New here. Is this an actual community?

it’s an actual community if you choose to participate.

Most people make one post and never come back.

How about, you hit us up?

Tell us about yourself and your goals. Why are you here?

I was obese for 28 years. One day I decided, I’m tired of being the fat one in the room, the one who’s plate everyone looks at and silently judges, the one who is alwaaaaays tired, the one who’s parents are both in a slow slide to giving up on life. I didn’t want any of that any more.

Why? Because even though I'd had an active training schedule - even competing athletically - for over a decade, I was still class 1 obese, with high blood pressure and cholesterol/triglycides so high for so long that my doctor was increasingly insistant that I should take a statin.

I didn't want to take the statin because I thought I'd already given up enough cognitive bandwidth to chemotherapy. Brain fog is a reported side effect of statins. (And yes, the advanced stage cancer I had had was a type that is more common among people who are overweight/obese. I was lucky I survived it.)

After trying various supplements and changes in eating style, with little or no improvement, I finally committed to weight loss. When they took out my gallbladder during weight loss - not from stones or sludge but a rarer condition called adenomyomatosis - it was an ugly, thickened, cholesterolized thing with actual holes in it. For me, that pathology report sealed the deal on weight loss.

Later, there were more improvements and insights, but that's the starting point.

That was around 10 years ago. I was 59, menopausal, severely hypothyroid (medicated for that). Some people think those things are weight loss doom. I think they aren't, if a person is serious about making a change. Within just under a year, I lost around 50 pounds, which for me was the distance from obese to a healthy weight.

I'm 69 now, still athletically active, still hypothyroid; my blood pressure is normal; my doctor recently called my cholesterol/triglyceride blood test results "phenomenal" (no statins, BTW). I've been at a healthy weight since that initial loss.

While not psychologically easy every second, the process was simpler than I'd anticipated, and the quality of life improvement that resulted was huge. I recommend it. My current goal is keeping it.

And yes, participating here in the Community helped me. I read a lot of posts, figured out who the well-grounded, intelligent posters were, learned a lot from reading their and other posts . . . including things NOT to do, from some of the posts about crashing out of the process. Now, in year 9+ at a healthy weight after around 30 previous years of overweight/obesity, I'm still reading and posting here to keep my own head in the game, and help other people succeed if I can do that in small way.

I agree with others: It's a Community for me because I participate to make it one. You can, too.