Hello everyone :> I'll put a
tl;dr at the bottom for some people. I apologize because I seem to only know how to write novels when I make any sort of post like this.
Pretty dang new here. I've rarely participated in forums like this or since my old 13 year old neopets days. But I kind of want to give it a try and see what it's like. Maybe I'll learn something about myself here, or maybe I'll help someone else, who knows!
It may be dumb to share a good portion of my life on here, but it might be necessary for me to read over later. Everyone has their story right?
I want to start off by saying that this is by far
not the first time I've tried losing weight. I've dealt with obesity my entire life. Age 5 I was probably
100 pounds. 7 years old my grandmother weight me, I was
140. I didn't move a lot. I liked food (I still do) a lot of it was probably out of boredom.
Then about 8 and a half my dad went into surgery to remove a brain tumor. He didn't fully recover from it due to poor aftercare (lack of oxygen) As much as I didn't think much of it at the time, I'm pretty sure it really messed me up mentally growing up.
5th grade I was already peaking at
185 pounds. I had finally made an actual friend since all of the moving we had to do. She of course, didn't turn out to be that bff and we split about freshman year (or I decided to just cut ties with her) Sophmore year was my heaviest. I never weight myself at this point, but I do remember stepping on a scale that I think was 5 pounds generous. I'm pretty sure I was almost hitting the
250 mark at this point. I had a crush at the time, and I was
miserable but I hid it so well. It was hard for me to fit in some school desks at this weight, and I was obsessed with the idea of my stomach not touching the desk part. There were some desks I couldn't fit in at all.
Thinking back to that time I was not eating breakfast, but I think I had a bagel and cream cheese during our first break. Then during lunch, a lot of times through the week I was eating port of subs medium size (it's like subway) we had off campus lunch, but my school sold these at the student store at the time. I was very much into starbursts at the time too, and I ate these generous sized cookies too. I wasted the sandwiches my mom made for me, sometimes (grossly) not making it out of my bag before going bad. Thankfully though, my mom kinda had thing against soda (especially diet) and while I did drink it occasionally, it was never a norm. I think the only good healthy habit I have/had all my life was that iced water was my beverage of choice.
My junior year was when I was starting to gradually lose weight by walking home from school. I lived a couple miles away, so I'm guessing through that I lost maybe 10-15 pounds over that time. My mom and I walked our dog every night too so that counted too!
Finally hitting senior year, I hit my first big wake up call (or I've
HAD it call) from an incident in class where we all had to speak our poems out loud and we'd pass notes to the presenter giving them feedback. One of my slips simply read "You should lose weight." Of course I was upset haha.
Last semester of high school of 2008, I finally made my first weight loss journey. I researched the internet to the best of my ability. I had another acquaintance who had went through her own journey as well, and I asked her what she did. I think in her case, she LOVED drinking milk, so she pretty much cut that, and used her stairs as a work out station and did some weight training. I had one class slot blank, so some days I slept in, but the days when the slot was in the middle of the day (before lunch usually) I wore workout clothes and tennis shoes to school, ditched the school grounds and walked/ worked up a jog around a big winding hillside (a good maybe 3 miles) Went to the smoothie shop at the end some days, had a smoothie, and walked back either before or as lunch was ending. I later started to add more jogging/running after school on chosen days, and did weight training multiple times during the week. This was the course of over maybe 2-3 months and I think I lost about 25 pounds at this time. Kinda hit a plateau, but I carried on through summer and the beginning of community college and I eventually worked my way down into the
190's kind of hoping to maybe get down to the 160's.
However, my craze to go jogging everyday slowed down and I eventually kind of stopped all together. And around 2010 new years, I was sad again because I was creeping back up to
200. My sister suggested to me a gym trainer, who I trained with for about a year. This was fortunately, the highlight of my life, or when I felt happiest. I made new wonderful friends with similar interests, and I was maintaining my weight well because I was gaining so much muscle. My goal however was to lose weight and that didn't really happen. My trainer knew however that my body worked fine (and heart beat was very healthy for a person like I was) and I had lost maybe 5 pounds with her within a month or two. Long story short, my weight just liked to toggle up and down the 190 spectrum because I didn't want to put in that extra effort.
