 This is something I hate talking about but let's do this. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and this video is going to be a little bit different hopefully the same I don't know but the style the tone of it might be a little bit off this is where I get a little rambling maybe it's because of nervousness maybe fear by the end of it I hope you don't think I'm a lunatic and say what does this guy know about mental health but I don't know maybe some of you can relate to this but yeah we're going to be talking about body positivity and I'm going to talk about the issues with my weight because I don't know if you got the memo but I am a little bit on the chunky side all right but yeah so when it comes to mental health okay weight body image all those things have a lot to do with our mental health so just a little bit about my struggles with my weight when I was younger when I was like a kid growing up I was never a big kid you know like I was a bigger kid but I was not like I am now if you will um many ways I got into sports at a young age and things like that but as I got older middle school and high school I was constantly comparing myself to other people and that's a lot of when we start developing these types of behaviors we start judging ourselves and start you know for me personally I started just wondering like why can't I just look like that guy over there why can't I have a body like that guy and you know um throughout even high school I was doing football wrestling track I was always in sports I was eating right eating healthy and there's something with my body where I can have like one little sugary tweet uh treat and like I explode meanwhile my best friend he can sit down and eat like 10 cheeseburgers and still have like the body of a Greek god you know what I mean and I used to be very resentful for that like I didn't like to accept the fact that I can't eat whatever I want I cannot you know look like that unless I put in a ton of work and even when I'm putting in a ton of work exercise eating healthy I still don't have my ideal physique so you know for the most part even though I thought I was fat in high school like for the most part you know part of me being healthy was purely based on the fact that I I wanted to look good and I cared what people thought about me I wanted to attract a certain type of woman and I didn't think I could if I was overweight so to the best of my ability I was managing my weight now um fast forward and I will spare you this part of the story if you would like check out the info card up there um a lot of this weight was put on in my drug addiction and alcoholism it's when I completely just stopped caring you know what I mean like 200 pounds of this if not more all happened through my active addiction just so you know and you know it's one of those things like have you ever like sat back and thought like you know like I thought I was fat in high school and I wish I had a time machine to go back in time find myself talking negatively to myself about my weight and just slap the living hell out of myself and be like that's not fat this is fat right but anyways when I when I got uh when I got clean and I started to focus on my mental health and something I had to do was I had to learn how to love myself and a lot of the way I learned how to love myself was by people loving me in a way that I couldn't love myself and this is where the body positivity talk comes in and I I really want to make it clear that with this video I'm talking from my personal experience I'm sure other people you know who are body positive are gonna come across this and I want to make it very very clear that this is my personal experience nothing negative about anybody else but what ended up happening was during this time I learned how to love myself and in turn in learning how to love myself I stopped caring about my physical health and that for me was one of the downsides of being body positive it's like learning how to love me and the weight I am and just feeling myself you know and I was dating girls and you know all this other stuff like I I again stopped caring about my physical health so for about five years like I I was just eating and doing whatever I wanted I didn't really exercise or anything like that because I would justify it by saying I love myself this is okay and for me that's when being body positive you know wasn't a good thing because if I look at the reality of the situation you know especially when I got clean from drugs and alcohol I why did I do it like there's a multitude of reasons why one of them is that my life was a freaking mess but one of them is I want to be a father to my son so if I want to be a father to my son yeah I can get rid of drugs and alcohol but when I'm going to the doctor and they're talking about cholesterol and high blood pressure unhealthy weights um I actually when I got clean I had congestive heart failure so I already have a weak heart you know and my heart is healed a lot but you know I'm putting my heart at risk because of my weight so for me I have to balance that whole thing of being body positive and loving myself for who I am but also recognizing that it could be detrimental to my health and and it's it's twisted and it it's crazy because as much as I promote positive mental health and I help all you guys out there with depression anxiety and all these other things like this is where my mental health is still a work in progress like for example for example um I've been beating myself up lately about my weight and something I often tell people and by the way this is a good way to deal with bullies or you know whatever um whatever you're dealing with you know people at work whatever it is like I always remember just saying this to myself it's saying this to other people like no matter what you say to me no matter how much you beat me up with your words like I'm doing a much worse job up here like I could beat myself up like nobody else can you know what I mean I can be my own worst enemy but anyways I was having a conversation with my friend and I was kind of just like ugh you know just those