my apron belly was.

I felt like I had an impossible task ahead of me. I had tried so many times before with no luck.

A few months later, I was at my in-laws house. Every year we all sit down together and write down goals for the year. It was March 11, 2023, and I decided I was going to lose half of my weight. I didn’t know how, I just knew I was going to do it.

(Also, I was 311 pounds and the date was 3/11, it’s kinda funny and I didn’t notice that until much later 😂)

I didn’t know how this was going to look, how it was going to go, or how I was going to do it, I just decided to start. March 11, 2023 is my start date. I have had to recommit thousands of times since then, but I refuse to change my start date again.

I just started tracking calories. I wasn’t aiming for a limit, I just started tracking to see where I was at. Wow, that was very humbling. I honestly didn’t think I was eating that much, but getting up to 3,000-4,000 calories a day was very typical for me. No wonder I had gained so much weight. Honestly I wasn’t eating that “bad” of food most of the time, but I was eating a lot of it. The poision for me was in the portion of the food.

I started doing cardio a few times a week. I don’t think I gave myself a calorie limit at the very beginning. If I did, it was one my calorie tracking app had recommended.

In 2 months I had lost 10 pounds just by making a few simple changes. Then I found Chris Terrell’s TikTok and podcast. His podcast was a game changer. It totally altered what I thought about weight loss. This is not a sponsored post, I am just that passionate about the lessons he taught and the perspective he gave me. It completely changed how I approached weight loss. He asked a question I had never heard before: “Why did you gain the weight?”

It took months of self discovery and journaling and pondering, but long story short I found my answer: the reason I gained the weight was because of emotional eating. Sure there were other things, but that was the main contributer. So I started reverse engineering that and decided I needed to lose the weight by doing the opposite: not emotionally eating. I began to learn how to recover from that.

One thing ontop of another was incorporated. I figured out what my daily needed calories were, then from that figured how much I should eat to be in a deficit. Then I started drinking more water. Then I started eating more protein. Throughout all of this I tried to workout a few times a week. 9 months after my start date, I lost 20 pounds. Boy this was harder than I ever imagined. The scale fluctuates a lot more than you think.

When I lost 20 pounds, the holidays came around. I stayed diligent as much as I could and tried not to throw everything away just because of a few days. I did end up gaining some weight over the holiday season, but lost it again.

One year after I decided to lose weight, now in March 2024, I had lost 30 pounds. I had such mixed feelings. On one hand, I was very proud of myself. I did that all on my own! On the other hand, a whole year of work and I had only lost 30? It felt like a drop in the bucket compared to the 156 I wanted to lose. I was hoping to have lost a lot more by then. But I was glad the weight was gone regardless.

Less than 2 months later, I lost 35 pounds! I was so happy and proud of myself.

I’ve been doing this long enough now that I realized there is a pattern in my weight loss: I will go through weeks of progress and being “in the zone” and that will be followed by weeks of setback. Rinse and repeat. I think that’s why this was taking so long. I would take two steps forward, 1-2 steps backwards.

I signed up with a weight loss coach I found on social media for 5 months. I had an underwhelming and disappointing experience with them. I didn’t get what I was hoping for with them, but I did learn some things and it did help me in a lot of ways.

I went through a dark time, mentally. I took a month break away from the scale. The scale is a useful tool, but it’s something to be careful of. I was starting to have a poor relationship with the scale. Is was at a point where I wasn’t using it to measure my progress but as a way to measure my self worth. So I took a month away from the scale to just focus on habits. However, without the scale, I felt less accountability with sticking with my plans. I had gone 61 days of no emotionally eating before I broke it. I had gained 6 pounds back, so I was back up to 29 pounds down from my highest weight.

My mental health improved and I was able to maintain around 30 lbs lost for about 6 months with little effort. I was glad that I could so easily maintain my weight, as I would need to do that for the rest of my life. However, it was frustrating and difficult to not be losing more weight.

Well, I ended up plateauing for 10 months and didn’t lose any weight. However, I learned a lot, and you can read all about that here. My plateau finally broke and I lost 40 pounds total.

For some reason I was still trying to figure out at this point, I “self sabotaged” or ruined my progress every time I hit a milestone. I didn’t completely go into “screw it” mode, but I did slacl a little bit, so I gained 12 lbs back within a month or so. The amount of effort it takes to lose weight vs gain it is so frustrating. I could be giving 100% of effort and maybe lose a pound or two. But if I give 90% effort, I gain 3+ lbs.

At this point, I’m two years into my weight loss journey and only technically down about 30 pounds. I am so beyond fed up. I understand it takes as long as it takes, but I felt like I should have seen more progress in two years. This was getting exhausting. So, after careful consideration and planning, I decided to do Whole 30 for one month.

About halfway through Whole 30, I ran/walked my first 5k! I was able to lose 11 pounds on Whole 30, and you can read my experience with that here. Going on Whole 30 reset my eating habits and helped me in many ways!

That is where I am now. I will continue to update this post as I move forward.