A Lurker Says Hi

[Red Dragoon]

So I found this site a while back while I was looking for advice on weight loss and gamifying your life, and I keep coming back to it so I figured I should at least introduce myself once.

 

Relevant background info: I've never been a very active person, I'm a writer with a gaming habit and movie addictions, everything I like doing is solitary, low key and doesn't require a lot of movement. I was lucky enough to be thin anyway, for a very long time. Then disaster struck. It started off with health problems, asthma kicking in while I was living in a fourth floor walk up, then moving to an area where I was allergic to the air enough to be in bed most of the time (i naturally don't live there anymore); then life got worse, depression set in, time goes by, blah blah blah, we get the idea, a really bad situation. I had been aware I'd gained weight, but I did not know just how bad it was until I was on vacation last year and caught sight of myself in a full mirror in the hotel room, and was just horrified by what I saw. I held on to that feeling and, within a few months, I figured out how to present getting back in shape to my brain in a way that would not cause instant rejection, make it seem like both a possible goal and worth pursuing. 

 

I don't know just how much weight it is, I don't own a scale (or know people who do). I made a lot of progress on cleaning up my diet, switched to a paleo-ish meal plan more than a year ago, most importantly cut out those liquid calories that were probably responsible for a lot of the problem (not soda, I lost the taste for that a long time ago - nah, it was fruit drinks that I stupidly thought were healthier than soda). I have seen some improvement off that alone, and that's good but not as quickly as I want to see it, so I need activity to creep its way in.

 

I don't have the sort of concrete goals a lot of other people seem to, knowing exactly how many pounds I want to lose. I'm planning to move back to where people used to know me and I want them to not be horrified by what I look like now the way I was. That's the closest I've come to a goal right now.

 

Support wise, I'm on my own here. I've been living for years now in a city I hate, that I don't fit into and never made friends in; the last group of online friends I had was...ha ha, an internet horror story, the kind of thing I tell people and they look at me like how is that real and where do you find these freaks? Dysfunctional and unhealthy doesn't begin to describe it. Honestly, I have always been bad socially, and even when I find moments of success I still manage to attract the absolute worst people to me. So I am used to being on my own, and accomplishing things with no support, just the I'll show you all what I can't do attitude. It works, but its slow going. And on something that isn't within my natural interests (as I said, never been an active type), I can see the wisdom in having similarly minded people around, to have some degree of accountability to, to help move things along and keep that little defeatist in my head bound and gagged in the closet. I don't know whether or not that can happen for me (very bad with people, and still so burned out), but I thought I'd poke my head out and at least try. Can't promise I'll ever post again, but I do want to try.

[ladyelmo1]

Congratulations on taking the first step and posting! Setting your epic quests, and then breaking them down into small, easily managed steps might be the help you need. Even a little progress is worth celebrating and every time you meet a goal you get a boost of confidence. Maybe your goals can be about trying a new activity: "try swimming" for example. Then you try it and decide you hate it. You get to check it off your list, take your XP and walk away. Boom. Over. You are a winner for completing your quest.

[Red Dragoon]

Congratulations on taking the first step and posting! Setting your epic quests, and then breaking them down into small, easily managed steps might be the help you need. Even a little progress is worth celebrating and every time you meet a goal you get a boost of confidence. Maybe your goals can be about trying a new activity: "try swimming" for example. Then you try it and decide you hate it. You get to check it off your list, take your XP and walk away. Boom. Over. You are a winner for completing your quest.

 

Thanks, that does seem like good advice, getting credit for being willing to try even if a thing doesn't work out.

[Lee Jun-fan]

Hey Stranger Things.

 

Welcome to the forums.  Take a look around at different stories and journey's. You may find someone was in a similar situation to the one you described and be able to take some inspiration from them.

 

I think the first goal you could write is acknowledging you need change. Tick that one off right away. The next step could be as ladyelmo1 suggested breaking your goal down into manageble tasks.

 

Hope to see you around the forums and congrats on starting your epic quest.