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Abstract

p>That journey was full of its own ups and downs, but I pushed passed the difficuluty of the holidays and seasonal depression. In early April 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing my school closed. Since I worked with children below the Pre-K level there was no remote learning for us. I was free to focus all my energy on myself and my weight loss goals and that is exactly what I did. Those five months off were amazing for my mental and physical health. I learned that I enjoy the way my body feels when I’m fasting so I started doing OMAD (eating one meal a day) and later switched to 2MAD (two meals a day) and I felt great. I was also running at the track or playing basketball in the park with my little cousins. My body was changing in the best way possible and I was having the time of my life.Once I went back to work full-time in September of 2020 not only did I have to adjust my routine, but I became very unhappy and depressed. I tried to keep the momentum going and I did for awhile. In the last two weeks of Octoer leading up to my birthday, I did a candida detox diet to improve my gut health, which is something I convinced myself I needed. This diet basically required me to elminate sugar and carbs. I spent two weeks eating nothing but eggs, bone broth, and smoothies and I felt aboslutely amazing while doing it.It was after this detox that I finally hit 199 on the scale. But I almost immediately started eating all the foods I missed and couldn’t seem to stop myself. Work was stressing me out and I was defintitely back to using food as a coping mechanism. Every day I told myself I was going to get back on track, but getting back on track became harder with each passing day.As I moved into 2021 I had high hopes. I tried multiple times to start over but my mood was low and I just couldn’t summon the motivation to stay consistent long-term. I had expected that once spring hit I would be feeling better, but I wasn’t. By the summer I’d gained most of the weight back and I was ignoring the fact that I hated myself for it.I thought the key to my happiness would be quitting my job and going back to doing what I was doing in summer of 2020, which was documenting my weight loss on YouTube. And while those first two months after quitting my job were great, it didn’t last.August hit and everything changed. I wasn’t attracting money into my life like I hoped and instead of remaining optimistic I started to spiral. I was grasping at whatever I could to make myself feel good (attention from men). But deep down I knew that “happiness” was temporary and fake. I was working hard to push away negative emotions and focused my energy on trying to be happy by focusing on my writing, YouTube channel, and <a href="https://readmedium.com/why-i-failed-my-november-gratitude-challenge-f7a8e93fbe6">even created a gratitude challenge for myself.</a> One thing writing did for me was made me realize how desperately lonely I was. The truth is trying to be happy was mentally draining, and being real with myself just seemed to hurt. It was a no-win situation.In mid-November 2021 something happened that exasperated my depression. I didn’t have it in me to continue faking the funk. I took up drinking, smoking, and reverted back to bad eating habits just two weeks after I’d decided to start trying to lose weight again. Any and all goals went out the window. I gave up on trying to lose weight. I stepped away from Medium.And when I started to feel a bit okay, I was hit with something else that knocked me down. All the things that had been happening to me were a reflection of the self-hatred I had been ignoring. I k

