How gaining a lot of weight pushed me towards becoming a better person – An ongoing personal transformation and self-discovery journey (Part 1)

This will NOT be a generic body positive post about how I “learned to love my curves”, but rather an exploration on the personal growth that I experienced as a consequence of this drastic change in my physique a few years ago.

Inspired by @replichara's (highly recommended) post about his fitness journey and how he went from a weak and flabby mess to looking like Michelangelo’s David thanks to proper fitness and health education, I decided to share my own journey so far as well.

As I was writing I noticed this was going to be a long story, so I decided to split it in two parts:

Part 1) Introduction: The story of my personal transformation and my struggles.

Part 2) The lessons I learned from it: Why I think I am better for it and the takeaway messages that helped me become more successful as a result.

Beyond the physical changes I experienced, I would like to emphasize the psychological effect this whole ordeal had on me, on the way I perceive myself and my self-confidence. At many points it was a very bitter and crushing experience, but I did learn some important lessons out of it. I hope sharing them helps to shed some light into the situation of whomever is undergoing similar struggles. 

So, let's get started...

The story: how it happened

Throughout my entire life, I was one of those much envied effortlessly slim people. At 5’5’’ (165 cm) tall, my natural weight fluctuated somewhere between 52 and 54 kg without me having to pay too much attention to my diet. Sure, I wasn’t eating complete garbage (I learned about good nutrition since I was a kid and always tried to eat well, never drank soda, etc.), but I didn’t have to make any big sacrifices or limit myself much to maintain my figure – if I wanted to eat a cake, or junk food, I would do it without giving it a second thought. I was also able to do occasional Gilmore Girls-style movie night binges without putting on weight, and almost every day I had a pastry for desert after lunch. I was also very active so that probably helped as well.

Heavily influenced by the era of the skinny girl tumblrs and fotoblogs, I started to purposefully lose weight during my early twenties. I saw all these internet-popular girls with carefully curated aesthetics that looked like a skinny, stylized version of myself, and felt like it was attainable for me if I lost a few kilograms. So, I managed to drop some weight by questionable methods resulting in calorie restriction (mostly skipping dinner, living on tea and coffee and for several months also smoking cigarettes). While I was exercising semi-regularly, I mainly lost the weight by starving myself a bit – which was easy on the very limited budget I had at the end of my master’s degree.

After this, I maintained a low-ish weight that I felt satisfied with (I think I was about 50 kg then) for a couple of years, no longer restricting myself and eating on an intuitive way according to my hunger cues and occasional cravings.

This was the period when I started my PhD. I sometimes jokingly say that this PhD ruined my life, however in some senses it kind of did. After a couple of years full of endless struggle with my experiments, frustration and crushing pressure due to lack of good results in a project that seemed to go nowhere, I started to feel like a failure. I was working so hard and seeing no results, no matter how much time and effort I put into it. Looking back upon it that was the main reason why I turned towards the quest of fitness: I wanted to prove myself that I was capable of achieving something great; that I could have something that gave me tangible results in exchange for the hard work I put into it.

So, I started running every morning. I started meal prepping, looking for online training and exercise resources, and eagerly consuming all the material published by fitness bloggers and instagramers. After witnessing what seemed like a never ending parade of super-slim bodies, six packs paired up with thin but defined gazelle-like legs and perky little butts, I tried some of the popular “Bikini Body” programs out there. 

Getting into skeletor mode. The huge bags under my eyes and yellowish blemished skin don't particularly scream "healthy".

At this point, I was exercising every single day, usually consisting of a 5 Km run in the morning and a HIIT/Resistance workout in the evening (yes, I worked out twice a day). All of it, while eating a low calorie, super low fat diet under 1200 kcals, day in and day out.

While this crazy regime got me to the lowest and leanest I have ever been (47.5 kg), it also marked the beginning of my physical and mental decay: I was perpetually tired and forcing myself to do stuff during the day because I had no energy, became obsessive about food and started isolating myself so I could work out by myself in the evenings and then vegetate until bed time because I had no energy to do anything else. I was irritable, reclusive, started to get really bad skin and dry hair, and eventually I lost my period for about a year.

But look! I had a big thigh gap... surely that makes up for it, right?

Surprisingly, even though my life was super stressful at the time (mainly due to my PhD, but also other factors), I was able to keep up my regime with iron discipline, since it was the only aspect of my life over which I had complete control. I could put my time and effort into it, and see results in a short time. I was no longer feeling like a failure: I had proved myself that I had discipline, I had self-control, I had tenacity and focus to succeed at something. 

At my lowest weight ever: 47.5 kg. Stick legs FTW!

