I have been morbidly obese the vast majority of my adult life. At my biggest, my BMI was 48.5. I have yo-yo’d down and up, many, many times. I have long known that the problem was my dysfunctional eating, and that my weight was a symptom. But that knowledge did not enable me to change.
A couple of years ago I started yet another weight loss attempt, prompted by health and mobility concerns. I did really well for over a year, then the familiar story: a return to binge eating, total loss of control, rapid regain. Only this time, I managed to put a lid on it, having only regained 18lb of the 5.5 stone I had lost. I joined a program which deals with the disfunctional eating. I lost part of the regain, then stabilised.
And here I am now, with a BMI somewhere around 30, but pretty much weight stable. I am wearing the same size clothes as I was over a year ago and have done so continuously all that time. It’s a bloody miracle.
So here’s the thing: for someone who starts out as obese to get to the healthy BMI range is very uncommon. And to stay there, even less so. If you start out morbidly obese, the probabilities are even lower.
Medically speaking, I have improved my health situation hugely by reducing my BMI from 41.5 a couple of years ago, and all time high of 48.5, to 30. If I could reduce it to 25, my risks would be even lower. So logically I should try to do that. But the probability of success is very low, and presumably the effort required would be huge. Whereas I do seem to be able to maintain my current weight.
Have you travelled this road? What did you decide?