So i had this crazy self revelation yesterday which kinda smacked me upside the head. it was the kind of revelation where you go "ouch that hurt", but its so true that you cant deny it..
Ive struggled so much in trying to lose weight.. and ive noticed i lose about 30 and then gain it all back plus more and lose another 30 and then gain it back again..and i started doing some searching inside myself for possible causes as to why i cant lose weight.. i came up with all the typical ones like "diet isnt right" "diet isnt right" "diet isnt right"....Thats funny..i have the same excuse..My excuse is ..each diet i try..isnt the right one for me..and yet i manage to lose 30 pounds on each of the diets...so OBVIOUSLY its not that im on the wrong diet...their is something else going on here...
So then i thought "maybe im not doing it for me, im doing it for someone else.." but for who? i dont feel the need to impress anyone..im comfortable for the most part in my own skin even though im waaaay bigger and fatter...ive gotten used to it..
So then what is the REAL? reason why i cant lose weight...??? and then i realized it...The answer is the same as the answer to the question of "what made me gain weight".
See.. my weight gaining journey started in junior high when i was about 13 years old..It was the first day of school and i had been sitting in a class next to a bunch of boys and i wasnt a girl who was accustomed to certain language..i was raised in a christian home and i went to a private school for quite awhile, before being in a public school..so when the word "sex" came up and the words "you are so sexy" and "would you like to have sex with me" and your so hot..and blah blah blah was spoken to me by all these guys, it scared me...In fact, all the attention from all these guys because i was the new popular girl that knowone knew who was skinny and beautiful ect ect ect...was not something i was used to..it was never mentioned to me by anyone else.. i didnt know how to take it..and in turn...i got scared.. i got scared cause i previously had been abused and molested by two different people..and i was scared that it was going to happen again..so to hide myself and make it so that people wouldnt look at me anymore or give me that kind of attention...i hid under fat...i gained weight on purpose.. i purposely ate to gain weight..and the eating to gain turned into anxious eating and emotional eating and then when i gained enough weight, these guys started saying things like "wow look at her, she is like an elephent..what a pig"... Nobody wanted to be my friend, not one guy wanted to dance with me at the school dance and i was fine with that..but the problem was..now that i got them to not look at me..i was heavy and i wanted to lose the weight and i couldnt..i didnt know how to and then my mom started me on diets, and then i ended up with an eating disorder which made it worse and on and on the sick cycle went...
The revelation about why i cant lose weight really is simple to me now...I cant lose weight, because im afraid to. I am afraid to lose weight for fear of being hurt physcially or emotionally by men. I am afraid to lose weight for fear of guys making comments to me like that.. or fear of them trying to take advantage of me. I am afraid i will lose my protective covering..See in astrange way.. i feel invincible because i feel invisible..I can walk down a dark street down the worst part of town late at night and not be afraid..why? because my fat makes me look big..i stand at 6feet tall and the way my fat is porportioned makes my figure look large and bulky like a man's figure. I feel as if no guy can touch me when i look like this..its like..they dont care because im not thin and pretty..so therefore i dont need to worry.. i feel protected..Im afraid of losing my protection..and im afraid that if i lose my fat.. i will lose my toughness..and will end up being vulnerable to being hurt..because i feel tough right now..i feel strong..even if its a false sense of strength..i precieve myself as having a manly type body even though i am a women and it makes me feel un-afraid..and people see me as that..they see me as a strong person who is tough..sweet but tough..and if i lose that toughness..then i cant hide behind anything and people see me..and my inside will end up matching my vulnerable inside..
So anyway, that was my revelation of why i cant lose weight..and im thankful i had it, because now i can work on the part of "how do i deal with these fears so that i can let go of my fear so i can lose weight"
I'm not sure if that's the reason I've never been able to lose but I know I have the same reason as you for gaining. I think I haven't been able to lose successfully before because I have such self hatred from growing up that I just felt I was meant to be that way, that I deserved to look like that. Fighting back my inner demons is a daily struggle.
I'm wondering if OA might be a thought, or therapy if possible/affordable.
Otherwise, I would say that if you want to lose the weight because you want to look good and be healthy, go for it--for YOU.
You don't say how you spend your time, but joining a group of people doing something you enjoy might help you gain confidence socially. It should be a group that shares your values, so that you can feel comfortable.
Some other posters on this site are your height or taller and they are losing weight and have partners who love them. Everyone is unique and has their own issues, but the stories of those women might reassure you that happy endings are possible for everyone.
You had very bad experiences in the past and it makes me sad to think you must imprison yourself in fat to avoid being molested or mistreated in any way in the here and now. You deserve to look as nice as you want, to walk tall and proud, and to say NO to anyone who thinks about bothering you.
That is good that you have found out the reason for not wanting to lose weight. It is good to keep in mind that fat doesnt make you strong, it is the mind that makes you strong. Remember that when you want to start your weight loss! Mind over body!
