Weight Loss is Personal Growth
I was thin growing up and right up until my late 30s, with just a few brief blips. It wasn’t until I had my second child that I got myself into a place I could not seem to find my way back out of. All of the previous times, I’d been overweight for less than a year, and each time, took a slightly more active approach than the previous time. Getting the weight off took a little longer each time, but never more than a few weeks to months.
This time was different, and I began to experience despair and hopelessness. I remember waking up and with eyes still closed, thinking it was all a bad dream and that I actually was still living in the thin body I’d always had. And then I’d feel my belly and realize, nope, not true any more.
I carried most of the extra weight on my middle, the classic “apple shape” that is most likely to reflect disease.
Not only was it affecting my health, it was hard to find flattering clothing, and it felt awful to live in this state.
I lived like this for a few years and during this time, heard these unhelpful and demoralizing comments:
Things are just different after kids. Accept that this is how your body looks now.
Be grateful for what your body did; at least you have two healthy kids!
It’s selfish and vain to want to be thin. Only shallow people care about such things.
and other ways to stay stuck.
I kept trying things that didn’t really work like detoxes. Anything that involved putting something in my mouth or lying around some more was about all the energy I had to put into this project.
While I was considering transforming my body, I came across an interesting program, but one of the things it said was that losing weight was not going to be the answer to all my issues. In fact, he said to fix all my issues first, before losing weight.
My self-confidence and self-image were deeply affected by both the way I looked and the way I felt. I was so weak and in so much pain that it was difficult to get up from the floor. It was difficult to lift my kids. In fact, it was difficult to stand up or walk even a little. Going grocery shopping was exhausting. These are Activities of Daily Living (ADL), something a mom of young kids should be able to achieve no problem.
In this state of unhealth, I certainly didn’t have the energy to address the work it would take to work on my attitude and mental health. I wasn’t able to enjoy being with my kids because all of the simple work involved with raising them was exhausting. Taking them on outings was draining beyond belief.
It’s hard to know what the best first step is to take when in a dark place. So, despite the fact that this influencer said that losing weight was not going to be a miracle panacea for all things mental health, I finally got myself unstuck and began the deep work of doing a physical transformation.
Life is messy. Humans are complicated. Any step in a positive direction is a good next step. This has been my experience.
It’s interesting that most people nowadays, when they see this picture, will still say what my husband did then:
“
It’s not that much weight. “
“This is normal.”
And yes, it’s true. It’s not actually that much weight in the greater scheme of things. And that should not invalidate my experience of living at this size.
This is probably about 45 pounds or 30% from my current weight.
The truth is, I “carried it well”, whatever that means. The fact that on my 5’11” frame, I can “hide” 45 extra pounds of fat does not mean that I should.
Nothing about what I did to lose weight will come as a surprise. You probably already know a lot of what you need to know and how to find help.
I took a few hard runs at losing the fat using various diet and exercise programs, and then I took time off to implement the tools I was learning to maintain the new weight. So I’d push very hard and be very strict for 3 months and then take at least 3 months off. I learned that at first, it is possible to lose a pound or even more a week. I learned that maintaining is a very active step and there is some backsliding, and to nip it in the bud; don’t let 2 pounds turn into 10 and then 15. And I learned that the closer I got to my goal, the slower the progress went. Any attempt to rush the process at this stage is more likely to lead to disordered eating. We are a culture of short attention spans. Weight loss is an act of Patience, Discipline, and Self-Trust.
Like many people on this journey, I got into some disordered eating. There are many weight-loss programs out there and they all have rules. The rules can be a bit crazy making. Disordered eating is not the same thing as a full-blown eating disorder, but it’s something to pay attention to. I found more than once that I was choosing programs that made navigating life too limiting, and I learned to reevaluate and find more balanced ways to accomplish my goals.
My BMI went from around 28 (for me, obese*) to around 21. More importantly, losing the weight helped me to regain the ability to do Activities of Daily Living. Once I was confident that the weight would stay off, I began tackling another serious personal issue: that in addition to keeping clutter on my body in the form of fat, I was also keeping clutter in my home in the form of Hoarding. Learning to release Things was arguably deeper work than losing weight, and that’s saying something. All self-improvement is deep work. Studying our own success and using our victories to learn where we can continue to grow is a formula to keep succeeding.
Back to the premise that losing weight won’t fix all my issues. True. While it was lovely to wake up and be able to leap out of bed and to able to lift my kids overhead, clean the house, take my kids on outings, and other cool tricks, I still was the same person inside.
But I was now a person who had set a goal and achieved the goal. I was someone who had stuck with weight-loss consistently for two years and then maintenance for another few years. Someone who had publicly declared an intention and had followed through. From this, I have been able to find the resolve to do other hard things. Life is always full of challenges for all of us. I am grateful for this learning opportunity and the confidence it has given me in my ability to do hard things.
*A BMI of 28 is not considered obese. However, a body fat percentage of over 25% is considered obese. I had a series of DEXA scans during my transformation, and my lean body mass is quite low, meaning that my body fat percentage is higher than average for my height. So in the before photos above, I am indeed technically obese.