July 2020 and February 2021
25F, SW: 94 kg (207 lbs), CW: 78.5 kg (173 lbs)
Hey! I’ve been lurking this subreddit for almost a year now, and I’ve finally decided to post and share my little victory – for the first time in my adult life, I’m no longer classified as an obese person!
I know that my change is not as drastic as some of the other ones posted here, nevertheless, I wanted to celebrate and discuss how little and slow changes accumulated over time.
To be honest, despite being overweight my whole life, until last year I had never actively tried losing weight. I accepted that part of myself and hadn’t really feel the need to change. And, frankly, I hadn’t had the energy to do so anyway, neither mental nor physical.
This changed last year, when I finally managed to get full control over my depression and CPTSD. I suddenly had the energy to do literally anything besides sleeping and studying. I’ve slowly started introducing more and more physical activity into my life.
I’m not gonna lie, changing my attitude towards being active in general wasn’t easy. I hated doing anything physically challenging, because I always associated working out with just wanting to look better and I didn’t want to let the society dictate that, as a woman, I should be as petite as possible and always on a diet. Then I met my now ex, who’s a total sport freak. He never tried to put any pressure on me to do sports, he just enjoyed them on his own and was super happy whenever he could work out, and, tbh, I think that’s what finally changed my mindset. I realized that being active can be something I do for fun, not because I’m being forced to do so during PE classes, or because I hate the way my body looks like and desperately want to lose weight. Now it’s trivial to me, but I seriously had problems with perceiving sports that way.
But, the best thing is, I’m not even doing anything hardcore. It’s just some walks every couple days, cycling to the mall instead of taking the bus and occasionally working out at home (I strongly recommend checking out Team Body Project on YouTube, they were the first workout videos I saw where they actually took into consideration my limits as an obese person who’s out of shape, and they’re also super nice – nobody motivates me like they do).
Since September, I’ve also been on a calorically restrictive diet planned by a dietician. First it was ~2000 kcal per day, now it’s ~1800 kcal. I still eat the same delicious vegan food, just in different quantities. In those six months, I lost 15kg and my BMI dropped from 34.4 to 28.8.
I wanted to reiterate, though, how important was my mental health in all of this. I don’t think I’d be able to change so many things, had I never even tried handling my depression. If you have similar problems, I recommend looking for help first.
I wish you all the best! ❤️
