How do I appreciate the results?

youngestadult

Hello, I suppose this is a bit of an odd topic, but I figure there's got to be some people who have felt the same at some point or still do.

I'm 21 now and started my weightloss journey last fall, just when I weighed in at 172 lbs at 5'4''. I wasn't miserable about it until I noticed that even large women's sizes wouldn't fit me anymore, then I just broke down and decided to get in shape. I started counting calories, eating clean and weightlifting in October.

I've always been an overweight child and I suspect I might have always been close to obesity. I couldn't be called thin after just seven years old, I'd get bullied at school over my weight and eventually at age 13 developed an eating disorder, not the kind where you lose weight, but some sort of bulimia. I never truly took care of my ED mentality until last year, about the time I changed my lifestyle.

Now I'm at 145 lbs - I haven't been this low a weight since I was 11. I fit into S-sized clothes whereas even as a child, I had to buy clothes in adult women's sections because I was simply too massive to fit into anything else. I stopped drinking, smoking and eat all foods in appropriate moderation without stuffing my face, I don't struggle with going to the gym or eating well, yet for some reason, I can't appreciate the progress. I know on an intellectual level that what I'm doing is good, but I get no joy or good feelings from it. Instead, I keep feeling guilty about becoming pretty much obese in the first place or how I could be eating less (I probably couldn't without sacrificing lean body mass) or how my lifts should be better and how I should be stronger/prettier/leaner by now. I look back at how I used to be, but Instead of feeling happy about all the progress I've made, I just feel regret and shame for ruining myself like that in the first place.
I keep thinking that I could have saved myself a lot of mental and physical health if I'd just followed the simple rules that I'm following now.

Has anyone had similiar feelings? If so, have you overcome them and how?
I don't know, it's just been a few months - maybe I just need some time to get over those feelings, mourn my childhood, so to speak, because those feelings are just about a few weeks old and I haven't always felt *this* completely joyless about what I'm doing but as of recently, it's been pretty bad.