What has lead me to this point?

My story is much like the others I have read. All of my attempts to lose weight have been refractory. I’ll discuss my dieting attempts first.

I have tried the conventional methods of caloric restriction and exercise. I did lose weight but when I would stop exercising or dieting I would regain weight with little effort. I found this extremely disheartening because I wasn’t over eating, gorging on sweets, or eating excessively large meals. However, the failure of caloric restriction was always due to hunger and guilt. It’s easy to understand where the hunger came from but the guilt? Anytime I would engage in eating that I perceived as failure, i.e. restaurants, family gatherings, or any environment where I couldn’t control what I was eating I would feel guilty about what I considered to be a failure.

I found the low carb diet to be very interesting, especially the cravings. I am not the type of person who eats high carbohydrate foods such as breads and pasta often and I never crave them. However after about two weeks into the diet all I would think about would be bread or pasta. It would consume my idle thoughts. I can vividly remember fantasizing about eating plain spaghetti. I would rapidly lose weight with little effort but I found the diarrhea and carbohydrate cravings discouraging.

My most recent attempts at dieting were more of a food revolution. I stopped eating processed foods especially processed meats and started eating whole foods, real meat, and vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables. This diet had profound effects on my health. I no longer have to take blood pressure medication and my cholesterol levels have normalized. I figured my weight would reduce as well but it has only maintained. However, I continue to eat this way today.

This brings me to talking about my exercise. I have never been a lazy person and I have never allowed my weight to affect my activity level. With that said, my weight has limited my choice of activities. I have received compliments concerning my endurance level. My weight has never slowed me down. As the saying goes, I can keep up with the best of them.

Over the years, I have noticed increasing amounts of back and joint pain that I can only attribute to my weight. Which presumably will only get worse with age.

I have a dream of being the type of person who can run. I definitely have the endurance but my weight has always been a stopping factor. My weight also stops me from doing other things that I love such as roller coasters, shopping for clothes, skiing, and any other thing that causes me to think, “Am I too big to do this?”

I have a gym membership. I have tried to regularly workout however my weight has made me feel very self-conscious at the gym. Also this is where the feelings of guilt play an important role. If I would not match or exceed my previous workout or if I skipped a workout then I would feel guilty and this was a major source of failure. I also find my weight embarrassing when I am at the gym.

The psychological impact of being overweight is profound. I find my weight, weight gain, limitations and almost every weight related issue depressing. I would not say my weight has lead to major depression but it does lead to negative feelings and anxiety.

And the amazing part about what I just wrote, it is only a small amount of the actual thoughts and feelings that have lead me to where I am at today.

Everyone has their own experiences and reasons why they decide to lose weight and maybe from everything I have just written may help anyone reading this understand my struggles and why I have made the profound decision to alter my anatomy as a tool for achieving permanent weight loss.