Between the months of June and October ‘07, I lost forty pounds. I went from 175 to 135; from a size 12-14 to a size 4-6; from hating my love handles to having a well-defined waist; from hating all physical activity to getting antsy when I’m not working out; from being disgusted by my thunder thighs to proudly wearing short skirts; from immense self hatred to genuine self love; from contemplating suicide to being one of the most positive people on the planet… and the list goes on.
I have a history of body dysmorphia (sp?). I was a skinny kid, so I ate all the time. In middle school, puberty hit me with a bang and I gained a massive amount of weight. This caused my peers to ridicule me incessantly and set the foundation for my high school eating disorders. While I stopped practicing eating disordered behavior at the age of 18, the mindset remained – I was still unbelievably afraid of getting fat.
When I was 16, I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. If I kept my blood sugar high, I would stay thin. I used this to my full advantage. My doctor caught on to what I was doing and told me I was slowly killing myself, but I was young and invincible, so I didn’t believe him. When I took better care of myself, I noticed the weight piled on. This discouraged me.
I gained 50 pounds in six months and began to hate myself. No, I don’t blame better diabetes control for that. The truth is: I made bad lifestyle choices. I ate my feelings and licked the plates clean. I drowned my sorrows with booze. I rarely exercised.
Before the weight gain, I was exceptionally confident and exceedingly outgoing, but after those evil 50 pounds suddenly appeared on my body, I didn’t even want to go outside! I was once the girl that would look great no matter what I had planned for the day. However, once I gained weight, I started going grocery shopping in my pajamas, wearing sweatpants and dingy t-shirts to work, and stopped styling my hair.
I got used to putting my life on hold and continued to do it even after I lost the weight. Still, on December 2007, I hit my previous weight of 125. My goal was 135 and I wasn’t expecting to reach 125, but I did it. I’ve been able to keep it off, though it has been a challenge at times.
I’m the sort of person who believes that to succeed at something, you have to put your entire being into it. If I don’t have COMPLETE passion and dedication, I will end up failing because I will lose focus. I told everyone I knew that I was going to get back to my thin weight. I had to live up to those expectations, because I didn’t want to get laughed at for not following through. I started to look at everything from a weight loss perspective. I stopped hating things like household chores, carrying the groceries up the stairs, moving furniture, and washing my car because I knew those were calorie-burning activities. My now ex was really LOVING my compliant nature, as I even volunteered to scrub the tub and clean the toilet!
My advice to everyone still trying to lose weight is to remember you are PASSIONATE about your weight loss; you want this and you want it with FIERCE determination. And if you want it bad enough, you will not make excuses. Instead, you will find out how you are going to achieve your goals. Think of how good you will look when you lose your weight. If you fall off plan, don’t mope about how you screwed up, just dust yourself off and remember that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. You have plenty of time to mend whatever damage you may have done.
Since losing my weight, I participated in four photo shoots, entered a bodybuilding contest where I placed first in my weight class and second overall, became a personal trainer (certified with NASM and ISSA), instructed at a health retreat on the beach in Florida, and finally became comfortable with being naked.
Posted on July 16th, 2010 by nightengaleshane
Filed under: maintenance, rambling, self | No Comments »
