The Day I Realized I Didn’t Have To Hit My Goal Weight To Be Enough
I didn’t expect to break down again, but I did
I had just started swim lessons, something I was really excited about. After lesson one, I was hopeful. Lesson two was hard. Really hard! Not only physically, but emotionally too, but I still believed I had found a way that I could exercise, even while injured. For the first time in a while, it felt like I had a path forward to accomplish my weight loss goals. But the next day, after my second swim lesson, everything came crashing down.
My back pain, from one of the injuries I was already dealing with, flared up and was the worst it had been in months. Day to day, it was bad, but this was extreme pain. At that point, I realized that I had to pause the one thing that I thought would finally let me start exercising. The one thing I believed would help me to start seeing progress again. I did not want to, but I reluctantly made the decision. Otherwise, not only would I continue to make things worse, but I knew that I would delay healing even more.
That day, I broke down. Again!
I didn’t know how many more setbacks… how many more defeats I could take before I let the goal go. The fear that I may never be able to reach my goal of losing over 100 pounds swelled up again. My heart broke. I wrestled with the thought all day, and honestly, I became really upset. I felt like other people didn’t have to go through this. Like people make the decision to lose weight, they just start eating better and exercising, and boom…100 pounds down.
I didn’t know how much emotional weight I was carrying
The belief that I had to lose all the weight I needed to lose before I could live a fulfilling and happy life ran deep.
My weight loss journey has not been what I expected it to be. It has not been linear like I thought it would be. Instead, it has been full of setbacks and false starts. And for someone with over 100 pounds to lose, there is a lot of pain in that. But I have come to realize that I don’t have to hit my goal weight to be enough. That a before and after picture does not make me worthy of happiness and respect. Honestly, it is not an easy concept to grasp, but I know that it is true.
How I started believing I had to lose the weight first
I’ve felt for a long time like I couldn’t truly live a happy and fulfilling life until I reached a certain weight. I never said those words, but now that I’m looking back, I can see it. I felt it even though it’s not something I ever said.
After I had my daughter, that pressure got even louder. I felt like people would look at me, overweight, and silently question how I could raise a healthy child. I was worried that they would judge her because of me. I felt like if I were smaller, I would be respected more. That somehow, being in a bigger body made me less of a good mom in people’s eyes… even if they never said it out loud.
At first, all of the pressure came from within, but eventually it started coming from the outside world too. When I got injured, doctors didn’t just treat me like someone in pain. They treated me like someone whose pain was her own fault.
One doctor compared me to a sumo wrestler. He said, “Being big isn’t always bad. Look at sumo wrestlers,” but in my case, it was. I had gone to him because I was having significant back pain after I started trying to exercise. He told me my weight was the reason that I was in pain, even though the pain didn’t happen until after I started to exercise and I had already lost thirty pounds by this point.
Another time, I went to an OBGYN for postpartum issues. She told me the solution was to lose weight, even though when I questioned her, she admitted that if I were not overweight, she would recommend something different. But she said that we needed to start with my weight.
Another time, after almost two years of an ankle injury, my physical therapist told me my weight could be a factor in why I was not healing. (Spoiler: turns out I later found out, after seeing multiple specialists, that I had an injury that only surgery could fix.)
So the pressure I was feeling wasn’t just internal anymore. The message was clear to me. I was my weight. I will be judged by it. Nothing will change until it was off my body.
What that belief did to me
I think what really broke me wasn’t just the injuries or even the weight loss stall that I was experiencing. It was what I believe the stall meant.
To me, it meant that I was failing. I felt like I was the one person in the world that set out to lose weight and was willing to do the things that needed to be done to achieve the goal, but couldn’t exercise. Not WOULDN’T, but COULDN’T.
I felt like, not only would I be stuck in a body that I felt uncomfortable in, but all the hopes and dreams I had wouldn’t come to pass either.
It meant that maybe I wasn’t going to lose the weight.
It made me feel like maybe I was the exception. Like no matter how hard I tried, something was always going to get in the way. And if that were true, then what was the point of trying so hard anymore?
That’s what this belief did to me. It didn’t allow me to see what I had already accomplished.
The scale had stalled for months. It had even gone up a few pounds, but starting swim lessons gave me hope that maybe I could get my momentum back. And then suddenly that was gone too.
And with that decision, everything that I had been holding back came pouring out. The fear. The frustration. The belief that maybe nothing that I was doing was really working. Emotionally, I was breaking down because everywhere I looked, people were saying the same thing:
“You HAVE to exercise to lose weight.”
“Just move your body.”
“Go for a walk.”
“Exercise is key.”
So when I physically couldn’t do it…again…it didn’t just feel like a setback. It felt like losing a significant amount of weight wasn’t possible for someone like me. It felt like none of what I had done up to that point even counted. It didn’t matter that I had lost 30 pounds not being able to exercise. This belief didn’t allow me to see that, because in my mind I was still an overweight woman with so much farther to go, and it was slowly pulling me down emotionally… one day at a time. Beneath all of it were two painful questions I couldn’t stop thinking about:
“Am I actually going to be able to do this?”
“Will I become the woman I know I’m supposed to be?”
How I’ve been measuring myself (and why that’s changing)
For a long time, I didn’t realize how much pressure I was putting on myself. Not just to lose weight, but to become this future version of me that I had in my head, within a specific time frame.
She was smaller. She was confident. She had “arrived” at the goal. She was taken seriously. She could help others. She could walk in a room and be seen as worthy. And every time I looked in the mirror, every time I had a setback, it was a huge reminder that I wasn’t that woman yet, and it scared me that I may never be her. Every time the scale didn’t move, or progress felt slow, that fear rose up.
The thing is, I wasn’t measuring myself by how far I had come.
I had lost over 30 pounds. I had changed how I ate. I had stayed consistent even when exercise was not an option. None of it felt like enough because all I could focus on was how far I still had to go. It was like I had placed my happiness on hold until I reached my goal weight. BUT, I’m starting to realize that this way of looking at this journey is not only exhausting, but it’s very discouraging.
Especially when the journey is long. Especially when my progress doesn’t go the way I want. Especially when my body just won’t seem to cooperate.
So I’m learning to look at things differently. To pay attention to what I’ve already done, not just how far I still have to go. Because if I keep measuring myself this way, always against some future version of me, I’ll stay stuck in disappointment. And if I stay stuck in disappointment long enough, I know what happens.
I will stop believing. I will give up, not because I’m lazy or unmotivated, but because I can’t see a way through.
That’s what this mindset does if I don’t shift it. It steals my hope.
So no, I haven’t hit my goal weight yet. But I’ve stayed in the game, even when it was slow, even when it was hard, even when I wanted to quit. I’ve faced setbacks, injuries, and self-doubt, but I’m still here trying.
And maybe… that counts.
Maybe that is worth something.
Maybe it’s even enough.
I’ve also been noticing how this shows up in my confidence day to day. I wrote more about that in the post: I thought I had to wait until I lost the weight to feel confident.
To anyone else who feels this way
If you’ve ever felt like you can’t feel truly happy until you lose the weight, you’re not alone. If you’re doing everything you can and still not moving fast enough, I understand that feeling too.
I’ve felt those feelings for so long. I’m still carrying them and working through them. I’m not there yet, but I’m starting to believe I don’t have to put my happiness on hold, while I work toward my goal. If you are in the same place… stuck between where you are and where you hope to be, just know you are not alone. I’m working through it too. One day at a time.