Ran out of money to support training and going to the gym (eventually I rejoined), but I kept working out and walking about 4x a week for 40 min or so. I also had a hobby over this summer that kept me from snacking a lot. This time surprised me the most because I somehow dropped 10 pounds, and I was seeing a number on the scale I hadn't seen since 5th grade! I was not depriving myself, and I was eating yogurt and crackers each night at 2:am!! I actually felt really great and I liked how I looked at this time! It finally felt like I had conquered this side of me because I was starting to "live" as they say, just going through life without constantly thinking about what was going in/out, etc.
Then came about my last semester of college, and I stressed myself over one project so horribly that I literally had a panic attack. If my mom wasn't there, I would have fainted. This was a bad moment because it still affects me greatly to this day. I have a lot of paranoia about multiple situations, especially regarding my degree and getting work. When I graduated, I decided to just take a break for a semester. Personal dark times happened, but I was able to dig out of it and stick through it. At this peak, I both gained a wonderful person in my life, and lost one at the same time. I took another sort of break and took life drawing (I love to draw) and I attended aerobics classes. I was maybe high 190's to mid at this time. The problem though in this phase is that I was holding myself back/putting up a wall for myself in regards to my career. I went back to school to take a few more essential classes I missed out on and I volunteered at the local tv station. Tried applying for a dream job, didn't make it. Crushed me. Was having a lot of anxiety and depression around this time, so my sister finally suggested that I went on antidepressants.
I went on generic prozac for about a year and lost maybe 10 pounds again at first. But here's where my current problem finally comes in- I eventually gained... 30 POUNDS!! When I realized this, I researched and wanted to switch to wellabutrin in hopes that I'd have a weight loss side effect. It did nothing of course, HA! (I was on generic though and didn't use it very well... oops)
I went through another very very difficult time. I had 3 different family health related things happening at once which made me essentially an emotionless potato hermit in my own room a lot. My mom and I got those margarita bottles from costco and we'd go through them in no time. I was snacking on things like tortilla chips (the yummy kind) with guac or some other creamy dip and putting butter and jam on my toast again. It was not a place I wanted to be at the time. But two of those things have been resolved thankfully, and crossing my fingers (we all are) for the other one, who is slowly getting better we believe and pray. But all the food habits + assuming my prescription is what triggered the weight gain.
Fast forwarding to now. I just got out of another personal dark tunnel (one of those dark times where nothing is really wrong but you just feel worthless and want to hide. If you've dealt with depression, you know what this is) ... but now, weight aside, things are actually looking up for me. I have a wonderful boyfriend of 2 years, I still am friends with the people I mentioned before, even if we don't see each other all the time... and literally just last week I finally conquered a big dark hole/fear of mine and obtained a part time graphics gig, which I think once I get settled in will be great for me at this time of my life. I'll be working 11-4 mon-fri, so that gives me time before and after shifts if I want to start to get active again.
I've been suggested therapy for a while now and I've wanted it but turned it down due to money but I'm finally getting that in the works. My insurance I think has approved it finally, at least the first visit. I'm on a new prescription (Viibryd the name brand) very new to it still, it doesn't seem bad, I think it actually is helping. I can't tell if it affects my appetite or mood, but I think it just makes me drowsy either around the time I should take it or about an hour after. The sad thing is that if I am going to still use this, it'll probably be generic but maybe I'll be wrong.
Which now leads me to this post. I'm currently 222 pounds. I have nothing bad to lose (besides maybe energy) and I want to try another weight loss journey. But I just never know, and I'm never committed past two weeks diet wise, 2 months exercise wise. I always have this spark every mid february or so, I tell myself that I'll eat less/better and exercise more... even tried low carbing but I always lose (I love carbs sadly who doesn't?) I have a few friends who do low carb or paleo, I know why people swear by it, I'm sure that it would do wonders for me, but I can't stick to it. I've had friends who have stuck and did well, friends who didn't stick and gained back. I've given it a try twice, but my sweet tooth just kicks my *** and I literally cave in. If that doesn't signify that sugar is bad, I don't know what will.
