Sorry for the confusing title, and long post! But in short, I’m feeling proud of the changes I’ve made over the past few years.
After gaining a net total of 25 kg over three pregnancies, primarily using the information and support of this sub, I was able to successfully lose close to 18 kg, after which I spend over a year basically in maintenance mode, again with a pretty high degree of success and limited effort.
I recently went through a difficult patch of extra stress, at home and at work, and my eating and exercise habits suffered. I lost the time and motivation to keep up with workouts, and I resorted back to old compulsive, stress eating for a period of a couple months, honestly feeling quite unhappy with my eating habits and how it was affecting my body.
I’d been too reluctant to actually weigh myself during that period, but once I finally felt in a good enough mental space to want to work on improving again, I did check my weight. And while I had, of course, gained some weight back, I soon realized: after months of what I now considered to be pretty subpar eating, even at night, clothed, at the highest bloat point in my monthly cycle, I only weighed 61 kg, which is only 3 kg higher than the previous low I had reached after dieting to 58 over a year ago!
That has made me reflect over just how much my normal, unconscious eating habits have changed. At the time, it seemed like pulling teeth to change any of my bad habits, and at best like I was just faking it. But I see now, with the bigger picture, how much better even the bad ones are.
Before, if I messed up and overate until I was stuffed, and then always give up and go buy more food and decide to diet again “tomorrow”; now, if I overeat, even in my worst state of mind I can’t bear to reach that too-stuffed-to-move point, and I never, ever go out and buy more food afterward “just because I’ve already screwed up”.
Before, I could binge eat 4 pints of ice cream and a whole cake; now, I genuinely feel too sick after probably a fourth of the amount of junk food I could eat before.
Before, I would overeat regardless of any of the consequences; now, it’s automatic for me to consider how awful I’ll feel if I can’t sleep well, miss a workout, or miss out on enjoying my next meal by eating too much.
Before, seeing food would lead to buying it, which would lead to eating it, every time; now, there are definitely pauses in my thought process, where I often choose not to buy, and even if I do buy, not to eat (at least not all at once).
Before, I would consider eating out, any sort of dessert, basically anything other than vegetables and lean protein being “bad” and require making up for before or after, which usually meant spiraling into a binge; now, I know I can eat everything and anything as part of a normal healthy diet, and therefore never experience any backlash from either being or just feeling deprived.
I also in the beginning used to freak out about any weight fluctuations, and it would cause me to usually to react by again going “what the heck” with my eating; now, seeing a small regain on the scale brings hardly any emotional reaction, and I simply know what I need to do if I want to change it.
Basically, I went from being an extreme, binge-eating, slightly obsessive and neurotic dieter to a calm and smart one, and it really shows in my habits now. I’m not really worried about reaching the point of weight I did before, because I can’t imagine eating like I used to before either, thanks to changing my habits from the bottom up.
Just wanted to share my success, and also a PSA that even if it feels like changing habits little by little is taking forever, not working, feeling fake, etc., keep at it, and over the long term you might realize the results were there all along. :)
Edit: What worked best for making habit changes for me was ridiculously small, incremental changes and goals, doing some “fake it till you make it”, and being aware of and consciously changing the thoughts the voice in my head is thinking.
