Overweight my whole life - if I can do it, and begin the path to healing from trauma, so can you. >40 lbs lost in 6.5 months

I started on May 1st, at 190 lbs.

More than chubby kid. 140 lbs at 10 years old. Went into an adult UK size 14 at 13 years old. Grew over the years to a size 18 at 18 years old, promising myself size 20 is the barrier, I'll never let myself get so bad I reach size 20. I was in between a size 18 and 20 at my highest weight.

I have been overweight my whole life because of trauma and neglect, this is the main way in which it showed itself. Struggled with binge eating disorder, emotional eating, boredom eating, the whole lot since I was 10 years old. Tried to lose weight at 14 but crossed the dangerous line into orthorexia and it scared me away from losing weight ever again... until now.

When you've grown up fat, like me, you have absolutely no idea about living any differently. You have no idea what your collarbones look like. Your belly sticks out of every shirt you wear and you just come to accept that this is your body shape, this is what you look like. You embrace and absorb the "funny fat girl" identity, the only thing you're ever seen as, and you cling to it, you never think to challenge it. You sleep, but never feel refreshed. You spend your waking moments in a groggy daze and your nights binging on junk food, to fall asleep from the sugar crash, although by this point your body is so messed up from the years of constant sugar overload that it hardly gets crashes any more, and you repeat it all again the next day. You have no idea how it feels to really feel alive. This is just your life, and it always has been.

Well, I started on May 1st at 190 lbs. At 5'1'' that is quite certainly obese, and at 19 years old that was not quite the way I hoped my life would be like.

I tackled my trauma, head on. I learnt self-control. I learnt patience. I learnt responsibility, to own up to your mistakes, and to forgive yourself for them. I learnt to take care of myself, and made the decision to always treat myself the way I'd like others to treat me - with respect and kindness. If you're not giving that to yourself, how the hell do you expect anyone else to?

It gets to a point where you're simply just tired of it all. I can't remember how I stumbled across this place, but I did, and I read and I read and it finally all made sense. I downloaded MyFitnessPal that same day. I was disciplined with myself. And by being the parent to myself that I never had, and showing myself care, and attempting to show myself unconditional love (which is still very much a work in progress), I have hit 148.8 lbs as of this morning. Over 40 lbs gone.

That's 40 lbs of fat that would remind me of painful childhood memories, gone. The protective but self destructive coping mechanisms, gone. The shame and mindlessness of eating just to feel something - gone. 40 lbs of me that I mistreated and disrespected through sheer self-hate, gone.

I grew up, and it feels like nothing else to be turning into a completely different person, and to be somewhat physically and mentally healthy for the first time in my life. I plan to get down to 125 lbs before reviewing further, but that will be a milestone achievement in itself when it comes to it.

Here's to life.

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