I discovered in losing almost 300 lbs over the last 16 years that you never do anything for people you hate. So all those years of hating myself did me no favors. I just starved myself, tried to exercise the fat off, white knuckled every diet until I just gained more weight when I gave in. You can’t hate your body into submission, but you can love it into wellness.
Wow! Well done! And too true. I have found that only a healthy mindset can make for a healthy body. I use food when I feel miserable and if I treat dieting as a punishment, that's just hating myself for my depression. And I can't flip flop between being depressed and hating myself for having been depressed for my whole life. Thats horrible. But if I treat physical wellness as an act of *self love* after coming out of a depression, that's sustainable. I can be forgiving and patient and come at it with a clean slate. I've kind of accepted that weight fluctuations are just going to be inevitable since my depression kind of is too. BUT with the healthy mindset I switched to a while back, each period of wellness brings me to a new scale low and each relapse stops before my previous high. Two steps forward and one step back is not ideal but it's how I will get to the end. As long as I keep loving myself and forgiving myself.