pat_auckland said:

One year anniversary on mental health — reflections: What I wish I'd known: the side effects are temporary, the benefits compound over time, protein…

Therapy insights from my mental health journey: my therapist introduced me to the concept of "identity updating" — the psychological work of becoming a new version of yourself.

Key realizations: I used food to manage emotions, I had internalized fatphobia that I'm still unpacking, my social identity was partly built around being "the big guy/girl," and learning to accept compliments is surprisingly hard when you've been invisible for years.

Physical transformation without emotional processing is unstable. Do both.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

What did you change at the same time, and can you separate the two now?

dave_SLC said:

Therapy insights from my mental health journey: my therapist introduced me to the concept of "identity updating" — the psychological work of becoming…

Careful with the causal language. Two things moving together in a period when five things changed is not a mechanism, and stating it as one makes the thread less useful to somebody reading it later.

dave_SLC said:

Therapy insights from my mental health journey: my therapist introduced me to the concept of "identity updating" — the psychological work of becoming…

Agreed, and one caution: a single measurement is not a measurement. Anything that moves day to day needs a trend before it means anything at all.

dave_SLC said:

Therapy insights from my mental health journey: my therapist introduced me to the concept of "identity updating" — the psychological work of becoming…

Genuinely useful, thank you. I had the facts and not the framework.