Q: Can you address weight loss fear..This morning I was getting ready for work and nothing fit..everything was way to big lol..I got rid of all my jeans over size 10, but my work clothes I’m still holding on to the 12 and girrrl they look bad lol..I can take them off without unzipping them
I understand completely.
When it comes to weight loss, we all get mixed information. We should be able to “lose 7 pounds in 7 days!!!!!11111ONE” yet, at the same time, “99.999992% of all people who manage to lose weight ultimately gain it all back,” even though “you’re definitely fat and you need to lose the weight immediately” because, if you don’t, your ability to advance economically in society will be negatively impacted.
I mean, wtf?
In the early stages of my journey, I didn’t let go of my wardrobe because I genuinely didn’t trust the results I was getting. I mean, I’ve blogged about how my underwear fell off in the middle of the grocery store (long, silly story) once, because I just didn’t trust that I was truly sizing out of the garments I loved and knew I could trust.
In my mind, the trust is the issue. It’s difficult to trust ourselves and trust the process and trust the results and trust your ability to ‘protect,’ for lack of a better phrase, what you’ve earned. If this is the first time we’ve experienced weight loss success, it’s a scary place to be. Letting go of what’s been comfortable to you; [in some instances] having finally found clothes that fit you at your larger size and then giving them all away despite a fear of re-gaining the weight and having to hunt for those sizes all over again; realizing that letting go of your older sizes really puts a major responsibility on your shoulders—not just to your wardrobe or to your body, but responsibility to yourself to make sure that you commit, forever, to your new active and healthy lifestyle.
The fear isn’t necessarily fear, from what I can see. It’s trust, and you have to begin to frame it that way in order to get past it. Can you trust that the way you’ve lost the weight thus far is sustainable enough that you can carry it on from now on? Can you trust that the way you’ve been eating to lose the weight is a way you can eat forever? Can you trust your ability to commit to this new lifestyle and keep it going, making it a priority and keeping it as such from here on out? If you can’t answer yes to those three questions, what you have is a feeling of fear—fear of your inability to make it happen. If you get rid of the fear, the inability to trust yourself and your abilities still remains, which is how you know the fear isn’t the problem, though: learn to trust yourself, and the fear dissipates.
Ultimately, when I moved back home for a few months a few years back, I wound up giving all of my old sizes away to Goodwill, and it wasn’t because I trusted myself. It was because I couldn’t fit all my stuff in my mom’s house without her cursing my name every time she saw another box of my stuff in her house. I took a deep breath, said to myself that I believe in my ability to achieve and maintain what I was after, thanks to everything I’d learned about myself, food, and fitness during my journey. After that, I humbly dropped off several bags of clothing to Goodwill, thankful that it was something I could actually do because of my progress and hopeful that the clothes would go to someone who could use them as much as I could when I bought them.
Trust in what you’ve learned on your journey. Trust in what you’ve learned about how to nourish yourself and enjoy your life while doing so with your health and fitness in mind. Trust in your new lifestyle, and let the clothes go. Know that you’ve got this, and it’s as good as done. And let those clothes go!