days when you just like realized how how overweight you really are and like I was just venting to her and she said this and by the way it's interesting because this is a friend who I was talking to about her depression and then she ends up start helping me with you know me being more positive about my weight and stuff but anyways I was talking about how much weight I've put back on since my weight loss journey last year and she says uh hey man you have a girl who thinks you're sexy um and you're a real person just let let it motivate you and you know and like I love that but like for me it's a dangerous slippery slope because I take these kind words and my brain can can run with them like I have a beautiful amazing girlfriend who loves me unconditionally and that can fuel my excuses for not focusing on my weight like some of us do that when we get into a relationship we saw caring about our our physical appearance if you will but like I guess the point I'm trying to get at is like it's so much more than just our physical appearance it's also the damage I might be doing to my body and like you know I have to figure out a way to break free of that and and I have in the past so one of the reasons I'm making this video not only to talk about body positivity and how it can personally be my downfall is because I now that I have this platform of YouTube and I have almost 2000 subscribers now I feel like I need to be held accountable and by the way there's a great way to stay accountable say things very publicly and I need to start focusing on my weight again like it it's a very real thing I have a whole playlist called losing weight mindfully and like if you look at those videos compared to now I have put a lot of weight back on um and it's because I fell off I fell off it's almost like a relapse when it comes to drugs and alcohol and this relapse if you will happened at Thanksgiving so that was I don't know five months ago you know I was like I'm just gonna take a little break for Thanksgiving and then that turned into I'm gonna take a little bit of a break for Christmas you know and then all the goodies are out and all that kind of stuff and that break has lasted until now we're in the middle of March so I'm personally getting back on the right track I have a Fitbit that I haven't been wearing that I'm gonna start using again I've been talking to some friends the Fitbit's a great way that I'm able to stay accountable um this video but also I'm going to rejoin a program some of you have heard me talk about Dr. Judson Brewer he has one for weight loss it's called Eat Right Now and by the way this is not sponsored in any way this video is so not sponsored by this app that I'm actually paying full price for it but um when I did this program like one of the things about losing weight is I hate everybody's opinions on it they're like oh you gotta do like low carbs and high fats or ketotonic and you know fasting and like there's just a million different opinions on how to lose weight and like this was the first program I did where it was nothing it was nothing like that it was all centered around mindfulness I've mentioned about his programs in the unwinding anxiety app but I managed to lose over 50 pounds last year using this and then I got to a point where I was like oh I'm fixed I don't need to do this anymore and like I'll be honest with you I've been afraid to go back on the scale in months because I'm I'm afraid to see how much weight I've put back on and I'm even more afraid that I might have put on even more weight than what I started with so um as of tomorrow I'm getting back into that program and if any of you are interested I'm gonna put a link to Eat Right Now um in the description below it's cool it uses mindfulness it's not like telling you what to eat it's just having to be more mindful of what you're eating when you're eating you know just really being mindful like it doesn't even suggest that you change your diet at all it's really cool and then the biggest part that benefits me is every single week they have like a group video chat where I get to sit and talk about the struggles I've had with other people going through the same thing you know what I mean so if any of you are interested like I'll put a link in the description I'd love to see you in one of the uh the weekly uh video chats that they do but anyways I'll try to keep you all posted about my weight loss and if you want like keep me accountable comment randomly on my videos just randomly on my videos and just say how's the weight loss going Chris just say that that really that really helps me a lot believe it or not because I'm like ah dang it I made myself accountable to other people but reach out to me see how it's going hopefully you'll see the change in this face right here um but yeah so I'm gonna get back started on tomorrow and like I I need to you know recognize that body positivity can be a bad thing for me personally but I don't know I don't know if you like this video like if you think it might be able to help others I don't know I don't know how you guys are going to react to this video but feel free to share it feel free to share it with people that you know who might be struggling with their weight um I my main my main goal is to live live as long as possible knowing that I'm not in control of a lot of things but one thing I am definitely in control of is the way I treat my body you know what I mean so I want to be able to be there for my son I want to be able to play sports with my son I want to be able to go hiking you know with my girlfriend you know my son my friends and stuff like that so that's that's one of the main reasons why I'm doing this but anyways like I said share this video if you think it'll help somebody if you like this video give it a thumbs up if you're new here my videos are usually a lot more centered around mental health this one kind of was but hit the little round subscribe button you want to check out some other videos on this channel click or tap on one of those thumbnails right there and thank you so much for watching keep me accountable and I'll see you next time