CW: talk about weight, mention of ED

I'll preface with: I'll be blunt from here on out, as I can't get better without truth. I know I'm overweight, and I've always known/always have been.

My mom spent a good amount of her life obsessing over weight (no thanks to my dad). She isn't at the level to have ED or anything but would find new fad diets to start (but not finish), have motivational food posters around, comments on how bad she or anyone else is eating and how it's a bad thing, things like that. My dad was never shy to tell me how fat I was and how fat I was getting. Said the same to my mom as well. My mom would comfort me during those outbursts, but still put me on similar fad diets or weight loss programs. None of them stuck.

What triggered the current push to lose weight were 2 things:

  1. There's a traveling adult bouncy house that's coming to my area, but there is a weight limit. My friends seemed excited to go, but I'll feel so much shame to say I can't because I'm too big. I also don't want my weight to get in the way of doing other fun things down the line.

  2. I plan to travel for my 30th birthday and the country is pretty fatphobic, I don't think I'll be able to (mentally) handle it and feel it'll be better to lose weight than draw unnecessary attention to myself. I visited a parent's home country a few years ago, it's been a long time since going, and my grandma couldn't say anything else to me than how big I was. I couldn't say anything back but take it, knowing the people around me were hearing it too. Some people would say something too like "She's just thick nothing wrong with that", but I just felt more shame that I couldn't say anything back, and deep down I agreed with her. It was embarrassing, and I felt embarrassed to look that way. I don't want to experience that again.

I don't even know if these are good enough reason to lose weight or if it just a self-esteem thing or both. I also can't tell if this is actual motivation or my own internalized fatphobia. Deep down, I like to imagine myself as thinner, only because it'll be more convenient to move through life that way. I'm otherwise happy.

Last year I lost a bit of weight, one of my friends complimented me on the loss, and it freaked me out. I felt perceived and observed, it opened up my mind to the fear that people were thinking negative things about my weight the whole time and only felt comfortable enough to talk about it because it was going down. The panic slowed down my progress and I gained the weight back.

I'll feel guilty abandoning the HAES cause and the fat community. Like I was only following it because I'm bigger and needed to cope. And when I get thinner, I won't need them anymore for comfort. I also feel shame losing weight because it admits that there was a "problem" and I didn't do anything about it until now. It also proved all the terrible, maybe well-meaning, people from my life right. All their comments were correct, and I was too prideful to admit it. That opens me up to being treated differently if I do lose the weight, and it makes me angry. Like my friends and family would be impressed but think "what took you so long?". Then, will I be respected more? Will more people be attracted to me now? I'll forever feel like people are only interested in being close to me because I'm thinner, just like how some people want nothing to do with me because I'm bigger.

I never really felt like my weight was an issue, it only stopped me from doing activities with a weight limit. I still exercise and whatnot without issue. But, since a young age, I was always told it was an issue, so it sits in the back of my mind constantly.

Fears:

  • I'm scared that I won't succeed
  • I'm scared that I will but will forever have to obsess over my weight and eating habits like my mom
  • I'm scared it'll yo-yo back and forth, or I'll just gain it all again (so why even start)
  • I'm scared my personality will change, and I'll get cocky like the other fit people who lost a lot of weight and get to brag about it
  • I'm scared of how I will be perceived during or even after the journey, comments like "homhom lost so much weight it looks good" make me feel like people will be relying on me to keep the weight off, opening up the possibility of being a failure
  • I'm scared I won't be able to eat yummy food again so I can maintain the new body
  • I'm scared more people will be attracted to me <- I don't get this one, I think it's also about perception

S/N: my current Doctor has a side practice that specializes in weight loss. She never made me feel bad for being overweight, and never pushed the practice on me. All of my yearly physicals are perfect, too, minus a few vitamin deficiencies. I've also been in therapy for a while, but never felt comfortable enough to discuss weight, I don't discuss with many friends either.

  • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    9 months ago

    I related to a lot of this, especially

    I felt perceived and observed, it opened up my mind to the fear that people were thinking negative things about my weight the whole time and only felt comfortable enough to talk about it because it was going down. The panic slowed down my progress and I gained the weight back.

    This happens for me most with my mother, and I take it into consideration with choosing the clothes I wear to her house.

    I gained almost triple what was "normal" during my pregnancy and struggled for years with different diets and approaches. I've been at a healthy BMI for almost seven years now, but getting there took almost ten years and several attitude/lifestyle shifts. None of these are new ideas, you have almost certainly heard all this before, but this is what worked for me.

    Here's what changed:

    • measuring things with a scale - this quickly became maddening and I absolutely did not stick with it for very long, but it was long enough to show me that I was wildly undercounting calories and so were all my friends and family.
    • weigh myself at the same time of day every day for a while - this helped me realize that my menstrual cycle adds 5-8 pounds every month, regardless of my activity or diet, but that sticking to my routine would make them disappear again by day 2-3 of the cycle. No more "omg I gained weight this week?!?!" freakouts, because I know it's coming, and it's temporary.
    • doing anything is better than nothing - even if I only do 5 minutes of walking or calisthenics or whatever, that's better than nothing, and often once I started doing a thing with mental permission to quit after 5 minutes, it was much easier to stick with it longer.
    • make activity fun - I get bored easily, and it has to be a truly gripping book or podcast to get me through 15 minutes on a treadmill or elliptical. I found a little shelf thing that straps onto the display/control area and holds a laptop, and it genuinely changed my life - even sweating and miserable on the elliptical, I can fuck around with Civ for hours. Whatever your favorite guilty pleasure fuckoff pastime is, find a way to incorporate that into exercising, and suddenly it's a healthy way to spend a few hours.

    Your doctor sounds like she could be a great resource! What do you think about talking to her about your concerns?

    • homhom9000 [she/her]
      ·
      9 months ago

      I know my Dr would be 100% supportive in whatever direction I take, it's just to scary to ask haha. Maybe I'll make that a goal, if I get to a plateu then reach out to my dr.