Being on Sertraline has definitely decreased my stress
levels and going to the gym (a total of four times in a week and a half –
hoorah) has increased my hope at getting back to an acceptable weight.
I have ALWAYS had issues
with my appearance and with my weight. I can remember as far back as early
primary school when I was the only girl with boobs and I tried to strap them
down, utterly mortified at being slightly bigger than my stick figure friends
or at that time, simply not being a boy because I liked playing football and I
was the only girl who was any good at it.
When I got to secondary school it was even worse, with a massive increase in the amount of people who noticed my chest, it was like a running joke in the first year – I think some people actually thought my name was ‘boobs’ because that’s what I was addressed as by most of the members of the opposite sex for a long time, until the prettier girls started growing their own weapons of attraction of course, and then I was just ‘one of the lads with tits’.
I remember being very impressionable at one point and wanting one of those tasteless, gaudy, awful tribal symbols tattooed on my lower back. I also remember being told by my tattoo laden father, not that it was unattractive, or I was too young (I was 14 at the time), or that it would hurt or that I’d regret it, but that simply “Errr I think you’re a bit chubby for that, why don’t you lose some weight first and then it will look nicer”.
I imagine that’s when I started hiding the food I was eating and throwing it back up later. I think that’s when the grey cloud settled in for good. I have diaries and diaries full to the brim of self hatred, food and exercise regimes, calorie counting... I even went to the trouble of hand-drawing a graph and pie-chart WEEKLY of what my weight and measurements were saying. Thinking about food and my weight took up a THOUSAND percent of my time.
I have been through the yo-yo weight game enough times now to know for certain that being two stone lighter won't make me any happier, won't change my situations, won't increase my motivation and certainly won't give me the personality overhaul that I need. But what it will give me is a small sense of accomplishment and that is something I rarely achieve. I am a perpetual avoider. I can start things with gusto and steam ahead with plans and goals and ambitions, however small or large, but I almost NEVER finish anything. I’m determined this year to finish my Open University module, and not even concentrate TOO much on the actual mark I get. I need to get it out of my head that I deserve to be getting 80%+ or distinctions with the lack of work I put in. If I can just manage to see the whole thing through to completion AND get some sort of mark, it will make a huge difference to me. The same goes with losing weight, because this will be the first time I'm actually putting effort into it.
In the past, I have flown up the scales to a horrifying 12 stone (how hilariously low is that when I talk about how much it impacted my life?) when I was really too young to be that, and slid back down to a teeny 8 and a half when I was too old. Now, there’s nothing WRONG with either of those weights, in reality they are at neither end of the scale, but for me, personally, I wasn’t healthy at either of them. I like being curvy, I don't want to be thin. But I hate the feeling of clothes that fit me perfectly six months ago now won’t go anywhere near my ballooning thighs. At 12 stone I was uncomfortable in my skin, let alone my clothes, I was out of breath, cripplingly self conscious and filling my body with all things sweet and unsavoury. It affected my skin as well which at the time was riddled with acne, so it became a vicious cycle of feel shit, eat shit, feel shit, eat shit, etc.
I was young when this was the case and after various counselling sessions and eating disorder ‘cures’, I found myself in a job where I woke up too early to have breakfast, ran around all day, had half an hour for lunch and would usually go out for a drink after work. I also preferred to spend my money on cigarettes than food, so my weight plummeted obscenely low to 8 and a half stone, which again, is not particularly small, but it is FOR ME. I wasn’t built to be skinny. I have an hourglass frame, which when empty, looks just as awful as it does when it’s overflowing. My ribs stuck out, I had saggy boobs, no bum, my arms looked like twigs and my watch was dangling from my wrist. I even lost a beautiful bracelet that I adored, because no more links could be removed and it was STILL too large. Although my cheekbones were chiselled, my skin was grey and my eyes were black. I thought it was great, I could finally sit down without a roll of flab in sight, but my friends and family were worried about me. My BMI dropped, my energy levels dropped, my mood dropped along with my concentration and focus which led me to start being overly emotional and making mistakes at work. I hadn’t overtly tried to be this slim, it just naturally happened. It wasn’t attractive, and most importantly, it wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t leading a healthy lifestyle and so my body wasn’t responding in a healthy way.
I stopped working for a bit and went back to studying, which meant that, again, totally naturally, I put on a stone and looked a lot better. However, when I stopped smoking at 20 for two years, my weight shot up from nine and a half stone to about ten and a half, and whilst I realise now that that weight is fine, at the time I was mortified. I had a boyfriend who was cheating on me and who the world thought was the most beautiful man to grace the planet, none of my clothes fit me, and I was in a job where everyone judged you on your hair/clothes/looks rather than your skills and I was being undermined and bullied by a girl who looked like Jennifer Aniston. I started smoking again PURELY for the hunger suppressing that smoking brought to me, sure that my life would improve if I lost the weight. What a disgusting thought.
