No more "goals"

Hey everyone. I don't post here often, but this community has been a huge support to me. some of you may have run into me as patricles43 or whu_patricles, and I'm friends with a lot of you on instagram, but long story short: I lost about 70 lbs and maintained for 2 years. And then this year happened. I found and met my birth family. My mother-in-law, who I was very close with, passed away. Between celebrations and grief, my eating has been terrible this year. I figured I had made it, I lost weight and maintained, I was strong and in good shape. I HIT MY GOALS. That's a mistake for me. There is no end to my battle with my weight. A giant portion of my birth family has diabetes. It's never going to be easy. I've gained back probably 30 lbs or so this year. But there are a lot of things I've learned too.

​

1. I'm not going to enter a goal weight, or even worry about the number on the scale. Period. This is just about my on-going health.
2. Even with a terrible year, I've kept a ton of the good habits. I walk miles every day. I do pull-ups and push-ups 6 days a week for 2 years now. We are joining the ymca to continue our exercise through the winter. There's some good with the bad
3. Even with a large weight gain, the physical change isn't as bad as I feared. I went from a 30 inch waist in pants to a 32. I went from a medium to a large. this is in large part thanks to the healthier habits I've developed. is all my weight gain muscle? gosh no. but some is. and that's not a bad thing.
4. I was always cognitive of what I was eating, even when I went off the rails. My bad days were bad (3k calories or so) but not pre-weightloss bad (5k calories or so)
5. The relationships you build on r/loseit are crucial, even when you are struggling. There are so many of you that I look up to (I forget everyone's reddit names, but all of you that I follow in instagram know who you are) help keep me at least cognitive of my health, and even if I'm backsliding the motivation to continue builds thanks to all of you.

That's all. This isn't anything ground-breaking or earth shattering, but I just wanted to say thanks /r/loseit , from a long time but largely silent member.

​

- Jeff

submitted by /u/Patricl3s
[link] [comments]