Thread by @AmyDee1001

For 40 yrs I desperately tried to to lose weight. I failed at everything, ended up nearly 400lbs, thought it was all my fault. I was broken, unsalvageable. Now I know differently, but there were skills from each paradigm that have been instrumental in my low-carb journey: /1

From Weight Watchers (joined over 35x!): counting points. Eventually I transferred that to counting carb macros. I don’t think weighing/measuring/counting is ultimately a sustainable solution but in early days of low carb it taught me what I was eating and where carbs lie. /2

From intuitive eating (which ultimately landed me +50 pounds) I learned that food addiction is real and that there were things driving appetite that have nothing to do with how much food is in my stomach /3

From Health At Any Size I learned the value of exercise, how great it feels to move my body + I deserved that no matter what my size. I wish it was called Healthier At Any Size. #HAES gave me some semblance of peace + acceptance. That acceptance, that sense of empowerment? /4

Instrumental in my growth and in loving myself enough to want to make change. That there was something better for me out there. It just failed to teach me how to get there. /5

I could never hate myself enough to get healthy. I (and society at large) tried desperately to hate me enough to be thin. Didn’t work. Self-loathing never led to self-care. /6

From keto/low carb? I learned how to nourish myself in a way that didn’t make me hungrier. And from @DoctorTro, who early on patiently looked at my meticulous food logs and quietly asked, simply, “Are you hungry?”
/7

No one had ever asked me that, certainly not in that context. Really, it’s that simple. Are you hungry?

It’s a question I go back to EVERY SINGLE DAY:

Are you hungry?

/8

Reflecting back on all of this, as I learn to shift, now in unchartered weight territory, in a different body/mind to a new way of thinking and living, it would be easy to be bitter about all the bad advice, about the life I *should* have lived
/9

But what sense does it make to ruin the next 40 years by being angry?

There is value in experience, in what has “failed.”

Time lost isn’t time wasted.

Keep trying. It’s worth it. I’m worth it.

You’re worth it.

/end