I'm female to male transgender, thus the facial hair, but that's not the focus of this post. If anyone is wondering, it has not helped me lose weight, if anything it made me gain weight when I first started hormones. Testosterone makes you hella hungry.
Also, i don't wear those leggings anymore, only kept for progress pic purposes.
Anyway....
I've struggled with c-PTSD and bipolar disorder my entire life and it's made... existing really rough. The constant carousel of meds they had me on made me with their horrid side effects made me dip into an eating addiction that just made me inhale food nonstop, until I reached my heaviest weight in 2016, 275lbs, which was march. The photos are from september, after I had begun to realize I had a problem and had begun to aggressively research online about weight loss and food addiction and all that. Lurked on loseit and other weight loss subreddits for months. Slowly began to change the way I ate.
But unfortunately with bipolar depression and ptsd, no matter how much you want to change, your mental illness yanks you back into it as a coping tactic, and it did, for me, over and over and over and over, until i felt I had absolutely no control over any part of my life. 2016 was the closest I came to killing myself, many times, but luckily I had my girlfriend and friends there with me to physically keep me from harming myself and help me through the darkest years of my life.
I began to realize I would not begin to lose weight and kick my eating addiction if I did not address my mental health. I realized that my mental health was so abysmal because I did not take care of myself at all. I slept all day and stayed up all night. I ate like shit. I kept friends that were unhealthy for me and encouraged me to be unhealthy. I didn't manage my PTSD triggers or cope with them in a healthy way. I just regarded myself as Sick, something That Couldn't Be Fixed, and I just sat on my ass and felt sorry for myself all damn day.
When I began to realize this, I began to become disgusted with myself. But... in a motivating way. I began to take my own mental health care in my own hands. I began to become more proactive. I began to prune unhealthy people from my life, and began making friends who valued mental and physical health. I pushed myself to get out of the house more, and make sure I sleep at night and be awake during the day. I go on walks with my girlfriend and make sure i'm socializing with friends and not just denning myself away to become more depressed.
And as my mental health became more manageable, the grip my food addiction had on me began to lessen. It's become so much less oppressive, and I can see food as fuel now. I no longer feel like I need to buy snacks... to have snacks. I don't see a point to them. I don't drink sugar. I avoid sugar as much as possible. My body has started to accept that smaller portion sizes is what it actually needs, and that being stuffed full isn't what's normal or necessary.
My mental illness is still very much there, and some days I feel as crazy as some days in 2016, but those days are very rare now now that I actually make a point to be proactive in my own mental and physical care, it's all so much easier to cope with and prepare for.