Feel your body. Connect and Breathe.
a. Chances are you’ve made adjustments as you’ve gained weight. Your shoulders hunched, your neck has sunk into your chest and dwindles. Your chest heaves its way up into your neck. Your belly expands up into your lungs and down to your thighs. And you’re disgusted with it. I know. Even with the healthiest dose of self-love and acceptance, it’s not something you’re happy about. You want to fit into a rollercoaster and be able to pull the lap bar down. You want to be able to cross your legs again. You want to be able to lay down flat on the floor without feeling yourself suffocate from the weight. You’re no longer wearing clothes you like, and each day its just finding something long enough, or big enough to cover these problem areas; cellulite and “bat wing” arms, and that belly lump that seems to never stop growing. Its impossible to shop in any “normal” store, you’re limited to the 3 stores that actually carry your sizes, the Heavy weight brands, and that’s if you’re under a 3X since most of these stores stop there. Bras are a nightmare. Rolls abound and if you do actually find something you like, by the time you notice it they’ve discontinued it and you have to start all over. You’ve given up on wearing jeans, and stick to leggings, jeggings and black stretch pants. You can acknowledge it, its okay. This is not fucking fun. It is not admirable to be big. No one looks at you anymore, they wont even catch your eye. They flit to your round midsection and back. And that’s all the attention that you get on a daily basis. You’re not happy. And you don’t know what to do about it. You’ve tried. Oh, you’ve tried, I know. Keto and low fat and yadda yadda, the list would go on. You’re disheartened, because nothing has worked.
Take a deep breath. Breathing is extremely important – it’s the first thing you’ll do in this life and the last thing as well. Most people aren’t even aware of their breathing. However, it can help you in so many different ways. One of the things I noticed is that my entire posture changes when I just breath properly. Open up that chest, pull those shoulders back, your belly moves in on its on accord. Deep inhale, count to 6. And blow it all the way out, until there is no air left. Most of us breathe very shallowly, from the very top of our lungs. Deep breathing will help you to realign and get through some intense moments. Just becoming aware of the position of our stomach and ab muscles when we breath drives connection to those muscles, this will help when doing exercise or just walking and maintain a good posture.
Exercise hurts. Hell, just living hurts as a fat person. Your hips ache, your lower back is taking the brunt of your exercise because your abs don’t support your core. You wake up with soreness, and everything you do seems to further enunciate that fact. So, let me tell you the truth, the more you start moving, the more activity you do get – the more it is going to hurt – at first. I remember when I was 200 lbs, I went to sleep and woke up refreshed. I found supportive bras and my shoulder didn’t hurt all day every day. Now, its like a constant nonstop pain fest. BUT – here’s the issue, sitting around and trying to avoid further making my body hurt is only making things WORSE. The more I don’t move, the more my body aches. So at this point, either way, its going to hurt. Try to accept the building of muscle and strength as a good pain. A pain that’s for a purpose. I see so many people say, my back hurts and they go to the doctor and get painkillers, and they sit on the couch and overeat. And they’re back still hurts, but they distract from it. No one ever bothered to say, your skeleton, which is made to carry you at an optimal weight, is carrying around 100 extra pounds, and its going to hurt. If you reduce down to a more reasonable weight, that pressure will lift and you will feel better overall.
Its not about taking foods away. Its not about never having your favorite things again. It’s a fact these foods taste better and induce cravings for more of the same when you eat them. So, trying to overrule that bodily response is quite simply going to fail. You will have a piece of cake again. You will eat pizza. Trying not to is simply denying yourself anything good in life, and what happens when you do that? You may last a week, or two, but eventually you get stressed out, you step on the scale and see you’ve actually gained 5 pounds and – you think, what the fuck is the point? If you work that hard, and see no progress, you might as well do whatever the hell you want. So, you resolve, I like myself, I’m a good person, so what if I’m fat. At least I’ll be happy.
What it is about is adding more foods that are nutrient rich. As a picky person, I just don’t like certain foods. And most of the foods that I do like and enjoy are not particularly healthy. I may not ever enjoy a kale salad. This is a fact of life. And I need to find a way to work around that if I want to be healthy and lose weight.
Look at the foods that are recommended to you to lose weight. Salmon, asparagus, leafy greens, almonds, fruit. You think, ok. But when do I get anything I actually enjoy? If I have to eat fish and greens every night for dinner, 1. I’m going to be hungry in 2 hours and 2. I’m never going to be satisfied.
Look at your skinny friends. They don’t deny themselves a piece of cake at a party. They’re able to indulge at times without throwing the baby out with the dishwater. If you’re obese, you’ve likely made it a habit though. You reward yourself with food. You don’t feel satisfied until you’re absolutely stuffed, or you’ve followed cravings all day long. First its salty, then sweet, then salty, then sweet. To the point where you’re having a chocolate or sweet after every time you eat. Or, you don’t eat as long as you can and then starving, you clean out the entire days’ worth of food you planned to eat in an hour. You literally feel like you can’t stop.
