Losing The Weight I’ve Held Onto Way to Long

I’ve carried around weight for way to long and let it shape how I felt about myself. Constantly impeding on my life, nagging me at every turn and overall leaving my stressed and insecure. I decided to finally do something about it and shed the weight that has bothered me for so long—-it wasn’t a lot of weight in actuality but the perceived load was far more harmful to my health. I am happy to say I have officially lost it!!! After 29 years of struggling and trying everything I finally lost my give a fuck and stopped weighing myself.

It’s been over 4 months since I broke up with my bathroom scale and I’ve never felt better.

I can honestly say for the first time in my life I don’t feel bad about not knowing how much I weigh. My scale has a nice layer of dust on it and I intend to keep it that way. I know I am healthy, active and eat well. I know that charts and calculators may say I should weigh a certain amount and have a certain BMI but at the end of the day I can’t keep being married to a number that may never appear for me. My worth isn’t a number on a chart.

To give some back story:

I was always a little heavier as a kid but looking back now I realize I really wasn’t as big as I thought. I definitely compared myself and bought into what society said was beautiful and accepted. I did Weight Watchers since middle school, tried staying away from certain “bad foods” and always felt self conscious about my body. I didn’t truly become unhealthy until my early 20’s. At almost 200lbs and only 5”1 , I had to make some life changes not for vanity but for my well being. This was a time that I actually NEEDED to lose weight.

After getting healthier I felt better but many of the old diet culture narratives were still hard to shake. I still compared, still was self conscious and struggled with how I looked. I still didn’t accept my body as it was after all of the hard work I had done. I would honestly say this year is the first year I’m embracing my body as a whole—-only took me 29 years (insert sarcastic tone here) I’ve ran further, faster and better than I could have imagined, I’ve carried/ given birth to a healthy kid, I have dips and rolls in places that no one but me cares about and I’ve finally accepted that my body is amazing for all it does, not the size I fit into.

I, like many others, have been struggling with many different challenges since COVID became our reality over a year ago. One of those things that was a challenge was my self care and also meant not eating mindfully which in turn left me with a little extra I didn’t start quarantine with. I tried being mindful to not give into diet culture and the traps that we all face ever day to “look your best”. But none of us are perfect and we definitely can all get sucked in no matter how hard we try. I fully admit I was down on myself and let it effect me way more than I should have.

Instead of giving myself a break I signed up for Weight Watchers like I had done before. It left me thinking about food all the time, struggling on my runs, and made me feel worse about myself than I already did.

I knew it was all wrong for me and my goals. I had to pick a priority: Weigh a specific number OR run faster, stronger, farther.

I chose to let go of an arbitrary number and focus on fueling to support my training because that’s what fulfilled ME. The endorphins I get from running, hitting a new PR and going further than I have before make me feel invincible. Weighing a specific number has NEVER done that for me. While I am very proud of my past weight loss, which I haven’t gone into detail about on here, that was a different phase and priority. In that case I needed to lose weight to be healthy, to not risk bigger issues, and to be able to live my life how I wanted. It wasn’t vanity at that point (ok maybe a small amount if I’m being honest) but 98% of it was because I was heading down a road that if not corrected would have impacted me more than I care to admit.

I’ve not been perfect on eating intuitively but I firmly believe that’s the point. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about living, fueling and enjoying. We can fuel AND enjoy food at the same time. Don’t like a certain food? Then don’t eat it. Love a certain food that’s not the most nutritious? Eat it, enjoy it and more on with your life. If I never had bread again I would be a miserable person. If I never had asparagus again I’d be ok with it (not the biggest fan but I’m starting to come around). All foods should coexist.

We have to get out of the all or nothing mentality. We have the power to not eat an entire loaf of bread if we choose but are so ingrained that if we eat one piece we will lose control and magically pack on 40lbs or if we eat a bowl of broccoli we will be “swim suit ready”. Take the power BACK and decide what is good for YOU.

No one else has your body, your exact DNA, or is a carbon copy of YOU. (If your an identical twin though you can go ahead and skip that last part).

It’s time we focus on being health and enjoying ALL that entails. We can’t just be hyper focused on what size pants we wear because let’s face it, no one can see what size we wear——and if they are hopefully it’s that last thing your focused on (wink wink)