I'm starting by focusing strictly on diet, but my sense of strict probably isn't as strong as it should be. At the moment, I'm making small adjustments like cutting after dinner snacking/ cutting my sugar intake in particular because I do love sweets enough to have a sweet something every day. I've looked on pinterest for some inspiration, lots of posts regarding raw honey+ ceylon cinnamon drink if prepared right. I've been making mine with green tea and having a glass in the morning and at night. I'm trying to make breakfast my biggest meal of the day because I love breakfast foods and it's usually the time of day I actually fend for myself. I'm trying to work back down to my successful egg+egg whites on toast method, but I'm currently on like 2 slices of toast with the eggs and a little bit of this yummy yogurt dip (and some honey sadly)
I still live with my parents and I'm turning 25 next week. I would like to move in with my bf, but there's currently no space (that could change who knows, but he has 4 roomates) My mom usually cooks at night, which while is a good thing (home cooked meals are usually good) it's hard for me to analyse what's going in my body, so I'm keeping a closer eye on that. Tomorrow she's fixing up a recipe with chicken and coconut curry in the crock pot
(YUM!)
I'm trying to use raw honey as a sweet escape. So far, it's only been like maybe 3 days, but I do
feel better. I wake up with more energy with the lack of snacking after dinner. Dinner, I'm cutting my carbs in half, possibly completely out depending on what's for dinner and making vegetables my main course somehow. I know deep inside that my body
needs more vegetables. Starting this weekend, I want to cook veggies at my bf's house when I stay the weekend instead of going for take and bake chicken or pizza rolls or something (so healthy am I right) My cheat day will either be saturday or sunday. Maybe it can be different each weekend, who knows.
I felt lighter this morning, I looked lighter in the mirror, but my scale kicked me down to the curb by the teeth by showing me 224. My weight LOVES to fluctuate.
As for exercise, I don't want to go into it at the extreme, at least not yet. Part of my problem with trying to lose weight (and I think a lot of people on here can agree) that I focus more on the exercise, not enough on the diet. Heck, the spring before my second good weight drop where I saw my scale in the
180's again, I was attempting
INSANITY dvd's. I tried them again last fall thanks to my sis, and while I can somewhat keep up if I give myself a
loooot of rest time between, I can't do everything they can do. It may not be something I should do but maybe work up to. The problem with this though is that while in theory that would work, and I feel great afterwards, I would tend to make a loaded smoothie or something.
I do however, received a good companion this last xmas, which is my fitbit device. While I've been kinda lazy these past few weeks thinking about work/life, I did for about a couple weeks get addicted to walking 10,000 steps a day. It's nice because I like having an actual status to look at that's not in my head that I can look at and say to myself "Ok, I can accomplish this thing today." I want to pick that routine up again once I start my real shift, and possibly when it gets warmer get out and walk/jog before and after work and do weights.
Me sticking with these routines however just haven't lasted these past couple years because they didn't really work or life happened and I stopped doing the things I needed to see results. I'm also sort of sadly a instant gratification type with weight loss and that's never a good thing. I don't know. But I'm hoping to maybe gain an idea on here and from other places and learn and grow from where I am now. I'm actually concerned about my overall health now because I don't think jumping up and down on the scale like this, and going up 30+ pounds is good at all within 3-4 months.
And while I may now weigh 222 pounds, the 222 pound self I was and I are completely different both mentally and physically. Hoping some of the muscle I gained is either still around just barely haha.
ok so
TL;DR All my life I've dealt with obesity and it's still a challenge for me to this day. My weight fluctuates constantly, I went up to 250, down to the 180's stuck around for a while in the 190's and I'm back up in the 220's. I'm trying to implement new goals for myself, but I never stay motivated due to life or diet change or lack of interest. I have been on anti depressants for over a year which may be interfering with any progress with my weight loss.
Also I hope this post isn't a rule breaker due to crossing topics like introduction and depression *crossing fingers* I'm new so I put it on introductions I hope that's ok! For those who read the whole thing thank you it means a lot to me. And whatever journey is ahead of you, I believe in you. Push on and believe in your strengths and enjoy life the best you can.
(there may be lots of posts in the past like this haha I'm so SORRY!)
Life story, general social anxiety, want to lose 30+lb plus hello! - Long post
