First of all I don't post on reddit, but I frequently stalk all of you beautiful kind people here at r/keto. I wanted to share my story with you.
I've never cared to actively draw attention to myself, unfortunately, my absent father's genetics were far from absent in my pubescent years meaning I've grown to be a 6'4" member of those social elites gifted with the ability to see dust on top of refrigerators.
Being this tall was already plenty to keep me from being able to fly under the radar of the many cruel youths that roam the halls of sleepy small town public school. Add on to my chandelier-forehead-smashing height the fact that I had size thirteen feet before I had even lived thirteen years.
On top of that, puberty hit me like a truck, and by truck I mean like a dump truck full of hair. When kids were showing off their first arpit hairs I already had my shoulders filling in nicely.
So there you have a young adult sasquatch trying to avoid detection from the poachers wielding rifles loaded with insecurity and fear. What could possibly make hiding more difficult for that self-conscious teen monster?
Fat Giant Hairy Kid.
I've been overweight a lot of my life. When I was eleven I had the first of two surgeries that involved sawing each of my femurs in half and screwing them back together. Unlike my youthful expectations, this procedure was not to give me bionic legs with the ability to leap over buildings and win track meets to impress girls, in fact it temporarily turned my legs as useless as a hat underwater. I ended up quitting all my physical activities because I was embarrassed about falling behind.
This was the start of a not-so-beautiful katamari tumbling and gaining momentum. The pounds came fast. I've been obese for most of the time that I've been actively making memories.
When I started Keto as my New Years Resolution this year I honestly don't know what I expected, certainly not for it to work as well as it did. This has been both far simpler than I ever anticipated, while also being one of the most challenging and fulfilling things I've ever done.
When I started I was a big boy consistently adjacent to that 300 pound mark. You can just see in the picture that at that point I was more beast than man. Eyes glossed over with that carby glaze. Shovelling bread into my mouth like it's going to smother the smoldering self-loathing that coats my insides.
My mother took that picture of me, and I hated it. I hated every picture of me, I could never look at myself without cringing and seeing all the things that the other people saw. I've always had a huge mental barrier between myself and photogtaphs that pushed me to avoid any documentation that made real how physically different I look to what my brain feels inside.
My mother took a lot of pictures of me on our trip to egypt at the end of 2016, I had read about Keto that summer and talked to my girlfriend about trying it, expecting this to be just another thing I talk about and consider but don't follow through on. Those pictures though, they just got to me. Here I had gone on this amazing trip across the world, and I didn't anyone to see any of the pictures. It just felt like a giant monument to how much I had let things get out of control.
I started Keto January 1st 2017, hard. My girlfriend did most of the legwork when it came to recipes and shoping lists. I'm hugely grateful to her, and to all of you. for the support and motivation to just do the dang thing.
I started at 302 lbs, 44 pant size, xxxl shirt. I'm currently 190ish, 33 pant size, large shirt, and honestly I stopped checking the scale. The mirror brings me more than enough joy now to keep me going.
I think the most unexpectedly huge change has been psychological. At long last, I like what I see when I see myself. I can finally genuinely look the way I want to when I buy new clothes. My mind is finally finding a synchronicity with my identity that's giving me confidence-gains such that I could swear I'm just intravenously connected to Dwayne the Rock Johnson's ego.
My mother took another picture of me today while she was visiting for Canadian Thanksgiving. It's finally really set in what I've accomplished. The fact that I can see a picture of myself without cringing fills me with so much glee that it's pouring out into this keyboard.
I'm sorry, I've been rambling, I just really wanted to thank you guys for helping me, and share a bit of myself with you. Thanks to you, I can finally renegotiate my relationship with cameras away from being one of fear and anxiety.
And, of course, for those of you who actually value your time
TL;DR - I was fat, now I'm not. Please validate this fragile section of my growing ego. Pics
Submitted October 09, 2017 at 05:41PM by ThatWookieGamer http://ift.tt/2ya3W9E keto
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