I Lost 180lbs in 14 Months

I had been overweight my entire life. The very first time I remember having an abnormal relationship with food was when I began hiding it from my parents at the age of five. I used food as my method of escape, but I lived in a household where it was the center of everything.

My family had a bakery and a cafe. We were the family that made food and had monthly dinner parties. Or if you went over, there would be three cakes in the fridge that would be served with coffee. Everything in our lives revolved around food.

Our family opened the bakery when I was 11 years old. By the age of 13, I had the keys to it. I would go there and secretly binge 6,000 calories worth of food because nobody was going to tell me to stop.

I somehow thought that I could control my weight with bulimia and thus I started to purge the food that I had eaten. By the age of 18, I was throwing up blood and knew I was destroying my system with my bulimia and binge eating disorder. I was scared.

Nobody knew I was bulimic. My friends were suspicious, but bulimia, binge eating, and anorexia are extremely private diseases. I had stopped purging, but I kept binge eating.

At the time, I tried the Atkins diet, and in six months, I lost 84 pounds and was feeling good. But once I stopped the Atkins diet, I quickly put weight back on again by eating carbs.

Throughout my entire life, I had a lot of negative self-talk. I would tell myself that I wasn't a good person, that I was ugly, fat, and disgusting. It was a dark time and I thought that if I could just get the weight off me, then everything would be okay.

I went to the doctor because I thought that I had coeliac disease. I burst into tears, and I said: "I am living in so much pain. I need help." That's when the doctor diagnosed me with binge eating disorder.

He told me something that will forever stick with me. He said: "When you fix the head, the weight will just fall off."

So, I started seeing a clinical psychologist. I realized that I was using food as my tool to escape what was going on inside me. After a few months, I felt like I was okay. I stopped binge eating and I have not binged since then. That was over ten years ago.

In July 2019, while still overweight, I had a moment that changed my life. After a few weeks of journaling, I had a realization that the negative narrator who controlled my every thought wasn't actually mine. It was a voice I constructed from people around me and society.

It felt like my heart, my chest, and my soul had been jolted out of me, and I needed to start to pull it back in again.

I decided to seek further therapy and we discovered that I'd had considerable unresolved childhood trauma from the age of five, incidentally enough, around the time I started hiding food.

The trauma threaded through my life and resulted in a lack of self-respect throughout my teenage years and early twenties. It was eye-opening. Uncovering that was very painful but through the pain came beauty.

In January 2020, weighing 323.8lbs, I decided that I might be able to tackle my weight for the last time.

Prior to that, I thought that if I fixed my weight, everything else would fix itself. But actually, my weight was just a symptom of what I was experiencing. It was a result of me numbing out and trying to ease the discomfort that I felt my entire life with the most easily accessible drug: Food.

How I lost the weight

My sister had lost 92 lbs with a program called BodySlims, and I figured I'd give it a go. On my first night of the program, I told myself: I will never weigh this much again. That number is a fact. It is a piece of information that does not correlate to my worth. It is just a number, and I will never see that number on the scales again.

Since then, I never have. Two and a half years later, I have not and I will never see that number again.

In the first ten weeks of doing this program, I lost 42 pounds. I received a daily calorie allowance, which I do not share with people as this journey is about so much more than calories and everyone is different.

The only exercise I did was walking one hour a day. It sounds simple, which it is. But it was not easy. The program mirrored the work I did in therapy and focused on how our minds are the most important element in weight loss.

I also intermittent fasted (and still do). I always broke my fast at 12:00 p.m. with a huge salad. As a former food addict, I would be overwhelmed if I only had small portions, so to counteract that I ate in abundance.

Filling my plate with high-volume, lower-calorie foods helped me. Salads are a great way to do this, but we're not talking about a boring salad—I packed my plate with variety and flavor.

Don't get me wrong, I also ate some processed food, such as vegan meat substitutes (I am plant-based). I tried to avoid pasta or tons of bread, but I did find ways to work them into my calorie allowance once in a while. I also avoided eating out too much because it's hard to tell what the calorie amounts are.

By March 2021, I had reached my goal weight and I had lost 183 pounds. I felt better than I had ever felt in my entire life. Of course, there is the obvious physical change of going from a U.S. Size 18/20 to a 4/6, but the biggest difference was in me.

I had finally stepped out of a prison of my own making and set myself free. I was free. I thought the biggest thing would be the weight loss, but it was actually how I showed up for myself. Becoming my own biggest champion resulted in that weight loss.

People are stunned by the change in my appearance, but it's my friends and family that notice the biggest changes. I'm a much calmer person, I'm more outgoing, open, friendly, some even say "bubbly".

This, I have to reiterate, is not down to the physical weight loss but to the work on the relationship with myself.

My life changed so much when I started to show up for myself and realized that I was worth it; that I was worth putting the effort in. Not because I lost weight, but because I had taken action day after day after day to prove to myself that I am worth it.

Happiness isn't having a nice car or a handbag, or whatever's situational. True happiness is when you can sit with yourself and be content without narration in your head telling you that you are not worthy—because you are worthy.

Carla Piera is a content creator, documenting her fitness journey on YouTube and Instagram. You can find out more about BodySlims here.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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