To most, "body positive weight loss" sounds like an oxymoron, but it is the best and most effective weight loss program that I have come across. In other words, only when I did not care about losing weight, could I actually get somewhere.
The big secret is that I stopped caring about losing weight and started caring about being healthy and loving my body as is.
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That sounds easy enough, but it's not that easy to shed 14 years of insecurity linked to weight problems. I had tried diets before and different fads, and they never seemed to work. I never seemed to reach my goal, and that would just deplete whatever hope I had left. That piled on to the fact that genetically I am predisposed to being overweight, and I felt doomed to a life of hating my body.
By the time I was a freshman in college, I was 5'9" and 240 pounds.
I wasn't eating very well, and as a theatre major, it made dance and physical theatre classes more difficult. I was also able to blame my weight for why I was not getting cast to the point where I felt I didn't deserve to be cast regardless of talent. Moreover, despite knowing it was ridiculous, I felt that I didn't deserve to be loved romantically because of my weight and appearance. All of these factors led to constant feeling of failure and depression.
Then something changed. On a whim, I went to the gym in a room where there was no one to judge me, and it really relieved a lot of my feelings of depression just by working up a sweat. Just that time to listen to music I liked and spend clearing my mind made me feel better. My goal was not to change my body, but rather to just feel better. At this point I was resolved to being fat forever, so I didn't feel like extra exercise was going to change anything. This inspired me instead to read up on the positive effects on mental health that exercise could have. This, in turn, led me to reading on the positive effects of good nutrition. Making one healthier choice a day made me feel better. I didn't feel bad if I ate something that was not that healthy, and I never felt like I was dieting. When the summer in between freshman and sophomore year rolled around I really enjoyed counting nutrients, not calories.
I loved my body because it allowed me to do cool things like juggling and dance class. I learned about how metabolisms can be genetically slower, and started taking green tea supplements that were a source of caffeine that made me feel better than coffee. I developed a love for cooking with fresh ingredients that started a love affair with food. Previously, I had an unfortunate belief that healthy meant fatless, sugarless, and tasteless food, but I soon learned that fresh cooked food tastes better with healthy ingredients than with artificial foods that had once made up a hefty portion of my diet. I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything, but I did feel better and I liked my body a lot more.
When sophomore year rolled around, I had lost 40 pounds. I felt fantastic. I don't feel like my body is perfect, and losing weight didn't make me happy. Being healthy just made me feel good.
I know that a little bit over a year ago I would have killed for a body like mine, but because I am human, I still compare myself to others. I cannot offer a solution to that, as that is something deeply seeded in our culture. I cannot promise that making one healthier choice a day will work for others as well as it works for me, but I can say that fad diets, hating oneself and quick fixes do not work.
