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7 Ugly Truths of Becoming Skinny After Being Fat
I lost 70+ lbs, it’s great, but it’s not all that glamorous
Writing about weight loss should feel amazing, a real success story of willpower, determination and the power of change. I should be beaming with pride and accomplishment — and some days I am. But if I am honest with myself, writing about weight loss is really difficult — this is why I have been putting it off for so long.
First of all, I feel ashamed admitting my fatness. It’s not easy to talk about it, even when it’s behind me, even when I already learnt the tools and methods that work for me, even when my fat loss journey is mission: accomplished. It’s not easy to admit that all these years I was struggling with my weight when I always had the power to change it. That I put up with myself, that I postponed healthy choices, that I was lazy or impatient.
It’s hard to write down that only within a year, it was possible to achieve what I told myself was impossible. And no matter how great it feels to look at progress photos, I still cringe at my before pictures, silently shaking my head in disbelief that I let this happen.
In a year, I did the impossible, I went from 213lbs to 140 lbs (from 96kg to 63kg) which means going from 32.8 BMI to 21.3 for my 5'8 (173cms) height. It meant a lot of difficult days and weeks when nothing felt right, with a lot of exercise and dieting, with a ton of new habits that I intend to keep for the rest of my life. [I wrote an article about the mental hacks that helped me because the physical part is simple.]
There are days when I still can’t believe it and while I would agree that it sounds like complain-bragging, believe me, there are a few downsides to losing weight — even when the cons are definitely outweighing the pros.
Losing the fat identity takes longer than expected
My weight loss journey was slow and steady, exactly as it should be. There were no immediate results and quick progress, it was a steady loss of 1–2 pounds a week — which seemed extremely slow at the time. I thought that with this pace I would have gotten used to the changing of my body, the changed way I look in the mirror and in photos.