When I got to secondary school it was even worse, with a massive increase in the amount of people who noticed my chest, it was like a running joke in the first year – I think some people actually thought my name was ‘boobs’ because that’s what I was addressed as by most of the members of the opposite sex for a long time, until the prettier girls started growing their own weapons of attraction of course, and then I was just ‘one of the lads with tits’.
I remember being very impressionable at one point and wanting one of those tasteless, gaudy, awful tribal symbols tattooed on my lower back. I also remember being told by my tattoo laden father, not that it was unattractive, or I was too young (I was 14 at the time), or that it would hurt or that I’d regret it, but that simply “Errr I think you’re a bit chubby for that, why don’t you lose some weight first and then it will look nicer”.
I imagine that’s when I started hiding the food I was eating and throwing it back up later. I think that’s when the grey cloud settled in for good. I have diaries and diaries full to the brim of self hatred, food and exercise regimes, calorie counting... I even went to the trouble of hand-drawing a graph and pie-chart WEEKLY of what my weight and measurements were saying. Thinking about food and my weight took up a THOUSAND percent of my time.
I have been through the yo-yo weight game enough times now to know for certain that being two stone lighter won't make me any happier, won't change my situations, won't increase my motivation and certainly won't give me the personality overhaul that I need. But what it will give me is a small sense of accomplishment and that is something I rarely achieve. I am a perpetual avoider. I can start things with gusto and steam ahead with plans and goals and ambitions, however small or large, but I almost NEVER finish anything. I’m determined this year to finish my Open University module, and not even concentrate TOO much on the actual mark I get. I need to get it out of my head that I deserve to be getting 80%+ or distinctions with the lack of work I put in. If I can just manage to see the whole thing through to completion AND get some sort of mark, it will make a huge difference to me. The same goes with losing weight, because this will be the first time I'm actually putting effort into it.
In the past, I have flown up the scales to a horrifying 12 stone (how hilariously low is that when I talk about how much it impacted my life?) when I was really too young to be that, and slid back down to a teeny 8 and a half when I was too old. Now, there’s nothing WRONG with either of those weights, in reality they are at neither end of the scale, but for me, personally, I wasn’t healthy at either of them. I like being curvy, I don't want to be thin. But I hate the feeling of clothes that fit me perfectly six months ago now won’t go anywhere near my ballooning thighs. At 12 stone I was uncomfortable in my skin, let alone my clothes, I was out of breath, cripplingly self conscious and filling my body with all things sweet and unsavoury. It affected my skin as well which at the time was riddled with acne, so it became a vicious cycle of feel shit, eat shit, feel shit, eat shit, etc.
I was young when this was the case and after various counselling sessions and eating disorder ‘cures’, I found myself in a job where I woke up too early to have breakfast, ran around all day, had half an hour for lunch and would usually go out for a drink after work. I also preferred to spend my money on cigarettes than food, so my weight plummeted obscenely low to 8 and a half stone, which again, is not particularly small, but it is FOR ME. I wasn’t built to be skinny. I have an hourglass frame, which when empty, looks just as awful as it does when it’s overflowing. My ribs stuck out, I had saggy boobs, no bum, my arms looked like twigs and my watch was dangling from my wrist. I even lost a beautiful bracelet that I adored, because no more links could be removed and it was STILL too large. Although my cheekbones were chiselled, my skin was grey and my eyes were black. I thought it was great, I could finally sit down without a roll of flab in sight, but my friends and family were worried about me. My BMI dropped, my energy levels dropped, my mood dropped along with my concentration and focus which led me to start being overly emotional and making mistakes at work. I hadn’t overtly tried to be this slim, it just naturally happened. It wasn’t attractive, and most importantly, it wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t leading a healthy lifestyle and so my body wasn’t responding in a healthy way.
I stopped working for a bit and went back to studying, which meant that, again, totally naturally, I put on a stone and looked a lot better. However, when I stopped smoking at 20 for two years, my weight shot up from nine and a half stone to about ten and a half, and whilst I realise now that that weight is fine, at the time I was mortified. I had a boyfriend who was cheating on me and who the world thought was the most beautiful man to grace the planet, none of my clothes fit me, and I was in a job where everyone judged you on your hair/clothes/looks rather than your skills and I was being undermined and bullied by a girl who looked like Jennifer Aniston. I started smoking again PURELY for the hunger suppressing that smoking brought to me, sure that my life would improve if I lost the weight. What a disgusting thought.
