On Maintaining Weight Loss

Since 2013, I have embarked on a weight loss journey. All my life I've had an unhealthy relationship with food. When I was younger I would eat so much I would throw up after dinner. In high school, my weight yo-yo'ed a lot to +/- 10 pounds. In uni I had horrible food habits which I did not realize were that bad. I would eat very little but my diet basically consisted of Tim Horton’s bagels. Despite the weight gain, I was never self-conscious about my size. I would skip breakfast and lunch and have a bagel in the afternoon and a bagel at night with coffee. I never even liked the taste of coffee but I felt I had to drink it to help me stay awake. I have always been chubby and with my shape, it's hard to skinny. I have wide hips and ginormous boobs (34HH now) but a smaller waist which you can't really tell since my boobs protrude out so much.

By my second year of university, I had deleted all social media so I rarely saw pictures of myself on a screen and was in denial about my weight gain. It wasn't until my third year that I went on a trip with my mom to Greece and saw the pictures that I realised I had put on at least 30 pounds. This may seem insane but I honestly did not realise I was gaining weight. I would squeeze my body into Medium sized clothing and in my head I looked cute. And I was. My winged eyeliner game was very strong and I wore red lipstick to all my classes. I was feeling myself. In my head I was the same weight as in high school. Now 30 pounds is not an alarming amount of weight. Maybe others could get away with this but weight gain is very visible on me. I am also short so it looked like I had doubled in size.

People noticed my weight gain but could never make a direct and helpful statement like "Girl, I'm worried you've gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time. Are you okay?”. Would I have even made such a statement to someone close to me? It's a delicate situation. My sister and dad, avid gym goers and people obsessed with staying slim, often commented on my food portions. "You don't need that much bread". "Don't order dessert". I am an emotional eater and these comments made me eat more (not blaming them for my unhealthy habits, it was all my doing. They did what they thought would help). I was also very depressed during uni which could have contributed to the weight gain and the denial of such weight gain.

The weight loss started accidentally. I got my wisdom teeth removed on my last semester during exams and I couldn't eat. I survived on smoothies and water and I lost weight FAST. Like too fast. Then I realised how good I looked and wanted to continue this way. At the same time, I started becoming obsessed with "thinspo" websites. Websites or Tumblr pages with an obsession with thinness displaying “ideal” white, blond and lean bodies that as a curvy black Caribbean girl I could never realistically be. I started doing home YouTube workouts and severely cutting down how much food I ate. My motivation to lose weight had nothing to do with being healthier but it encouraged me to look into a healthy lifestyle. I eventually stopped looking at thinspo and looked into healthy, albeit still subconsciously skinny obsessed Tumblr blogs full of inspirational pictures and drastic before and after transformations. Becoming thin was out, becoming fit was in (the fit girls, however, were very similar to the skinny white girls from the previous websites. Now they had a butt and back muscles).

Like with the weight gain, people generally did not make comments but their attitudes towards me changed. People were nicer. My dad and sister asked me for recipes or invited me to workout with them. I looked into this phenomenon on the internet and many people hypothesised that now that you are skinny, it is your own attitude towards people that is more positive, and in turn they are more positive towards you. I call that fucking bullshit. We judge fat people all the time (skinny shaming is not a thing, go away). I remember being at a restaurant and seeing a larger family not being able to fit into a booth and judging them. Why were they so fat? I still feel guilty about it to this day. I didn't even bother to feel for their humiliation in not being able to share a family meal. I eventually lost 30 pounds in less than a year. YouTube workouts gave way to running. I ran all the time, all seasons. I fucked up my knees because of improper shoes and most likely bad form. I am a slow runner but I would force my body to limits that I knew were too much. Diet wise I had cut off most carbs, all alcohol and juices and survived mostly on salads. This continued till 2014 but then after a year of being an unemployed grad, I found a job. No longer did I have time to run miles or do so many workouts during the day. Work donuts and late dinners and fatigue started affecting me. I did my best but ended up gaining 10 pounds which I have never really lost.

Around that time, I joined a gym and started focusing on being healthier as opposed to being skinny. Maintaining weight loss is harder than losing it. But I don't want to be limiting myself. If I want a piece of cake, I will eat it. However, I don't eat 3 bagels a day. I focus on making sure most meals I eat bring something to my body. I went from working out 3 days a week to now 2 (sometimes 1). I do a spin class and a yoga class or some quick cardio at the gym. Some weeks if I have my period or I'm just too exhausted, I don't work out and don't beat myself up about it. This not beating myself up took a while to figure out but I've come to accept that I won't gain 30 pounds by not working out one week (I will defiantly gain like 3). Was my body banging when I worked out more? Yes. But I've learned to live with that choice.