Shedding Heaviness + Weight

Have you lost weight? I’ve hit that phase of my very long and very slow weight loss journey where it’s become more obvious that I’ve been losing weight so people have been asking. I’m a goal-oriented girl so I planned on a big ta-da sort of blog post, but I’m also impatient and this has been a long slow journey. It’s time for a little ta-da along the way because I’m not done, but ta-da I’m getting results.

Yes. I’ve lost weight. A lot. And slowly, gently, without a lot of pressure on myself. It all started when I walked away from a marriage that left me eating my hurt. First, I had to work on the hurt inside so nothing physically changed for a good long while. I put myself through some healing education by listening to audiobooks, reading, and watching videos by trauma-informed therapists and taking their courses. 

Then I started changing my eating habits. Simple things like only eating when hungry and leaving food on the plate. I started realizing that from inflammation alone the scale can bounce up 1-5 pounds daily, so I stopped giving up and quitting when the scale gave me disappointment news. When I failed and the scale started climbing again, I didn’t go 100% back to old habits. And when was feeling a sense of defeat my friend Anne-Marie Faiola talked me off the ledge and joined me to do hard things for 2 months. Her walking beside me got me back in the right mindset. And at the same time my friend Donna Maria was daily inspiring with her hard work and perseverance. Check her out in this Burn Boot Camp ad. Accountability and inspiration are a magic combination.

So, what did I do? A lot of things. But mostly I stopped self-sabotaging myself. I stopped living in the hurt that had me eating my feelings. I turned off the power of the past old negative messages and 100% cut off ties to any anchors that were pulling me down with them.

I stopped believing that the only way to weight loss was to push my hurting body through grueling exercise. Don’t get me wrong. I actually love exercise, but my body fails me. My past is littered with weight loss journeys that ended when I got seriously injured and quit in defeat. I so move my body a lot, but exercising didn’t get me here this time. 

I got here through balance, patience, healing, forgiving myself, eating less, and eating cleaner. I worked on healing my gut through supplements. And now I maintain a healthy gut with supplements and fermented foods. I’ve always been good at water intake, so I focused on swapping out soda for things like Poppi, Olipop, Kombucha, and Alive Mushroom Elixir. But all with balance. They give me just a little treat along with mostly water. 

I’ve kept my mind on the journey downward on the scale by weighing in and tracking it. You can see my struggle with that reflected in the Noom chart below. The first yellow circle on the chart is when my friend Anne-Marie stepped in and walked beside me to do hard things. You can see I was struggling and then I wasn’t.

On May 14, 2020, when I started this current journey, I used Noom and I’ve continued tracking on the app even though I no longer pay for a subscription. I have less than 15 pounds to go to hit the 68-pound weight loss goal I set in 2020. Whenever I get to that original goal, I will set a new one. Some may say I could have done it faster. I say, go for it in your body if that is what is right for you, but this body is happy with a long slow weight loss journey. I’m going for wellness and balance.

So, what do I do now? I eat when I am hungry, and I eat until I’m not hungry. Not until I’m full or until the food is gone—until I’m not hungry. Trust me that takes a lot less food than eating until you are full. During the two months that I was doing hard things with my friends support I cut out inflammatory foods like sugar, dairy, and white flour. That helped my cravings for sweets. Cutting cravings helped me no longer feel like I was depriving myself.

Today I don’t eat perfectly and I’m okay with that. Balance. No extremes. And patience! So much patience because I really would love to see the scale take a nosedive but that’s never worked long term for me. 

People keep telling me I look good. That’s what happiness looks like on me because it took healing from the inside out to get here. What you see is joy and peace. And deep healing is a process. I’m not done yet.

I’ve added some resources below. Find what works best for your own metamorphosis. The biggest tip I can give is to start with the heart because eating your feelings can knock you off any weight loss journey. It certainly derailed me many times over the years. Your emotional health and your gut are deeply connected.

HEART

Everyone has different hurts to heal from so what healed me won’t be what heals you. I encourage you take your healing in your own hands by reading, listening, and taking courses. Therapy and counseling are great, but they are not the only tools in the emotional toolbox. 

I love Audible! It helps me consume books at a faster rate than I could read them. I love to read, but much of my work is on my feet so I listen when I work. Here are a few good titles, but again find the ones that fit your needs. This link to Audible will get you two free titles for signing up. I use a combination of reading and listening to books, find what works for you.

Addiction and Alcohol Abuse: This Naked Mind, my friend Jeff Allen’s book Are We There Yet? is an encouraging story, and my book A Little Handbook about Addiction.

Healing from Toxic Relationships: Psychopath Free, Whole Again, Matthias James Barker, LMHC (@matthiasjbarker) • Instagram photos and videos has good courses, content, and podcasts.

The number one book I’d recommend for anyone struggling with weight or any form of unwellness in their heart and body is to read The Body Keeps the Score. It is offers so much understanding because we are all living with our bodies keeping the score whether we know it or not.

GUT

We all know gut health is vital, but what does that mean? It means having a healthy microbiome. “The microbiome is the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their genes, that naturally live on our bodies and inside us. Although microbes are so small that they require a microscope to see them, they contribute in big ways to human health and wellness. They protect us against pathogens, help our immune system develop, and enable us to digest food to produce energy.” NIH

In other words, gut microbiome is important. So, I set about getting mine in balance with supplements. I have a practitioner account on Fullscript and I’ve set my account to give the best discount available at the time for anyone to use. The primary probiotic I use is SBO Probiotic Ultimate combined with Vitamin Code Perfect Weight Multi for a good multivitamin, and for the herbal component I use Adipromin Weight, Metabolism, and Heart Complex. I have mixed it up on the probiotics because there are so many to choose from, some of my favorites include PRE+PRO 60B, Dr. Formulated PROBIOTICS Mood+, and RAW Probiotics Colon Care.

Weight loss and wellness is a journey. I expect to be here for a while. If you have other well-balanced tips and tricks feel free to share in the comments. Selah is now a Certified Wellness Coach and taught me that what I’ve been practicing is called Intuitive Eating. Here is a little infographic.

So that’s the long answer to the question I’ve been getting a lot, have you lost weight? Ta-da!

UPDATE: I did get the Ta-da moment on January 27, 2024 which was 988 days after I started the journey. And then I promptly reset my goal to a new healthy lower weight. Who knows how long the next leg of this journey will take and I am okay with that.

This blog post contains some affiliate links and some just plain old links with no monetary value at all.

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