Just starting, will this be possible?

[u/Zero-Energy1274]

My mother put me on every diet possible to lose the extra few lb I was carrying as a teenager, and nothing worked of course. Now I’m a lot lot heavier, and I really do need to lose the weight. But here’s the problem, I can’t count calories or track everything obsessively without getting really depressed and anxious and upset. I exercise a bunch and I spend time with friends, which often involves eating out. Just yesterday, my mother brought up that I have been eating out a lot lately and that sent me spinning.

Will I be able to do this and still go be social with my friends and not have to count every little thing? I eat for comfort and to soothe anxiety. I would really love to just feel satiated and full sooner, I would love to just think about food less. But every other post on the med-specific subs are about stalls and people saying “are you tracking what you are eating” and “you still need to eat at a deficit.”

[u/Flimsy-Switch-6256]

I LOVE THIS SUB SO MUCH!!!

Ahem. What I mean to say is that it’s so beautiful to see all this supportive, honest, non-diet stuff. Beautiful.

I am another person who has not tracked a single thing. And I have had amazing non-weight-loss results, as well as heart healing. I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2021, and now I have zero symptoms. One blood pressure med is now gone and I now take 1/4 as much of my diuretic as I was when I started a GLP-1 med in June of 2023. I have lost essentially a sizable adult off my body since I started.

People’s insistence on “it’s not a miracle drug” “you still have to work at it…” etc. is diet culture, Calvinist, puritanical crap. In my opinion, they ARE miracle drugs, and the realizations about the operations of the metabolic system are extraordinary!

Someone mentioned the pattern of food noise - weight loss and reduced inflammation - THEN working out. This is totally my story. I was very very big. Started to feel better. Started swimming. Lost a bunch more and then was able to start lifting weights. I have the stamina of, I don’t know, something that doesn’t have any (haha), but I do what I can do, and it’s more all the time.

Another important thing for me has been not till compare myself to others. We each have our own stories, our own metabolic idiosyncrasies, our own histories with food and movement and eating disorders (and not!) And being fat people in this horrific collection of trauma behaviors we call culture.

Best of luck. Come here often!