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new I didn’t love myself the way that I should but it didn’t occur to me that I might actually dislike myself. I have been walking around with this idea of I’ll love myself when I lose weight. I’ll be beautiful and sexy when I lose the weight. I’ll be worthy when I lose the weight. Those aren’t things I actually said out loud or admitted to myself but if I’m being honest they were thoughts lingering in the back of my mind. And I also allowed my value to be defined by who was in my DM’s showing me interest.A person’s love for themselves is not something that’s set in stone. It doesn’t have a definitive value on a scale of 1–10. Self-love has a sliding scale, it moves up and down, ebbs and flows as we go through the ups and downs of life. And while some people are able to maintain a higher value that’s not my story. It just so happened with me that my self-love value was significantly lower in 2021 than in other years in my life.And so 2022 will be my year of healing. My focus this year is to love myself every day. To make decisions for myself out of love and not out of fear or a need for attention. To let go of toxic people and situations. To speak up for myself and not ignore blatant disrespect. I’m still going to work on losing weight and I’m feeling optimistic about it, but regardless of what happens with the number on the scale or the shape of my body, my 2022 goal is to focus on self-love and healing.Thank you for taking a moment to read this. If you want to follow my journey consider <a href="https://medium.com/positively-healthy-vibes">following my publication positively healthy vibes</a> as I continue to write about my journey to better mental and physical health. My mission is to live my life as positive and healthy as possible. I’ll also be writing about my on/off battle with depression as well as my journey to lose 99 lbs.<div id="37ec"><pre>Follow my adventures:I am Positively Healthy Vibes on both my YouTube & Instagram in which I promote positivity and document my weight loss journey.</pre></div><div id="8bd6"><pre>Follow Me On Twitter @Nathalie_Clair1 (can y’all believe someone else has that so I had to add the 1) where I promote myself as a writer. </pre></div><div id="7562"><pre>You can message me directly on Twitter or email me at [email protected]. </pre></div><div id="156c"><pre>If you are not yet a Medium Member you can Sign Up Here to get unlimited access to all Medium content for $5 a month.I will receive a referral bonus when you sign-up using my link.You can also support me by buying me a coffee Here.</pre></div></article></body>

New Year, New Me — 2022 Will Be The Year I Finally Truly Love Me

An honest reflection on why I failed in 2021

I love the start of a new year and while there are probably 100 memes and gifs floating around the internet making fun of anyone who declares “New Year, New Me” I don’t care. The start of a new year is exactly the perfect time for a fresh start. No, I’m not actually declaring that now that a new year has begun I will automatically transform into a new and better version of myself. I will however be drawing from everything I’ve experienced and learned over the past two years and taking intentional steps towards becoming the person that I want to be. Things didn’t go as planned in 2021 and I’ve had time to reflect on what went wrong and how I can hopefully do things differently in 2022.

For most of my adult life, whether I actually declared it out loud or kept it to myself, my new year resolution has always been to finally lose the weight. There may have been some other things I wanted to accomplish but number one has always been to lose weight. And though its taken a lot of years and a lot of failed attepts. I needed each and every one of those failures to teach me something.

I Gained The Weight Back And Now I Have To Deal With It

Part One

medium.com

I realized whenever I was going through changes in my life that forced me to completely switch up my daily routine (like starting a new job) I would start to slack on whatever I had been doing to lose weight. My emotional state (seasonal depression) also plays a huge role in whether I succeed or fail. I had to learn and come to terms with the fact that I’m an emotional eater. I’m very attached to eating when I’m sad or stressed. Even when something good happened and I was proud of myself, I’d tell myself, “I deserve a slice of cake” or whatever unhealthy food I was in the mood for at the moment.

But then in 2020 things changed and I had the biggest break through I’d ever had before. By August 2019, I’d spent the majority of 2 years taking care of my aunt and completely put myself, my health, my needs on the back burner. As she got closer and closer to her final days, my responsibility to her and my focus on her became even more intense. I knew if I didn’t start before she passed, I wouldn’t start.

I’ve experienced death many times throughout my life but her death was the one that impacted me the most. I realized how many years I wasted being stuck in this cycle. It was time to take care of me. And though I’d go back and take care of her all over again, I was very aware of how much time I’d spent ignoring my own needs. This was a major factor in what kept me motivated for over a year.

That journey was full of its own ups and downs, but I pushed passed the difficuluty of the holidays and seasonal depression. In early April 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing my school closed. Since I worked with children below the Pre-K level there was no remote learning for us. I was free to focus all my energy on myself and my weight loss goals and that is exactly what I did. Those five months off were amazing for my mental and physical health. I learned that I enjoy the way my body feels when I’m fasting so I started doing OMAD (eating one meal a day) and later switched to 2MAD (two meals a day) and I felt great. I was also running at the track or playing basketball in the park with my little cousins. My body was changing in the best way possible and I was having the time of my life.

