Let's talk about body image

Self love and body image are very interesting things. Learning to love yourself and the skin you are in can be an insane challenge that seems impossible to achieve.

Before I started WW in 2012 -  I didn't think much about it. I liked how I looked, except I wanted a flatter belly. I was about 155 lbs, and it seemed my average weight that I sat at with no effort was 150-155, I just had a little belly flub.

I did WW on and off very casually between 2012 and 2015. I wasn't very intensive, or obsessed with it. My weight went up and down and there were times I was more comfortable than others but I was traveling and then in post secondary, and I was very very busy, stressed and I would eat whatever I could grab. During TV school I would do WW for short stints and go up and down, up and down depending on the next time I was going to be on air.

(I felt fat and like my stomach was sticking out too much while getting these photos taken - While living in Europe in 2012)

(This photo from Nov 2014 shocked me. I had no idea I looked 'this big')

(This was my professional school portrait. I hated it. I literally felt like an obese monster. This sent me into some major WW dieting for sure.)

Then in the summer of 2015 - I took a month off of work to vacation. Erik and I ate out EVERY SINGLE DAY. It was a staycation/eatcation and I loved every second, but I saw my weight barreling out of control.

Erik proposed to me on June 8, 2015 when this picture of me was taken. I was 182.2 lbs the highest I had ever seen on the scale, and I felt like a whale. From August 2015-Aug 2016 I went into dieting, weight watchers weight loss over drive to prepare for the wedding.

(Felt like a whale)

By doing Weight Watchers to an obsessive degree, I was able to lose 52.2 lbs. I went from 182.2 to 130 lbs in a year. When I say obsessive I mean obsessive. If I did not know the points for something, I wouldn't guess, I just wouldn't eat it. This meant never going out to eat, or out with friends to restaurants that didn't have nutritional info. It meant I declined every treat that was ever brought into my workplace. It meant tracking on holidays like birthdays and thanksgiving. It meant weighing and measuring out everything. It meant not eating if I was hungry if I was out of points. It meant weighing myself every single day. It meant food consumed my thoughts 24 hours a day. I mean, obsessive.  

 

(Biggest before and after)

 

(At one of my lowest weights)

 

(For my wedding I was about 135 lbs) 

 

I got down to this low weight, and wanted to lose ten more pounds to be at my 'goal weight'. But something I have realized over time is just because you weigh less doesn't mean you'll like yourself more. 

For my wedding I was at one of my lowest weights... yet in the photo below and many others from my wedding, I still felt like my face and arms looked fat. 

 

Something weird that I noticed was I was more self conscious after losing a bunch of weight, then I was before I ever started dieting. I wore short shorts cause I wanted to, and felt generally neutral about myself.  But after dieting, I was obsessed with my shape, my figure, how much skin I would show, how comfortable I felt in my skin and that number on the scale mattered A LOT.

When I say a lot I mean A LOT, I mean A LOT. I started weighing myself every day. I lived to see that number go down. What I thought I looked like before weighing myself meant nothing. The scale gave me context about how I thought I should feel about how I looked. On WW, if I stayed within my daily points, I would go down the next day without fail. Every time. But since I was restricting, I would often binge/go off track and seeing that number climb gave me feels. Bad Feels. It made me feel fat, ugly, like a failure, worthless, pathetic. It would literally tint the vibe of my entire day if that number was up, because for some reason, I would value myself less. 

Not weighing myself for the entire first week of IE tested me a lot. It was hard. It was difficult. I felt like a crack addict addicted to my scale. I thought about it every day. Am I up? Am I down? Is this IE thing working? Can I trust myself? Aren't I going to gain weight from eating ice cream for breakfast?  I already think I am over weight right now, I can't afford to gain more.

I was forced to rely on other methods to see if I thought I lost. Daily I would check my belly and chin in the mirror and wonder if they had gone down. Did my leggings feel tight or lose? Did my bra feel tighter or loser? I had to look at myself and base how I felt about myself on a mirror, not the scale and it was super weird, and hard for me to handle. I couldn't tell... I was sure I ate enough to gain 15 lbs... but I felt like I had lost, or stayed about the same if I had to guess by looking at myself. Erik hugged me and claimed he could feel the bones in my back more.

I was torn about weighing myself at all. Because IE does not recommend weighing yourself, because you're trying to get away from the diet mentality... not reinforce it in any way. But I had to check in and see that I hadn't gained a million pounds. I had only gained 1.9 lbs. I had a horrible sleep the night before, and ate pub food 7 hrs prior, so I believe I probably actually maintained over those 7 days. 

If I was doing WW that gain would have devasted me. But on IE it surprised me. I was shocked that I ate ate much as I did, and only gained that much. I'm still not happy with how much I weigh, but I made a choice... I do want to lose weight, but I didn't want to suffer through WW anymore, and IE can lead to weight gain initially, but what I really want is to have food freedom. To enjoy my life and the skin I am in, and not be a crazy dieting and scale obsessed person. Part of me wanted to keep doing WW and get to a good weight that I liked and then start IE but what good would that do?

 As time goes by, I am becoming a believer in the fact that if you can't love yourself where you're at right now, you can never love yourself... even at your lowest weight. Losing weight, isn't going to make you love yourself. You need to figure that out first. It's a separate issue. One that I am hoping to work on. 

During my IE journey, I feel like it would be nice if my weight settled down to one that my body feels is the right place for me, and I hope I like that weight and how it feels and what it looks like. But in the meantime I am going to try and learn to love where I am at now, even if it's 168 lbs,  38 lbs above my lowest weight. Even writing that made me upset a little inside... which proves I have a lot of work to do.

(Me now)