Here’s what no one tells you about massive weight loss

In the fitting room of Limited Too in Miami, I told my mother, you are hurting me. She was burning my body in the largest American flag shirt she sold.

In the third row, I have been delving into their catalog for hours, not only craving bohemian chic bandana shirts but also the body that allows me to wear them. The shirt was for a national school event, the red, white, and blue to temporarily replace the khaki outfit. I ended up wearing something else.

Having spent my entire childhood inside an obese body, I finally lost 80 pounds in my early twenties, after thinking I had already tried everything. I said a lot to my boyfriend at the time, who frequently commented on the attractiveness of other slim women. He assured me that it was all just thermodynamic, and that I could lose weight if I “really wanted”. In an aggressive, passive attempt to prove him wrong, I started completely starving myself. (Did I mention how true this relationship is?)

When the pounds fell, I had to admit he was right – but looking at my new body, I’m still winning. Or at least, so I thought at the time.

In many ways, losing my weight changed my life for the better. The elevated blood pressure and resting heart rate decreased to normal levels, followed by athletic levels later. I discovered my passion for hiking the steep trails and lifting heavy weights.

And I definitely plunged into a strong slutty streak after I shed the bulk of my excess body fat, which I was drunk with ubiquitous male attention and which I had been hungry for so long for. I’ve experimented with my new body with six partners in several months, and I’ve only had two in the four years since I lost my virginity.

But now that I’ve had this “new” body for half a decade, I have more insight into the counterintuitive – and unpleasant – consequences of massive weight loss.

Weight loss is hard to do, but easy to get pregnant: consume less than you burn. At the level of life and life, of course, the effort required is enormous, and it can have lasting effects on the psyche.

At Netflix Original ‘in depthAnorexia patient, Lily Collins accused of having Asperger’s with calories. Although I can never be mistaken for anorexia, I can speak. Food no longer looks like food as it does as a set of numbers : Calories, grams of carbohydrates, minutes of cardio exercise. I still track everything I ate, even pieces of gum or sips of soda; I spend up to two hours in the gym on a daily basis. I follow strict and somewhat arbitrary eating rules, and I eat Lots of binge eating late at night.Although I only eat foods that fall into my “safe” categories, I may still consume 2000 calories per session, shedding half a pound of almonds or an entire packet of bars. Protein… Then the next morning I’ll turn around and rotate the ellipse to the highest level, trying to burn it up again.

If this sounds like an eating disorder to you … yes, it probably is. Even though I don’t have an official diagnosis, I have half a joke on a scale of one for bulimia, I’m sitting at about three. And what’s worse, is part of the reason you did not It’s been diagnosed that the idea of ​​seeking a cure is more frightening than continuing to live that way. I love to eat my restless. I love the control I feel it gives me, even though it’s clearly out of my control.

The problem is that it sounds like a force: the man bends over from the window of his truck to say, Ma’am, you are so beautiful – just in case no one tells you today. The man falls to his knees before me on the sidewalk, his hands are as high as in prayer. The man looks at my crossed legs in the cafe and asks if I am a dancer. And the perks are also tangible: the guy smiling at me shyly from behind the glass, finds me a free ticket despite selling the show. And turned all speed violations into warnings.

I came to this after being told, in no uncertain terms, that I was abhorrent. I was the kind of girl who dared to kiss in high school because the concept was so funny. And when they did, my heart jumped hungry because it was for attention. Seeing life from the other side is amazing and unimaginable. The whole world is putting itself under the feet of beautiful womenI wrote in my journal, I’m still not convinced I have the trait.

The problem is that you don’t think until it is too late Why You crave this attention – the cultural reality that a woman’s value is so closely linked to her physical appearance. The problem is that in a culture that proves you are nothing but commoditized your body, you will do absolutely nothing to preserve the validated version.

Fear of my apparent beauty – more precisely, fear of losing it – carries me into a cage, a life of calorie counting, and a graded life unlike what I had imagined. I remember watching beautiful, skinny girls in high school, how they miraculously ate lunches of pizza and fries without apparent consequences. I thought their life should be one long party: a stream of flirtation and completeness punctuated by the indulgence of guilt-free cooking.

But once my body got close to theirs, my bondage to my newly discovered and risky skinniness took me away from a seemingly carefree lifestyle. Alcohol contains a lot of calories. Crazy morning gym sessions mean I’m so tired of the nightlife – and besides, I’m an introvert with an addictive personality. So I would be sitting home most evenings, reading a book or completing the crossword, feeling my beauty like a dwindling resource, a lamp whose dim light slowly wasted.

Perhaps the most surprising part about losing massive weight: I did all the work, put in all the effort, and I’m still struggling – I still, despite my efforts to the contrary, spend more time hating my body than loving it.

I’m going to poke my face in the mirror and get the flesh out of my chin, checking to see if my beauty is still intact – if it is in the first place. I’ve spent all of the last five years convinced and terrified that I am close to taking everything back; I’m going to scroll through my backlog of anxious mirror selfies and see, no, I’ve been pretty much the same size the whole time. I still thought everyone thought I was fat when they first met me.

Losing 80 pounds means things aren’t exactly where they’re supposed to be. Even though I fit in with a once crazy-looking size 4, I don’t look like the Victoria’s Secret models I used to crop their pics for “subtle inspiration”. Fat Puddles Leave In Sagging Excess Skin: The two thighs that will move no matter how many stabs I do, a patch of baggy belly.

In some ways, it is a simple case of a goalkeeper. When I first lost weight, carved a new breath out of someone much older, these flaws became inconsequential by comparison. Today, it’s devastating, and insurmountable – so much so that I might hate my body now more than I did when I was fat. I am definitely more afraid of taking off my clothes. At least 215 people, then the suitors knew their reason for being.

(I know, too, that I think about it, that I am more deformed than deformed. What I really want: to see my body as something more than an embodiment of my triumph or my failure.)

When I was in college, I admired a boy who didn’t even know my name, despite the fact that we share multiple classes. After losing his first forty pounds, he’s suddenly stalking me – and years later, he’s still sending me Christmas gifts and flirting texts. One of these, sent after a visit rejected his physical advancement, stayed on my mind.

He wrote: “You are a beautiful and wonderful woman, and I feel grateful to be close to you as much as I am.”

Yeah, I wanted to respond. But the “lustrous” didn’t matter until the “beautiful” part.

And that’s what no one says (but everyone knows) about losing weight: It matters. It is very important. That’s why my mom struggled with me in this fitting room, trying to physically squeeze me into something more convenient; Why are the boys who once ignored me trying their best now to smile and whistle to tell me their names.

appearance Do Thing. To tell ourselves otherwise is a hoax. The best we can do is try to change it, choose body positivity, look in the mirror, and actively decide to love ourselves – and others – just the way we are.

Do you have a compelling personal story that you would like to see posted on HuffPost? Find out what we are looking for Here And the Send us the playground!

If you have an eating disorder, contact: National Eating Disorders Association Hotline At the number 1-800-931-2237.