Once I went back to work full-time in September of 2020 not only did I have to adjust my routine, but I became very unhappy and depressed. I tried to keep the momentum going and I did for awhile. In the last two weeks of Octoer leading up to my birthday, I did a candida detox diet to improve my gut health, which is something I convinced myself I needed. This diet basically required me to elminate sugar and carbs. I spent two weeks eating nothing but eggs, bone broth, and smoothies and I felt aboslutely amazing while doing it.

It was after this detox that I finally hit 199 on the scale. But I almost immediately started eating all the foods I missed and couldn’t seem to stop myself. Work was stressing me out and I was defintitely back to using food as a coping mechanism. Every day I told myself I was going to get back on track, but getting back on track became harder with each passing day.

As I moved into 2021 I had high hopes. I tried multiple times to start over but my mood was low and I just couldn’t summon the motivation to stay consistent long-term. I had expected that once spring hit I would be feeling better, but I wasn’t. By the summer I’d gained most of the weight back and I was ignoring the fact that I hated myself for it.

I thought the key to my happiness would be quitting my job and going back to doing what I was doing in summer of 2020, which was documenting my weight loss on YouTube. And while those first two months after quitting my job were great, it didn’t last.

August hit and everything changed. I wasn’t attracting money into my life like I hoped and instead of remaining optimistic I started to spiral. I was grasping at whatever I could to make myself feel good (attention from men). But deep down I knew that “happiness” was temporary and fake. I was working hard to push away negative emotions and focused my energy on trying to be happy by focusing on my writing, YouTube channel, and even created a gratitude challenge for myself. One thing writing did for me was made me realize how desperately lonely I was. The truth is trying to be happy was mentally draining, and being real with myself just seemed to hurt. It was a no-win situation.

In mid-November 2021 something happened that exasperated my depression. I didn’t have it in me to continue faking the funk. I took up drinking, smoking, and reverted back to bad eating habits just two weeks after I’d decided to start trying to lose weight again. Any and all goals went out the window. I gave up on trying to lose weight. I stepped away from Medium.

And when I started to feel a bit okay, I was hit with something else that knocked me down. All the things that had been happening to me were a reflection of the self-hatred I had been ignoring. I knew I didn’t love myself the way that I should but it didn’t occur to me that I might actually dislike myself. I have been walking around with this idea of I’ll love myself when I lose weight. I’ll be beautiful and sexy when I lose the weight. I’ll be worthy when I lose the weight. Those aren’t things I actually said out loud or admitted to myself but if I’m being honest they were thoughts lingering in the back of my mind. And I also allowed my value to be defined by who was in my DM’s showing me interest.

A person’s love for themselves is not something that’s set in stone. It doesn’t have a definitive value on a scale of 1–10. Self-love has a sliding scale, it moves up and down, ebbs and flows as we go through the ups and downs of life. And while some people are able to maintain a higher value that’s not my story. It just so happened with me that my self-love value was significantly lower in 2021 than in other years in my life.

And so 2022 will be my year of healing. My focus this year is to love myself every day. To make decisions for myself out of love and not out of fear or a need for attention. To let go of toxic people and situations. To speak up for myself and not ignore blatant disrespect. I’m still going to work on losing weight and I’m feeling optimistic about it, but regardless of what happens with the number on the scale or the shape of my body, my 2022 goal is to focus on self-love and healing.

Thank you for taking a moment to read this. If you want to follow my journey consider following my publication positively healthy vibes as I continue to write about my journey to better mental and physical health. My mission is to live my life as positive and healthy as possible. I’ll also be writing about my on/off battle with depression as well as my journey to lose 99 lbs.

Follow my adventures:I am Positively Healthy Vibes on both my YouTube & Instagram in which I promote positivity and document my weight loss journey.

Follow Me On Twitter @Nathalie_Clair1 (can y’all believe someone else has that so I had to add the 1) where I promote myself as a writer.

You can message me directly on Twitter or email me at [email protected].

If you are not yet a Medium Member you can Sign Up Here to get unlimited access to all Medium content for $5 a month.I will receive a referral bonus when you sign-up using my link.You can also support me by buying me a coffee Here.