HOW I LOST 30 LBS
Whenever someone asks me how I lost 30 lbs…well…the journey was hella long and it certainly did not happen with skinny teas or fat burners. And relapses happened.
From disordered eating, endless hours of cardio and weight training, to picking up Olympic lifting, running outdoors at odd hours of the night, making sure I exercised at least 2-3 times a day and MANY injuries later…I finally understood the secret to losing weight. Losing excess fat wasn’t about depriving yourself of entire food groups or restricting yourself so much you feel like a junky fighting the addiction around a candy bowl at your friends birthday party, but ultimately about changing the way you talk to yourself. It’s about adapting your the relationship you have to yourself. And when you take a step back and realize you would never talk to a best friend in the manner your talk to yourself, you begin to ask yourself some questions like “why am I so hard on myself?” One of the reasons the body holds on to this extra layer of fluff is because it is in constant fight-or-flight and under so much stress. In this state, your body thinks it is protecting you from external dangers. So…by adopting all my self- love practices and learning to truly love the woman I am, I realized my worth was not associated to how I looked or the number on the scale, but about the relationship I was cultivating with myself. By connecting to my inner world, I began trusting my body’s needs, and when you believe you’re worthy of caring for yourself, you’ll instinctively put your health and body first. When you start loving yourself more, you’ll naturally start choosing to nourish yourself with healthy food. I changed my entire lifestyle and truly understood the secret equation to shedding unnecessary weight: self-love + eating nutrient dense foods + being active (with rest days).
It took me years to reprogram self-limiting beliefs (which drop by to say hello time to time) and finally understand happiness or my worth is not dependent on how much I weigh or how I look but rather on my personality, my values and who I am as a person. With time, I learnt to love myself unconditionally and offer myself compassion when things got tough. When I finally had the AHA! moment, my life completely changed. It’s about shifting your MINDSET and connecting to yourself. It is so powerful to know all that you need is already within you. It is even more powerful to trust yourself so much that you can shut out that outside noise (that tries so hard to reel you in), that makes you compare yourself to other women and make you feel bad about yourself or tell you “you’re not enough”.
After years of struggling psychologically and emotionally, cutting out entire food groups, driving myself literally insane, and being a bully to myself, I understood food is an integral part of our lives and understanding how food can feed/fuel your cells, muscles, body, brain is key to a healthy life. Making small changes and taking the steps towards adopting a healthy lifestyle will allow you to alter your relationship to food and your body for the better. Changing your engrained habits isn't a walk in the park, but trust me when I say it’s SO worth it!
In hindsight, I am grateful for the challenges I overcame, as they shaped me into the young woman I am today. Strength is taking your pain and turning it into your passion, strength is looking your pain in the eye and telling it “You no longer serve me”. Strength is releasing judgment and learning to trust your gut and having an unbreakable bond with your one true soulmate: yourself.
Below you can see what my body composition looked like in 2015.
This is the first time I share my before and after photos. I decided it was time for me to be vulnerable and share my story in hopes that some can relate and be inspired to reclaim their health lost to diet culture. Often times we don’t realize what personal journey someone is on. So this post is a reminder to myself of how far I’ve come and how much my mindset has shifted for the better with the help of my self-love practices and I am so proud of myself! When I see that picture of the girl who weighed 170 lbs, my body shivers because I remember the exact feelings and thoughts running through her head. I would do anything to just look her in the eyes and tell her “You are beautiful, you are loved, you are strong, you are enough and I love you.”