I didn't lose weight for the longest time, (Notice I didn't say couldn't...because I COULD...I just didn't try very hard), was because I was/am a food addict. There were no deep seeded reasons I secretly wanted to be fat. I wasn't abused, or molested, or liked being a wall flower. I was/am purely and plainly totally addicted to some carbs/fats and once I started eating them, I didn't stop. I used these foods as my drug of choice to self medicate me when I was happy, lonely, depressed, anxious or any other normal human emotion.
I remember saying things like..."yea I'm like an alcoholic, but an alcoholic can live without booze, but I can't live without food." Fortunately I finally realized that was just another excuse to keep feeding my addiction. I CAN live without sugar, I CAN live without refined carbs. It wasn't until I treated my morbid obesity as an addiction disease rather than some inter turmoil psychological issue did I begin to recover...
Read my post on the fear of being thin! I have the same issues, breaking 200 was so hard for me, cause at that weight I wasn't skinny yet I wasn't overly "fat" either. I sat on the fence for a long time cause expereince has shown me that I feel vulnerable when I'm "small" I used my pounds as proctection for a long time.
I hate attention from men. When I'm tiny I get it all the time....heck I was at a bar this weekend with friends and I had men all over me on the dance floor and it freaked me out....that hasn't happened in years cause I was so heavy....I get anxiety, I seriously have a fear of men.....but that's because I had a male family member abuse me for years.
For me, it was similar to Lori Bell, I am not aware of any deep-seated psychological reasons that stopped me from losing weight. I just enjoyed eating too much to exercise the kind of restraint it took me to stick to a plan for more than a few months at a time. Once I made the decision to really do it, to really do the work of figuring out a way of eating where I could still take pleasure in food despite exercising restraint with food, and to really stick to it in the long term no matter what ups and downs I had, I was able to lose weight.
I'm not saying that other people don't have deeper issues that stop them from losing weight. And if you are one of those people who has those issues, it's great to think about them and work on them. But, I don't think that solving them is necessarily a prerequisite to succeeding at weight loss. There are two approaches to any psychological issue - one is to solve the issue first in your mind and then use that knowledge to alter your behavior. But the opposite approach can work just as well (better in some cases!) - address your behavior, commit to making behavioral changes, and save thinking about the underlying issues until you have the behavior under control.
This approach has worked extremely well for me in other (non-weight-loss) areas of my life. I think there are many people out there who are waiting to solve their psychological issues with food and weight loss, who might benefit from this approach just Picking A Plan And Sticking To It, making a commitment to do so (for 30 days, or 60 days, or 90 days) the way you commit to going to work whether you feel like it or not. You might find that once you get the eating under control through this kind of commitment, it frees up some mental energy to think about the underlying issues.
Porthardygurl - congratulations! Finding out what keeps you from losing weight is an AWESOME step in finding out what you need to do to move forward. Therapy is a good suggestion, if you want/can afford to take it. The other thing that I recommend is to take a self-defense class and if you like that kind of exercise, to take a martial arts class. It's very empowering (I took a self-defense class) and it might help you feel "safer" even as you lose the weight. My self-defense class was taught by a former marine who loved to tell me how I could actually hurt someone very very much by doing this or that.
The reason, for me, why I stayed heavy for as long as I did is pure DENIAL. I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was much younger, but I never did anything about it. I was thin before and when the weight started piling on, I just ignored it. I figured someday I would lose the weight. I don't know how. Maybe "magically".
I knew that I had to lose the weight somehow. I just didn't know how. Never bothered to figure out how. I just kind of hope it would go away some day. I also didn't know how what I ate would stick to my body like glue. But it did. Finally, one day, I got really, really, really sick. A stomach virus that absolutely floored me. This was not the first time, but this one was at the "right time, right place" kind of thing. I didn't want to eat anything..... anything at all. I spent days without eating any solid food and my body rejecting even liquids. I realized, while I laid in bed hoping for death, that I could actually survive days without eating food. So, what was my problem with the whole dieting thing? Why wouldn't I put down the fork and not eat the cake (I was eating cake every day)? Why wouldn't I take care of my body so I wouldn't be this sick (I attributed the virus to eating out to restaurants, even if later I learned that wasn't the cause)?
I had time, while I was really sick, to really think about my food habits. I realized that I was being a big baby. I needed to eat healthy to be healthy. If I lost weight, then great, added bonus.
After a week and half of no solid foods, I learned I had to start getting food in my system slowly. I decided then that it would be "healthy" food. No more sodas (diet or otherwise). Whole foods. No high sugar stuff for a long time. Because my body was not used to eating by then, I didn't feel deprived. I felt grateful I could eat solid food again!
