This might sound weird, but I find it helpful to think of myself as different versions of me through the context of time. And past me--WOW. She's fantastic.
I started losing weight/getting fit very seriously last September. At the time, past-me was 260lbs, 5'7. She struggled to move, walks tired her out, she got out of breath on the simplest journeys, or to and from her car at work. She had a lot of self-loathing and really negative relationships with food and exercise. She didn't really know what she looked like, and wore boring clothes, because paying any attention to her body at all was the quickest way to a depression spiral. She couldn't ride a bike without feeling ungainly, unbalanced, and pitiful. Every sort of even the mildest exercise made her so self-concious that she would crumble and hide, never to attempt such things again. She ate her feelings, and thought about food an unhealthy amount of the time. She judged every body size around her as "bigger than me" and "smaller than me", feeling better or worse about herself by turns. She couldn't comprehend how a skinny person could be "out of shape", and believed they were liars if they said as much. Anytime she tried to do well for herself--track calories, exercise, or eat healthy--the smallest failure would send her into a tailspin of self-hate and negative, mental-voice abuse. Her joints and feet ached all the time. She got plantar fasciitis once and cried for weeks at the pain.
Current me goes mountain biking three times a week. I can't even remember what it feels like to lose my breath on the way into work. I don't think about food that much; sometimes I get so busy I forget to eat. I like moving around. Daily household chores don't feel intimidating. I don't remember how it feels to not have the energy to get up from the couch. A lazy day for me still involves some sort of exercise, like a walk to the store. Im not overwhelmed by the idea of anything that requires motion. Healthy food is actually appealing, and unhealthy food is less appealing. Portion sizes are easy, and I dont feel the need to eat everything all at once. I'm happier. I'm kinder to myself. I know I can do things, hard things, because past me did the hardest thing I can imagine.
Past-me took steps to make the process of change between her and I happen. She recognized that negative self-talk and motivation through self-loathing wasn't working and was actively harming her. Through all her own opinions of herself, and societies opinions on fat bodies, she found a way to love herself, to be kind to herself while she actively worked towards goals. She shut down negative self-talk. She went to the gym even though it intimidated the fuck outta her. She ate better even when she didn't want to, and tracked her calories without obsessing. She spent a lot of time thinking about how to do this in a way that supported her rather than tore her down, and it fucking worked.
Now, at 190lbs, I look back over some 7 months time and see such a staggering difference between who I am, mentally and physically, and who I was. I feel such profound gratitude, love, and admiration for the person who did that, for past-me. I still have more I want to lose and more strength to gain, but I no longer doubt that I can because I've already done the hardest work, the purely mental framework of how to do this--and get results--without losing my sanity or hating myself every step of the way.
Past-me is a freaking rock star, and I wanted to share this in the hopes that others could benefit from some self-love as motivation as opposed to self-hate, because that shit is hard, and in this society it is so so easy to motivate through hate. Thanks for reading.
Edit: it's been 10 months guys, not 7. I suck at counting.
Also! That is the timeline from when I started exercising. I started counting/restricting calories three years earlier, and thinking deeply about mental health in relation to fatness a year before that; the timeline isn't a fixed object, just an objective measure for when other groundwork began to show fruit.
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