How can I really change my lifestyle and overcome my weight and body image issues?
All I can say is that to make something a permanent part of your lifestyle, you have to do it — and the day after you screw up and don’t, and the day after that. You can’t be perfect. So if you begin to revert, it shouldn’t be a shame cycle that leads to more passivity, but rather just an “Okay, tomorrow I will.” “Today I will.” Little steps, you know? Also, you have to enjoy the exercise, I think. If it’s a chore and you hate it, you won’t do it. And though I myself have a dusty collection of exercise equipment I sometimes use but mostly don’t, I think they’re boring as shit and only good in a pinch. Find an outdoor activity you like, and do it–cross-country skiing, hiking, biking. Walk around your neighborhood. I think that the best way for me is to make it utilitarian. I have a dog that needs to be walked twice a day, and he likes to run. Because stores are often a not-unreasonable distance, I will often insist on walking there with a backpack or biking rather than taking the car.
I’m so sympathetic to you, having spent a good deal of my teens and twenties loathing my body and feeling scarily out of control about my weight and my relationship to food. I’d been overweight since my early teens by about 30 to 35 pounds although, by all appearances and the FDA food pyramid, I ate an ideal balance of carbs, protein, and healthy fats. At 27 I turned my eating upside down. I actually upped my calories to about 2500 a day. I lost about 35 pounds in the process, which I’ve kept off now for four years with minimal effort. For me, the key to transforming my body lay in two separate but related changes: First, I stopped loathing the way I looked. I focused instead on finding a way of eating that gave me more energy and told myself my primary goal was NOT to lose weight: rather, it was to be good to my body. Diets had always filled me with self-loathing, you see — not only because calorie limitation just sucks, but also because it seemed to contradict my most deeply-held be
I agree more with PhoBWanKenobi’s post than I do with a suggestion for a book. If you are looking for change in general, I can recommend the book: Changing for good and switch but I haven’t read the latter and am working through the former. General weight loss advice: Wanna lose it for quite a while, gonna have to work at it for quite a while & the last place you gained weight is the first place you lose it.