Then, 2014, the year of doom, came upon me. I can say without a doubt that it was the worst year of my life so far. It started with my grandmother’s death in January, and from then a constant stream of terrible events unleashed; I think what made it so bad was that I had no time to heal, no respite – just as the pain from one blow started to dull, the next one will come and create more devastation on top. To summarize without giving too many details, my family fell apart piece by piece, lost some of the people close to me, and on top of that everything seemed to point that I would fail my PhD and be left without anything to show for all my efforts. My life was turned upside down in the course of a few months, and being 11, 000 km from most of the people who loved me and cared for me, I was alone to deal with all of it by myself.

It was then that my mind just snapped. You can still be functional when one aspect of your life is failing, but when suddenly everything around you gets blown to pieces, you are left feeling powerless, desperate and sinking in despair. I lost my grip on life, everything felt out of control, and this somehow triggered a self-destructive urge: I started swiftly undoing all my hard earned progress with my body, it just didn’t make sense anymore.

So, the binge eating started and I was out of control; I gained almost 10 kg within three or four months, but I looked so bloated and puffy that it looked like even more than that. One of the postdocs in my lab even asked me if I was sick or something – to which of course I replied that I was perfectly fine. Around this point I started taking birth control pills (never again!), which contributed to make the situation 10x worse.

At my worst both physically and psychologically. Summer of 2015; heaviest weight ever: 67 kg.

Long story short, I spent the next two years battling with major depression and anxiety, which was exacerbated by my out of control eating habits. A lot of self-loathing ensued, and got trapped into what we can call the Fat Bastard vicious cycle: 

I hated what I saw in the mirror every morning, but still I couldn’t stop. My life felt so pointless and everything felt so overwhelming that the only comfort I had left was provided by food. Sure, my experiments failed all the time and there were endless conflicts back home, but at least I could always have chocolate, pizza and Ben and Jerry’s waiting for me at home while I watched Netflix.

One thing that helped, though, was that the habit of regularly working out from my extreme fitness days remained: I was still working out at least 3-4 times a week and running a lot (which in the end resulted in a busted knee that gives me trouble until this day). Regardless, I was still slowly but steadily gaining weight. I don’t even want to imagine how much bigger I would have gotten if on top of the binging I had become completely sedentary.

Very accurate graphic description of that period.

At my biggest (during summer of 2015) I reached 67 kg, which is almost 20 kg more than my lowest weight. At this point I decided that this couldn’t go on and I had to do something before the situation became unsalvageable so I made it a point to get fit once and for all.  I stopped taking birth control pills and that alone helped me to be much more in control of my emotions. Since I could not run anymore, I signed up to a gym.

One day I watched Enter the Dragon and became fascinated with Bruce Lee, admiring both his physical and mental prowess; I eagerly consumed all material regarding his philosophy, his daily habits, his exercise regimes, his personal view on physical development and being a martial artist. Inspired by him, I started trying to get my martial arts skills back; I worked on my flexibility, my endurance and started practicing and sharpening my kicks again.

Slowly, I started building better habits. Also, I managed to slowly rebuild some of the problematic parts in my life and leave behind an important source of drama that was draining my energy and focus.

Something that really changed things for me was reading The Art of Expressing the Human Body, which is all about Bruce Lee’s fitness and conditioning philosophy. It shifted my perspective from my previously shallow approach to fitness (burn calories, look better) towards that of self-improvement, focusing on my body’s capabilities and skills – without too much focus on its looks.

Photo by Phil IP X.

I did a lot of research on nutrition and came across the ketogenic diet. It worked amazingly well for me (you can read the details on this post), and it became a great tool for propelling my progress, both physical and mental. One year after that, I finally decided to take the plunge and go back to practicing martial arts. I wanted to get my skills back, but this time I was also excited about learning much more and becoming a well-rounded fighter.

(Crappy) selfies taken last July, after one year of re-starting martial arts. Feeling better than ever!

That happened during the summer of 2016, and that’s how my Jiu Jitsu story started. Now, a year from my return to martial arts, I can say with certainty that I feel stronger, more skilled and confident than ever before. Right now my weight fluctuates between 60-62 kg, but my body looks completely different than it used to: instead of flabby and puffy, I look certainly not lean yet, but still solid and strong. 

Beyond that, my mindset is much healthier and resilient, and I have a newfound drive for improving myself continuously. I think the biggest change, as trite as it might sound, is that all these habits became my lifestyle, one that sustains that newly developed part of myself: now I am a fighter, and I need to provide my body with the best training and nutrition I can in order for it to perform at its best. This helps me stay focused without straying too much from my path.

Working out at the hotel's gym during a scientific conference last month (note to self: really need to improve my selfie-taking skills).

Stay tuned for Part 2…

Cheers, 

Irime