I'm really glad I found FDS around 6+ months ago. It helped me leave my shitty ex, and my life has been progressively getting so much better since then.

This may sound like a really weird milestone: today I did my first ever full unassisted pull-up!

I'm so proud of this, because for the past 4 months I've gotten serious about a weightlifting program and eating a healthy diet. After breaking up, I weighed myself to see my starting point, and was shocked to discover I had gained 55 pounds since the last time I weighed myself, which was right before I started the relationship (about 1 year apart).

My weight has fluctuated a lot over the course of my life, always gaining weight when feeling stressed and depressed, and losing it when I am mentally healthy. It's like a canary in the coal mine for the state of my mental & physical health.

I cannot emphasize this enough: being in a relationship with an emotionally abusive narcissist is TERRIBLE for your health. Frankly, being with any LVM brings you down.

At first, he seemed really great on paper. Good job, nice, funny, handsome, tall, charming, flattered me and treated me like a princess. Around 3 months, the mask started to slip and although I didn't realize it at the time, our relationship fell into a cycle of abuse. He would get super moody, sulky, withdrawn, hyper-critical, picking fights over every little thing, we'd start arguing all the time, I'd start to feel super tense and walking on eggshells. Then there would be some sort of explosive event, I would try to leave him, then he would beg for forgiveness and love bomb me until I take him back. Repeat. Each time it happened I would trust him less and less.

I'm convinced that during this time, my stress hormones were THROUGH THE ROOF, which always causes me to eat emotionally. To worsen this, I was also way less physically active during the relationship. For my whole adult life, I've been into weightlifting, especially powerlifting (squat, deadlift, chest press). Unfortunately, my ex was very critical of this, and basically thought women should never lift anything heavier than 5 pounds, and that I was better off doing nothing but cardio (which I absolutely hate). Even though he never admitted it, I could tell he was SO JEALOUS that I could squat and deadlift more weight than him. He never outright said that, but whenever I dragged him to the gym with me, he would be so whiny and negative about the whole experience: "waaah, your form is all wrong, if you lift heavy you're going to get injured, the gym is too crowded, blah blah blah"

Anyways, I am happy to report that I have lost 28 pounds so far (more than half of my goal) and doubled my 1RM on most of the major lifts. I do full body resistance training, with an emphasis on selective hypertrophy of shoulders/chest/upper back and glutes/quads/hamstrings, which has helped me achieve a more hourglass shape. Basically, my waist has gotten snatched whereas my booty/thighs have stayed approximately the same, giving me a more favorable waist-to-hip ratio. My family and friends have noticed, and it feels good when I get compliments from them (although unfortunately I've been getting more unwanted male attention- oh well).

At work, I had a positive end-of-year performance review and got a decent raise. I also completed a 7-week professional development course online. Been reading a lot more feminist writings: just completed "Why Does He Do That?" and started "Why Men Love B*tches" (love it) and of course learning more from the FDS Handbook 🥰

Special thanks to the mods and founders of this sub, and to anyone who has contributed to the Handbook. I probably would have wasted a lot more time with my ex if it hadn't been for FDS, so I'm really grateful to everyone here for helping me save myself from the stress and pain I felt while in that relationship.

TL;DR, I've been leveling up and feeling way happier ever since my breakup. I'm especially proud of being able to do even just one pull-up, because I used to be too weak and fat to have been able to accomplish any such feat of upper body strength.