Expose yourself to the things that fit people do. Much like #3 above, look at your skinny friends. Observe their habits regarding exercise. Sign up for nike, reebox, and bodybuilding emails to hit your inbox. Pick and choose what articles actually interest you and read them once in awhile. Exposing yourself to a fitness related lifestyle won’t hurt, I promise. Its probably the easiest thing you can do to start moving towards a better lifestyle and mindset. I found an article there about breathing – how to actually breathe properly when you run. Now, as a D breasted girl since fricken middle school – I hated running and part of that was feeling like I could never catch my breath or get a proper breath. Look up the YouTube videos on it – how you’re actually supposed to breath. 2 in 2 out worked for me. It helped me feel in control and when you feel you can actually get a good breath, it’s a lot easier to keep moving that body. It took practice. I played with it. I observed. There was no doing it wrong, just better than I had been in the past. But every time I did actually get on a treadmill or elliptical and really get going to where I needed it – I remembered, 2 in, 2 out. And that was enough to help me get through the dread of running. I’m not going to lie. I still don’t run. Lol. But I could control my breathing if I DID. So, like I said, that exposure to a new way of thinking isn’t going to hurt. And a lot of those emails will feel irrelevant. Like really… you’re worried about how to get a bigger butt? I just want to fucking go for a walk without being out of breath? But that’s okay. You’re in a different place and you have different priorities, doesn’t mean one is better than the other. And that leads me to point #5
Know when enough is enough. I’m sure you’ve heard of SMART Goals. And yes, it makes a lot of sense. Small things, compounded, make a big difference. And my main point here is going to be Realistic. I will never be a size 4. I’m perfectly ok with that. Now in the era of curves and butts being “in”, I’d be perfectly okay with getting back down to my fighting weight and where I was really pretty happy with – a size 14 pant. Now, youll understand why most fitness programs don’t work for obese people. Most people are starting at a size 14, and trying to get into that 6, 4, or 2. Because theve been moderately fit, or even out of shape they had a limit to how big their body would get. Call us unlucky, whatever, genetically, we can get a lot bigger than those people. And that’s why for me, being 200 lbs is healthy, totally acceptable, and still puts me in an overweight BMI. However, I decided, if and ever I do get down to that again, I’m going to rock the shit out of it and accept it. Not that I’m not going to try to tone my belly or really go for the gold when I can get some really good workouts in, there is always an innate need to strive for better. But, I’m going to know when enough is enough and when to be satisfied with the hard work I’ve put in.
Because, lets face it. If you’ve struggled with your weight throughout your life, you know this better than anyone – it was never good enough. You always felt you had more work to do. You were never just happy as you were. Even when you were 100 lbs lighter than you are now. Partly because you compared yourself to people with entirely different structures; or to 100 lbs models like we see all day everyday.
Most people who are into fitness or enjoy it (gasp) have never been obese. If they have been, I don’t think they’ve ever adequately captured to me, what its like to start a journey like this. Most every plan that I’ve ever seen has a picture of someone with a body composition that would be a marked improvement over mine (What the hell, I’d like to be the start point for some of these) , and yet, they say, if you’re’ 100, 150 lbs overweight, this plan will work for you too! You don’t have to do anything different, just follow the plan!
Excuse me? Exercising, eating healthy, EVERYTHING is a different animal at this point. And I think that’s why so many of these programs fail for those who need it the most. It is different when you have a very long journey ahead of you. Eating a smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, and greens and fish for dinner is not going to work for you for a very long time. It hasn’t, and no matter what extra pill, or shake, or philosophy they claim to have that is different from all the rest, you end up in the same exact place. Tired, exhausted, and if you had managed to lose any weight through extreme deprivation, you eventually backslide and gain it back, plus some.
Change things up. This is a point to review how you got here. It didn’t happen overnight, and while that’s usually used as justification for why this undoing process is going to take so long – lets look at the facts. Did you start taking an antidepressant? Did you lose someone close, or go through something fucking devastating and start eating to cope? When were you at your lightest? Did you ever get some regular exercise, from sports or college teams? You’re going to need to leverage those strengths and use them. What has changed for you since you started packing on weight? An injury? Your approach will likely need to change a bit – but its definitely worth looking at times in your life when this body was working a bit better for you. I know, weight comes with age sometimes, but this is an individual journey, yours. And you know you better than anyone else. And you, are going to have to be the one to do this for yourself. Everyone wants the easy way but let’s face it. We can’t afford private chefs to make healthy food taste good. And if you want to go off the rails and eat way too much one day, you’re going to have to the one to stop yourself, no one else. This is on you. Its incredibly enlightening, but at the same time sobering to take responsibility. You got yourself here. At the same time, you get all that responsibility back to fix it. This is not about blame. This is living eyes wide open. Accepting where you are now and vowing to do something different.
So many of the programs I see address the nutrition and physical aspects, but rarely, do I ever see an emotional aspect. And I’m sorry, you don’t get to be obese without having some emotional aspect to your eating patterns. What are the top three things that spur you to eat when you’re not hungry or overeat? Mine are:
Boredom
Stress / anxiety / a way to relax
Rewarding myself / celebration