When you just want to give up

I’m fat. I hate it.

I’ve almost always been overweight. About 10lbs as a child up to about 30lbs but it wasn’t until after I had my children that I ballooned and am now carrying 70–80 extra pounds. On a frame that’s barely 5ft tall, that’s a lot.

After the birth of my second son a little over a year ago, I decided that there was no way I was going to keep the weight. So I made a plan. I found a good balanced diet plan and I set some ambitious exercise goals. The first was to run a 10k obstacle race in the mud and the second to run a 1/2 marathon. I incorporated strength training into my run schedule and kept my nutrition on point 90% of the time. Surely all the running and training and proper eating would lead me to my goal weight.

Wrong.

I ran that mud race, and that half marathon last year but I did so carrying an extra 80lbs. I am proud of that accomplishment. Very proud. But as I look forward I’m completely lost as to what direction to go. I still want to lose the weight but if my efforts last year didn’t do it, then I’m not confident anything will. This crisis of confidence is keeping me down. I feel like it doesn’t matter. Why bend over backwards with effort when none of it amounts to accomplishing my goal?

I know in my heart there is something else at play. Something health wise that is effecting my progress. There has to be. No one believes me. They see a fat girl. They assume I eat a lot of junk. They assume I’m lazy. They assume I’m delusional when I say I eat right and exercise, that I’m just making excuses. The doctor doesn’t even believe me.

I’m struggling with how to move forward from this. My head says keep going! You can do this! You are strong and worth it, but heart is not in it.