Fitness, Diet, Weight Management
Thoughts about weight loss and why I'm doing it
Here's my page for talking about my physical health management. I'm currently on a journey to lose weight and become more fit with a healthy diet and regular exercise. I know that weight loss and discussions around obesity has become more of a controversial topic in recent years, and I've seen aggression from both the body positive side and the diet culture side of things. There's a lot of conflicting talk out there about whether weight loss is good or not, whether it even works, whether it is fatphobic or healthy or any number of things. Part of the reason I want to lose weight is because of the conflicting information out there. If I see things that are confusing, I want to try them out for myself to fully understand it. To be honest, seeing people say that it is impossible to lose weight piqued my curiosity and made me want to try weight loss far more than simply being told that being overweight was bad. I take that kind of "impossible" talk as a challenge.
I hold no negative feelings towards fat people, I do not support bullying or hatred towards fat people, and I understand that weight loss can be a triggering topic for those struggling with EDs, body image, or mental health in general. That is why I have this as a separate page and I warn people exactly what this will be about. I also don't support tearing people down because they want to lose weight, or the idea that what someone does with their own body is somehow harmful to others. I don't think I am harming others by exercising and changing what I eat.
With that out of the way, I have quite a few different motivations for weight loss, exercise, and diet change. I mentioned one of them already, feeling challenged by people saying it is impossible. I also have struggled with binge eating for my entire life, and I've come to a point in my life where it really feels like the next logical step is to treat my BED. This year a lot of my therapy and trauma processing has been focused on the negative experiences I have had with food and poverty when I was younger, and one day after a rough EMDR session things just suddenly clicked in my head and I realized it was time to change. I wasn't happy with the way I was eating. I would binge on food that brought me momentary relief but then an onslaught of negative GI and migraine symptoms long-term. I have had a lot of traumatic experiences with food, and a chronic boredom with life where I filled an emotional void with food, and now I am at a point in my treatment where that doesn't have to be the case anymore.
Another reason I am pursuing weight loss is because of the many chronic health problems I am dealing with currently. I've received quite a few different diagnoses regarding autoimmune issues, sleep issues, migraines, and generalized chronic pain, and I have usually blamed these on my trauma history and genetics. Recently I received another autoimmune skin diagnosis, around the same time I had the realization that my food habits needed to change. This skin disease is known to be worse for people who are overweight, and it leaves me more prone to infection if untreated. I had also recently watched a documentary where excess adipose tissue was connected to heightened autoimmune responses, which I had struggled with my whole life. This was another moment where things clicked in place, as I realized just how many of my issues were connected to obesity, either causing or exacerbating my chronic health problems. I want to see if a lower weight will reduce my symptoms, plain and simple.
The final reason I'm trying to lose weight, and more notably become more fit and healthy, is because my dream job involves being very physically active. I love working outside and doing physical labor, I love the outdoors, I love sports, and I want to be able to participate in these things. I never was able to do those things as a child because of the trauma and my lack of physical, or mental, health. My lifestyle has always been really, really sedentary, even after moving away from my abusers, and I so desperately want to change that. I think I would have been a very athletic and outdoorsy type of person if I had grown up in the right environment. I think I can still be that person now with these positive changes today.
My plan
I have already started my weight loss and fitness journey, but I'm still going to write down the plan I have been working with. I started at 205 pounds and I am now at 189 pounds, a 16 pound loss. My goal is to be 120 pounds. I started losing weight sometime in August or September of this year, and I only really started consistently tracking things in October. I have been eating 1500 calories per day, with one cheat meal usually on Friday or over the weekend that brings me up to around 2000 calories, to help my metabolism and stop any plateaus. I am also working out 5 times a week, including cardio days and strength training days. This is the plan moving forward unless I suddenly stop making progress or go through a major life change.
My progress
I have really been enjoying weight loss so far. I feel better and I am starting to slowly see results. Eating 1500 calories a day isn't difficult or torturous for me at all, despite everything negative I have heard about it. I eat a lot of vegetables, nuts, and meat, and I can keep myself full without feeling overstuffed when I eat a lot of veggies. I feel more energetic and I have less sleep struggles. My migraines and knee pain are still around. I'm suspecting the knee pain will get better but the migraines will never really fully go away, but I am lucky to have a good treatment plan going for the migraines anyways.
Exercising has also been very fun. I love cardio, I love arms, and I don't love core and leg strength training as much but I feel so satisfied and energized after every workout. It's less hard to go up the stairs at work and walk across campus. Things have been going really well already, and that makes me excited to see how far I can go and how much better I will feel as I make more progress.