Last year I moved from NY to LA, and through losing my propensity to walk everywhere (it just doesn't happen in LA; driving is king) and stress eating (new job/new city plus a history of binge eating in moments of extreme stress), I stepped on a scale after 12 months and I was 56 pounds heavier than I was when a year ago.
I knew my clothes were getting tighter, I could recognize that I couldn't walk up stairs as easily, I was eating out constantly and mindlessly eating in front of the TV. But nothing shook me until I stood on the scale. Well, that, and when a co-worker told me that I was "getting heavy" and that I "used to look good." *Seriously*
I looked at myself in the mirror, and I repeated the SAME negative behaviors that I always have when I've yo-yo'ed in the past. I shamed myself, called myself disgusting, cried. Everything but something proactive.
HOWEVER, I stopped eating out, I started exercising daily, and I'm eating the appropriate number of calories a day. I am happy to announce that after a month of these positive changes, I am down 12 pounds.
No extreme diets - no starving myself - no unhealthy amounts of exercise (all past behaviors that worked for the short term, only to inevitably enhance the yo-yo effect), just positive changes that are sustainable and healthy.
I guess I'm posting here because, for the first time in my life - after three decades on this earth - I feel like I have accepted that quick changes are not lasting changes, and that only through implementing long-term improvements can I actually live the life that I want.
It's strange that something that SOUNDS so simple can be so challenging when one has an unhealthy relationship with food and/or their body image. This was the most difficult thing for me to share with a community of people whom I do not know, because for so long I couldn't even face these truths myself. Thank you, though, for this outlet. Seeing my progress in writing, and understanding the hard work it took to get there (and that it will take to STAY there) is more important than I ever knew.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2wsTgBE
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