If You Ever Thought of Giving Up Trying to Lose Weight

[MeadowLily]

A Whole30 is not a plan for weight loss, but rather a template for overall better health that might include losing weight for those that need it. I just wanted to share a place I went before I stumbled upon Whole9 with the people who are struggling with weight issues. It was a dark, horrible place for me.

My weight profile was the most common one in first world countries: I was overweight, teetering on the brink of obesity. I actually was technically obese, being 5'5 and about 194 at my worst. What got me up to that number was binging and dieting, over and over in a cycle. It's a boringly familiar story.

From Spring 2011 to January of last year, I was on Weight Watchers. WW is THE worst thing you can do if you want a healthy relationship with food. It makes you obsess about food volume and arbitrary point-counting (the points system is designed to keep what you're eating a mystery and keep you reliant on WW for life). And WW changes their program, just ever so slightly, every couple of years, so you have to buy all their new program material to keep up. And no one who works at WW will tell you about that. You have to find that out on your own and quit eventually. Then the next bunch of desperate, overweight people, mostly women who just want to be valued by society, file into these horrible meetings. Ugh. I needed to rant about that, thanks.

So, there I was after WW this time last year. I thought, maybe this is just how I am. I missed the slim youth boat. At 32, I felt old and fat. So I just tried to pick up the pieces from years of yo-yo dieting and try and accept. I found this site: http://www.bodylovewellness.com/ I'm sorry to the well-meaning Golda Poretsky who created this, but this was the deepest point of despair, the darkness before the dawn, that helped me search for health instead of being ok with being sick and fat. This woman is a life coach for obese women. She says that it's ok to be fat. It is NOT okay to be fat. Being obese is your body's way of telling you that your lifestyle is WRONG for you. She says to love yourself, you have to give up. I say to love yourself, sometimes you have to change yourself. The thing that helps the most is realizing that certain foods out there are addictive, like sugar and flour, and getting away from them will give you a clarity you've never experienced before.

I found Whole9 in summer of 2012. I lost over thirty pounds in a period of about 5 months. It was an awesome experience that I can't shut up about. With another Whole30 (actually a W100), I'm losing more.

What do you think about changing in order to love yourself? The act of changing things IS love to me.

Congratulations on all of your success.  

[MeadowLily]

So worth it.... to read this again and again.

[baltomom86]

CAK911: I get where you are coming from. In my house the word 'fat' is equivalent to the F-word, we don't use it. I don't like horrible negative connotations associated with being "fat."

That being said, obesity is definitely associated with chronic health diseases like hypertension and diabetes. It's a reality. Many people who are obese eat a lot of foods detrimental to one's health. I don't think anyone here, at least I hope not, are trying to knock obese people. They want to try and avoid health problems associated with weight gain. If you are clinically obese and only eat nutritionally dense foods, then that is you. For most people I would think that is not the case. When my husband lost his 100+ pounds, he had to cut out the junk!

You do you!