About 5 years ago, I lost a significant amount of weight through good old fashioned diet and exercise. By “diet” I mean compulsively counting points on Weight Watchers, attaching my self worth to whether or not I stayed within my daily allowance, and ultimately forcing myself into anxiety-fueled binges if I so much as tried a bite of something I hadn’t scheduled in. And by “exercise” I mean 1-2 hours of weight lifting and a 1 hour high intensity spin class everyday for streaks of 15-20 days without a day off.
And yeah. I lost weight. 25% of my body weight to be exact. And you know what else I lost? My sanity.
I ended up in therapy, spending 2 years trying to undo the damage I had done to myself mentally. Throughout the recovery process, the pendulum swung back past center and in the other direction and I ended up gaining the weight back… but sometimes mental health is more important. Sometimes it’s worth going back up a couple jeans sized to be able to eat pasta without crying.
And so here I am. Finally bringing myself back to center. My goal isn’t weight loss, per se. It’s finding a maintainable lifestyle which is healthy both physically AND mentally. Mental stability is incredibly delicate. The way we talk about food and our bodies can be tearing us down mentally without us even consciously realizing it. I DESPISE the phrase “trigger foods” for this reason. By calling food a “trigger” we are implying that is has some kind of intrinsic control over us. We are, in effect, giving it that power. Food is not intrinsically good or bad, and we are not good or bad based on what we eat.
I am not fasting for weight loss, I am fasting to hopefully reduce my risk of chronic diseases and improve my digestive issues. I’d love to talk to other people who feel similarly and want to talk about 5:2 in terms of these goals, and not weight loss.
3:49 pm
27 Apr 16