My Weight Loss Story
So I’ve lost a significant amount of weight recently. I’m not done yet and I think I will be ready to talk about how I’m losing weight once I have hit my goal. I don’t know exactly why I’m so uncomfortable talking about it, I talk about everything on here. But for some reason, I feel fiercely private about my body.
Weight has always been an issue for me since I was a little girl. I was a chubby as a kid until I hit 13. I plan on talking about my entire weight journey in life at some other point. Maybe I’ll write a book about it, maybe I’ll write a few posts about it.
For one thing, it makes me incredibly sad to talk about my weight issues. They have been the cause of much unhappiness in my life. Even when I was at my very thinnest as an adult, I believed I was too overweight, when I was not at all.
It makes me sad because I have never appreciated my body. The fact that I have all my limbs. The fact that I don’t have any real scars. I am lucky that all my body parts work. But why isn’t that enough?
Why is it so important in our society, in pretty much all cultures, to look good. Especially for women. Men can get away with not looking as good. But women, our worth in society is often measured by our beauty. I hate that notion. I hate that idea. But I have fallen victim to it just like everyone else.
I was not really a cute kid, and I was chubby. When I hit adolescence I bloomed into a pretty girl. This transformation was weird for me, I didn’t understand why people, especially boys and men, treated me differently. I mean I knew why, but it made me uncomfortable.
I started to think that my self-worth was based on my appearance. This was all tied to my weight, apparently, after losing some weight I looked a lot better. I distinctly remember being depressed about some boy issue and I told my friends I was going to go binge on popcorn and they panicked and told me that I should not do that and gain all my weight back.
I remember that moment when I was on the phone with my friends when I was 13. It was like a moment where I translated that people liked me better now that I was thinner. Boys even liked me. I didn’t want to ruin all that by eating, did I?
Then I did the unthinkable that year. I was dieting, as usual, and I decided to eat these mini-chocolate chip cookies. I ate like a handful and immediately felt guilty. So I did something I am ashamed to say, but I tried to throw them up. What happened was, I physically could not make myself throw up.
I like to think god saved me that day, because if I was able to throw up those cookies who knows what I would throw up next. I mean to say I could have been a bulimic if I was able to make myself throw up that day. I am so lucky.
I was a relatively normal weight from my adolescence into my thirties. It was at the thirty year mark when I started to gain weight for real, real. That is when I actually became legitimately overweight. It started with me going on medication for Bipolar Disorder, which causes weight gain. Secondly and probably more importantly, I became depressed. I used food to deal with my depression and sort of became a food addict. Not sort of, but actually.
I didn’t binge on like junk food like some people, but I would go to a restaurant and eat an entire meal, every single day. In any American restaurant, the portion sizes of food that you get are out of control. They are usually double the size of what a normal person can eat. I would eat the whole thing, every time.
This was my path to weight gain. So what did I notice along the way? I noticed less of the male gaze. Men did not look at me as much. Boys did not fall for me as often. In fact, I went on a date with one guy and he literally told me my body was not his type. That was eye-opening for me. When I was a normal weight I got a normal amount of attention from men. It really hurt me that men did not like my appearance as much anymore.
But you know what else happened? I started to like myself more. I started to notice there was so much more to me than looking pretty. I realized that people liked me just as much for my humor and intelligence as they did for my beauty. I stopped caring what other people thought of me and started to care more about what I thought of them.
I became more of a real person. Not that I wasn’t a fully fledged human being when I was thinner, but I started to notice that my worth had so much more to do with who I was as a person than what I looked like. As I slowly gained weight over about a ten year period, I liked my personality better and better but was painfully aware that I was losing my physical appeal.
I started to not care as much about my appearance, not wearing make-up or caring so much about what clothes I was wearing. I mean I still did a little, but definitely not as much as I did when I felt good about myself. So on the one hand, I was building up my inner world, but on the other hand, I was neglecting my body.
Since I have been losing weight these past five months it has occurred to me that I am a three-part being. I am a mind, body, and soul. These past months I have not just made my body more healthy, I knew that doing just that would not work. I had to change the way I think and the way I feel mentally and spiritually as well.
I started by writing every day. I noticed my depression got better. I added some meditation every day, my depression disappeared. Then when I added exercise not only did my depression go away, but a new zest came into my mind, body, and soul. I realized through this journey that you cannot neglect any part of your self. We are all three part beings. I feel so good right now physically, mentally and spiritually. I eat healthily and work out, I work out my brain writing and teaching, and I feel my true self through mindfulness and meditation.
I have never felt so much self-worth as I do at this moment. I am not even the size that I want to be yet, but I will get there. And I will stay there. How do I know this, because if I stop doing this, my spirit will die? It would be equivalent to a metaphorical suicide. I did that once, I’ve been there. Not going back.
So if you ask me if I regret gaining the weight, I can’t exactly agree with that statement. If I did not gain weight maybe I would not have started to look for my real self and find out who I really am. I will not be pretty forever, I’m going to get old and ugly like everyone else. But my spirit will always be beautiful.
I finally feel beautiful.
nina