People Ask Me All The Time How I Lost 80 pounds
I tell people all the time that reaching my goal weight and losing 80 pounds was easy. I usually get a perplexed look when I say that but the truth is, it was that simple. I changed what I was eating, how much I was eating, started working out and committed to it every day. I didn’t have cheat days, I didn’t binge, I didn’t workout like a maniac. I just made simple changes to my lifestyle and stuck to them. That easy. But what wasn’t easy, was dealing with everything that came after the weight loss.
The Emotional Side of Weight Loss
There are various emotional stages of weight loss which are not discussed very much. First is the initial shock. WTF am I doing??? I’m so hungry! How am I going to stick with this? I hate vegetables! Then comes the excitement after losing a few pounds and people begin to notice. After sticking with your same routine, the weight loss slows resulting in feelings of frustration from the dreaded plateau. Eventually things turn around and the goal is achieved, but it is with mixed emotions of joy and sorrow which I will get to in a minute. Finally, once the reality of weight loss has set in the dreaded weight gain fear takes over.
Reaching My Goal Weight Taught Me A Really Important Lesson
Weight loss taught me I didn’t like myself. After years of battling weight loss, the real truth was I didn’t feel good enough inside. When I finally achieved my goal weight, I felt joy and sorrow. In fact, more sorrow. The opposite of what one would expect. I felt like part of me died. I had no idea who I was. My perception of myself my whole life was merely physical. When that changed, I no longer knew who I was.
It Took Losing 80 Pounds For Me To Realize, It Wasn’t My Body I Was Unhappy With
I was unhappy with myself. Fat or skinny. I didn’t like who I was. I had no sense of who I was. Suddenly I was flooded with questions of who am I? What am I passionate about? What do I feel? What do I want to be? How do I want to experience life? There was no mind, body, soul connection. I realized I had been living an emotionless life. Going through the motions of what I thought I should be and believing the size of my body was what was holding me back from bigger and better things when in fact it was my mind holding me back.
My Body Was A Reflection Of My Feelings
My body had become overweight because I was insecure so I ate to feel better about myself. My body had become a reflection of those feelings and how I was treating my body showed in my weight. Think about a time when you bought something you were just meh about. Maybe a new outfit, pair of shoes, purse, whatever. Then imagine something you love so much you would die if it were ruined or lost. Now think about those two things and compare how you treat them differently. For me, I take really good care of the things that matter to me. Conversely I am not so careful with the things I could live without. Reaching my goal weight taught me I didn’t care about myself and that was a hard reality to face.
You Have A Choice
I believe people struggling with weight loss have much deeper emotional issues. They’re unhappy and turn to food for comfort. The weight is simply a reflection of those feelings. Fat, skinny, short or tall. No matter what the size, you see happy people in all sizes. A true testament that your weight does not define your self worth. You do! So you can continue living unhappy or you can chose to be happy. If I had to do it again, I’d choose happy, a thousand times over. My only wish is that I would have done it sooner.
If you chose happy, then read my eBook, Ditch the Diet. In it, I share more details about my weight loss along with a step-by-step guide that walks you through implementing small changes over time to create a healthy lifestyle that will help you lose weight and live your happy life. Everyone wants to be happy so what’s stopping you? Get started now!
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What do you choose? Do you believe your body is a reflection of how you feel about yourself?
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I think this hold true for many people when they lose a large amount of weight like you did. They think that losing weight will solve all of their problems than they come to realize that they got to that weight because of not loving themselves. This was a great read, Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you Rachel!
I think, no, I know, that this will resonate with so many. Often, weight gain is the manifestation of unhappiness; when And, it must be said, sometimes weight loss (in the extreme) is also a symptom of being unhappy with onesself. We seek to control, or we give up all control, and we try to find peace that way. It is only when we find the love within ourselves that we find the balance in our bodies.
You are so wise. You should be a poet. 😉
I went through the same sort of thing when I lost a lot of weight during my eating disorder. I thought being that skinny would make me super happy, buuuuuut I experienced the complete opposite. That’s why I always say that happiness doesn’t come with a smaller pair of jeans – it’s something that comes from inside us that we constantly have to work on.
I love that saying!
I definitely think we focus on our bodies or other “easy” things we can control in life when there are deeper dissatisfactions or fears. I’ve always been the type to set goals and then idealize them, thinking that once I do XYZ I’ll be content. Honestly I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied and that’s a big part of what drives me in life.
Exactly! Once we reach XYZ, we never let ourselves just be done. We always want more.
YES! I love this. I lost about 50 pounds or so, and I agree – for the most part losing the weight was the easy part. The fear of gaining it back? Not so much. Losing a notable amount of weight definitely makes you look at yourself in a different way and takes away the security blanket of having your weight be the “thing” you don’t like. I think getting pregnant helped me come to terms with everything a lot easier (I was definitely in a place where I could have either had an ED or gained it all back. It was a bit of a tipping point.) since you kind of don’t have a choice in terms of gaining weight when you’re pregnant
That’s awesome Morgan and it sounds like your pregnancy was a blessing in disguise!
Isn’t it amazing how weight is like a tip of an iceberg? We are so much more than a body. I’m thankful that each person has an eternal soul, a body, mind, and spirit.
Yes!
Love this. For many years I thought that if I looked how I wanted to on the outside, everything would be fine. I soon found out that I could never reach what I thought was perfection and the closer I came to it, the unhappier I was inside. The whole tagline for my blog came from that experience and I’m glad I finally came to those realizations!
Notions of perfection can really twist things in our minds. I wish we were all programmed to not think that way.
I love this post. I’ve experienced each and every one of these bullet points on the list during this process. Now when people ask about weight loss I just say “It was simple, but not easy.” and try and leave it at that.
That’s smart because there’s much more to it than people who haven’t been through it can understand.
I learned a lot of what you did when I lost my weight & I have written about it a lot but the biggest thing, it is so much more about the inside. I still did not like myself. Life did not suddenly become wonderful, all the things you think will happen do not fall in place just because you lost weight. It has to be inside & I did not learn that for many many years after the weight loss,
Yeah, it’s taken me a couple years to figure that out too. Those feelings got pushed aside because I was more fearful of gaining back.
this is such an emotional post. the fact that you lost that much weight is very impressive, but the fact that you realized your weight loss goals were covering up personal insecurities. this is really making me think and reflect on a few things
http://makingrestorations.blogspot.com
My thoughts exactly!
Thanks dear!
Thank you Jasmine. I truly believe our bodies are a reflection of our self worth.
I haven’t blogged for a while and forgot you are in Phoenix. You are so right about self-image being correlated to happiness.
I clicked on the link for your book but it said there was an error. I tried it twice so I wonder if the link is broken?
It’s fixed now. https://skinnyfitalicious.com/ditch-the-diet/ Thanks for letting me know!
Great job losing that weight. I don’t doubt that it was tough!
At first it was, but over time it just became part of my new normal.
Wow this really made me think about my own life. Thank you for sharing.
Megan,
I cannot thank you enough for this post. I came across it this morning. It hit me hard as it seemed to sum up for me all that had been percolating in the back of my mind about why I can’t seem to lose my excess weight and what seemed like an irrational thought that I don’t really want to the lose the weight because I wouldn’t know who I am then.