30 Days of Blogging: Day 7

Day 7: How do I feel about my body?

It's funny because I have a love/hate relationship with my body. Some days, I love it and other days, I loathe it.

For three years, I was on an antidepressant. When I started taking that antidepressant, I was 170 pounds. Even then, I felt wishy washy about my body, but I was comfortable in it. Anyway, my family doctor warned me that I needed to remain fairly active, because antidepressants can make you gain weight. I'm not gonna lie, I pretty much blew him off because outside of having to take steroids one year for Bells Palsy and gaining back all of the weight I had lost when working in a factory, I didn't really gain weight like that.So, in my mind, gaining weight wasn't going to happen.

Or so I thought.

I actually ended up gaining 30 pounds from said antidepressant. It was as if I gained 10 pounds every year. Each year, I would work out hard core and lose weight, only for it to come back with friends when I fell off of my workout regimen. At the beginning of this year, I started going to the gym a lot. Religiously almost. I went every other day constantly, from February until mid April. I was focused on losing weight and toning up, only that's not what happened. I definitely toned up, but I didn't lose weight. I ended up gaining 5 pounds. Because I was confused by that, I stopped going to the gym completely. Clearly, I had to have been doing something wrong if the numbers on the scale were going up instead of down.

I had totally forgotten that fat turns to muscle and makes you gain weight.

For me to be on an antidepressant, lazing around and eating became my primary source of comforts. 

My peak weight this summer was 202 pounds. I started finding myself repulsed by what I saw in the mirror, so I stopped looking. Even my face was fat to me some days, hardly recognizable, so I refused to look at it. The selfies that I loved taking, came to a complete stop. Understand, I used to love my reflection, but that was no longer the case. I found myself not seeing what other people saw when they looked at me and I contemplated doing unhealthy things to lose weight. I can't tell you how or why it happened, because I don't know, but something clicked in my head one day and I snapped out of it. 

There were some unpleasant side effects as a result of my antidepressant, so I stopped taking it. As a result of that, I have noticed my weight has been going back down. I am currently at 194 and for the first time, in a long time, I am okay with being in the 190s.

It took me a really long time and a lot of soul searching to accept that my size or my weight doesn't define me. And that in order for me to love myself, I have to love all of myself; outer parts included. There are some days that I struggle with it, but that's to be expected. Rome wasn't built overnight. However, I do have faith that in due time, I will be confident within myself once again.