And every time I had cravings or the like, I would remind myself that I needed to be grateful I could eat whole foods and solid foods and not be sick to my stomach and worse. Slowly, that became a habit. Now, it's a habit. I can't go back to eating the way that I was eating before, so I've lost a lot of weight since then.
I still struggle, because I can over eat even "healthy" foods. I just have to be mindful about what I am eating and to also stop myself from going into that "denial" that everything will resolve itself on it's own without my intervention. I lead a really busy life and it's easy to delegate stuff around me to others...... but I can't delegate this! I have to be focused on this.
So, to keep focused, I've also had to change my habits and my socializing and my relationships with family and friends. It's been hard, it's not easy. But it's super rewarding. I'm in better health today than I have ever been before.
Porthardygurl- I think that was a great discovery! It takes a lot of inner strength to face your own traumatic past and the emotions that come with it so well done!
What kept me from losing weight?
My past may have been traumatic, I lived with my father who abused me physically for years. I turned to drugs and alcohol at a very young age to help myself cope. I struggled severe clinical depression and several suicide attempts. At 16 I reached out and finally told people what my dad was doing, he convinced everyone that I was just a sick kid who was making things up due to my personality disorder (which I actually was never diagnosed with). I left my dads place and started living on the streets and couch surfing before finally making it back to my mums and getting the help I needed.
Can I blame any of this for my addiction to food? No, I am okay with my past, It was hard but it made me who I am today. The only person I have to blame is me. I don't know exactly when my relationship with food changed and became unhealthy. I remember indulging in treats several times and week and I even remember that my pants were getting to tight. I would look into the mirror and hate what I saw and wished it would just go away over night but I was to lazy to change. I watched myself grow larger and just continued eating. I actually remember watching an intervention with 2 anorexic women, they would constrict there calories to 500 a day and weigh every single thing they ate to make sure it was accounted for and I wished I could do that! I actually envied the control they had over food and wanted to be like that but I simply couldn't control myself like them. Screwed up right? Looking back on it now, I have no idea what I was thinking.
The times I did try to lose weight were half hearted attempts. I believe this was due to 2 things, first I was young and stupid and had no idea what healthy eating was and second I was simply lazy. My idea of "working out" was all that walking I did at school haha. On top of that the guy I was dating at the time LOVED eating out, it was our favorite thing to do! When we broke up I got a new job and promptly lost about 15lbs without trying. You think that would motivate me but nope, instead I started buying chocolate every break.
Then I met my now boyfriend of 3 yrs and guess what our favorite thing to do together was? Eat. I again packed on the pounds and let it happen. I would get on the scale and see the number, get sad and go out and eat. Him and I tried probably 50 times in 2.5 yrs to lose weight together but we would give in to our addictions and binge giving up any progress we had made. It was a horrible cycle of binging.
I saw 180 on the scale one morning, being only 5'5 on a good day I was mortified. I was almost 200lbs! How did this happen? Why did I let it get here? I felt gross, I looked gross and I loathed myself. Something needed to change. I saw results pretty quickly on the scale of course dropping the water weight and it fueled the fire a little bit. I started researching everything I had questions about, started buying whole clean foods and threw away all the crap. I think what made it stick this time is a couple things, I found support from a friend who was struggling just like I was and also from all you beautiful ladies on 3FC. I had the information I needed and I was truly determined for the first time. Now, most of it has become a habit and I just have to control my portions and sudden cravings. Which is becoming easier as the time ticks away. Even working out has become a habit, I recently had to take a couple days off due to a minor injury and I was actually dreaming about running on the treadmill. I WANTED to work out, which sounds completely crazy to me since I dreaded working out before.
Its been hard changing my habits and getting my family/friends used to the change but it's totally worth it. I feel amazing and I can't wait to see where I am a year from now!
I feel the same as the mod here... I have noticed that when I go to bars I feel REALLY insecure about getting approached by anyone and just don't want ot deal with unwanted attention. Being this big usually keeps men away, although it hurts even more when you get approached at this weight because it's always a funny joke. I was never molested by anyone, so I do not know how you feel that way, but I understand how hard it mus tbe and the struggle it causes for you to lose weight. The thing is, just because you get fit and healthy doesn't mean you will suffer more trauma. You will be in control of who you want to have a beautiful healthy relationship with! Plus you will be strong and fit and you will still be able to defend yourself if you feel the need to.
The reason why I can't lose weight is because I constantly convince myself I don't have time to exercise because of school and work, and then I don't eat very well because I either can't afford to buy healthy groceries or something like that. Haha. Then I stop buying groceries and eat out all the time or snack on crap for days and it's a bad cycle. It's all BS but I hope I can change my mindset. It's pretty damn boring actually.
I'm not saying you're exercising too much. I'm just saying that as you get into better and better shape you might be tempted to keep pushing it and that could cause problems.Just something to think about in the future. Gooduck.
Why cant you lose weight??
