Weight loss makes you confront the truth

I was listening to sports radio today and someone spoke about losing weight.  It was asked if being overweight was an unhappy thing because most weight loss stories begin with someone saying they were unhappy with their size. I think it’s a trap people fall in after they lost weight.  I’ve said it many times that I’m happier now that I’ve lost the weight which sometimes insinuates that I wasn’t happy before.  Don’t get me wrong, life definitely had it’s down points but it also had it’s ups too!

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I know the weight loss forced me to confront some issues that did lead to some unhappiness.  Learning the reasons why I overate or the feelings behind wanting to eat in certain situations was important to me because it wasn’t a road I wanted to ride down again.  I needed to get answers so I knew what to do to avoid the situations.

I ended up learning a lot of things about myself that probably weren’t the best things but it has helped me become a better person!  I do believe I’ve changed a lot over the past five years and I think it’s a positive change.  In my eyes, I think I was a train wreck but I’m really hard on myself.

What kind of things did I learn about myself?

  • I was a serious emotional eater.  When I was really sad, I would eat the most.  When I was sad, I would just eat no matter if I had just eaten.  When I was happy, I ate too.  It was a way of treating myself.  That’s still a really bad habit to break but I’m still a work in progress.
  • I ate out of boredom.  If I was bored, I was going to eat.  That’s why I don’t like to get in those situations now.  I’m constantly moving and involved in something so I don’t face down the boredom beast too often.  Sometimes I can’t avoid it so I focus on finding something to do.
  • I justified. I knew better than to eat all that food but I kept eating it.  I remember a couple of times thinking, “I’m already fat, what else could happen?”  How wrong is that?  That was just one of many things I would say to myself to justify my behavior.  I was enabling myself to head down a path that was eventually going to kill me.
  • Negative thoughts and self talk caused me to over think and analyze everything.  I would find problems when they didn’t exist.  I wasn’t confident in my decisions or actions.  I sometimes masked that behind overeating and eating really unhealthy.

These are just a few things that I learned a long the road.  But most importantly, I learned to believe in myself wholeheartedly.  I didn’t doubt myself and I became more determined.  I wouldn’t have learned any of this without the weight loss though.  I would still be traveling down that path.

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Weight loss forces you to confront all the demons that you never thought existed. That’s the not so great thing about weight loss.  It’s like breaking yourself down to build yourself back up.  But it can be a completely life changing experience if you’re really honest with yourself and take the process seriously. I think it’s an important step in changing your lifestyle.  If you don’t know the root of the problem, it can never be fixed.