Disgusting it may have been, it worked. I lost
weight again and found myself back at 9 and a half stone, and although my
health and skin was shot to shit, my body looked amazing (if I do say so
myself). By this time I had a different boyfriend, who didn't really care about
my looks, but HATED smoking and had been a fitness instructor in a previous
lifetime. This made me go insane with conflict. I gave up smoking again, not
totally because of him, he never MADE me do it, but I just smoked less around
him to impress him and it drove me insane with cravings so I would snap and be
moody. So I thought I might as well give up, plus my skin may well improve.
Suffice to say, I got a little fitter, but
the weight eventually piled back on.
Things are slightly different now; I have the contraceptive implant in my left arm which mucks around with my hormones, as well as the Sertraline coursing through my body, doing its business with my brain and metabolism. This is making it VERY easy for me to put weight on and VERY difficult for me to lose it just by sacrificing a few packets of crisps a week.
Because I’m not working at the moment, this means I spend a large portion of my day sitting in one spot, trawling through the internet wishing I was somebody else, and consuming so many calories that I’m otherwise, just not shifting.
I know this seems trivial and shallow to
some, but with the battles I've had and the skewed view I have on my own body
image and self esteem, this really, really does something to me. I don't seem
to understand how my boyfriend can still find me attractive, even though J has
absolutely never judged me on how I look. It makes me uncomfortable in all my
clothes, to the point I sometimes don't bother getting dressed for the day and
it just makes it difficult for me to leave the house sometimes. I want this to
change, I want to not care so much about how I look naked and how my clothes
fit me and to just feel comfortable being me, whatever weight, but I can't. I
have no idea where it all stems from initially, and I have no idea how to move
forward with it. I'm self deprecating enough without having added worries
about J leaving me for a slimmer, fitter, tighter, more agile thing.
When I read that back I feel pathetic.
STEP IN THE GYM.
So far, it’s been quite amusing. Each time I’ve gone, I’ve really not wanted to. I’ve thought up a thousand excuses to get out of it, but I HAVE gone. And each time I’ve gone, I’ve left feeling better. Alright, it’s not glamorous – I’m red, sweaty and aching and I still feel guilty that my family and friends are working and I’m getting free gym time to work on something that shouldn’t be a priority in my life, but I AM losing weight. I have lost three pounds in a week and a half and I haven’t changed my diet TOO much. I’m spending time with Rachael, who I haven’t really ever spent that much time with on a one on one basis and I REALLY enjoy her company. I’ve so far met some nice people, and even though there are women there that ordinarily would make me want to hide away and fade into the background, I can see that no one really pays attention to anyone else. Everyone is there to achieve something; whether it’s losing two stone like me or feeding the obsession with the body beautiful, we all have a goal and we’re not too concerned with anyone else’s.
Its super early days, and I know it’s going to take hard work, focus and whatnot, which I’m certainly not known for. So far though, it’s making me feel, not better, but just better than I was. Things somehow seem brighter and not so grey after a workout. I'll always have pizza days and lazy days, but I DO undoubtedly feel better when I've done my crunches, squats, and walks and not eaten a week’s worth of bread in one day.
I’m going to carry on for as long as I can, recording my progress and taking it step by step, pound by pound and see what happens. I know what I want from it, but when the dark days overtake me it’s VERY difficult to fight my way through it, but I’m going to give it a decent shot.
STEP IN THE GYM.
So far, it’s been quite amusing. Each time I’ve gone, I’ve really not wanted to. I’ve thought up a thousand excuses to get out of it, but I HAVE gone. And each time I’ve gone, I’ve left feeling better. Alright, it’s not glamorous – I’m red, sweaty and aching and I still feel guilty that my family and friends are working and I’m getting free gym time to work on something that shouldn’t be a priority in my life, but I AM losing weight. I have lost three pounds in a week and a half and I haven’t changed my diet TOO much. I’m spending time with Rachael, who I haven’t really ever spent that much time with on a one on one basis and I REALLY enjoy her company. I’ve so far met some nice people, and even though there are women there that ordinarily would make me want to hide away and fade into the background, I can see that no one really pays attention to anyone else. Everyone is there to achieve something; whether it’s losing two stone like me or feeding the obsession with the body beautiful, we all have a goal and we’re not too concerned with anyone else’s.
Its super early days, and I know it’s going to take hard work, focus and whatnot, which I’m certainly not known for. So far though, it’s making me feel, not better, but just better than I was. Things somehow seem brighter and not so grey after a workout. I'll always have pizza days and lazy days, but I DO undoubtedly feel better when I've done my crunches, squats, and walks and not eaten a week’s worth of bread in one day.
I’m going to carry on for as long as I can, recording my progress and taking it step by step, pound by pound and see what happens. I know what I want from it, but when the dark days overtake me it’s VERY difficult to fight my way through it, but I’m going to give it a decent shot.
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