My entire life I have struggled with my weight. Part of it is my genetic disposition, but the biggest factors are stress eating and the habits that I've been taught and developed during my life. I also have PCOS(Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) which causes hormonal imbalances and difficulty with weight loss. I'm not naturally a petite person, I stand at 5'6" with a fairly broad build, and a full figure. Not to say that I lack femininity in any way, I'm just a very solid person, I tend to carry quite a bit of mass. Anyhoo....
In my childhood I went back and forth between being a healthy weight and being chubby, and it always bothered me. Puberty was a cruel time for me, just as it is for sooo many of us, but when I was in 8th grade I started to limit what I was eating, and I was already increasing my level of activity(I started walking to and from school) so I started to drop some weight. I was even on the lower end of my weight range(around 137-140). By the beginning of high school I looked good and I was taking care of myself. After my first year in high school, life got pretty crazy, but I shan't bore you with it. My health got put on the back burner and when I weighed myself again, after several months, I was about 158. For my build that is still within the healthy range, but I didn't see it that way, I was pretty mortified. As life started to settle(I was about 16 at this time) I started to obsess over my weight, putting all of my self worth into that stupid number. I had just started being home schooled, and had moved to a new state...I knew no one and went nowhere so it was just me obsessing over my weight. It didn't help that I was being raised by an anorexic mother, so my view on health and dieting was pretty seriously skewed. Without doing any research I started on a quest to lose weight. I cut out as much sugar and fat as I could out of my diet. It didn't matter if it was healthy sugars or healthy fats(ya know, that ones that help your brain work correctly and are mandatory to your health!) I ate as little of them as possible. I controlled my eating to an unhealthy extent. I started loosing weight really quickly and I was so excited! I was dizzy a lot, but it didn't really matter. After dropping to 135 lbs my obsession changed, I realized that I could probably get BELOW my weight range! I was so overly excited I started cracking down even more on the dieting. Whenever I would crack and eat too much(so close to a normal meal) I had some ipecac from my parents emergency medical stuff and I would take that and throw it up. This happened no more than once or twice a week, but just thinking about the smell of ipecac makes me sick. Every once in a while I would try to work out, but didn't have very much energy. I had constant brain fog(probably due to lack of fat in diet!) and my blood pressure was dangerously low, and I also was quite anemic. I didn't look like I was starving so I only ever heard from people that what I was doing clearly worked! I had a boyfriend who was very destructive to my self image and towards the end of that awful relationship I was staying around 122(which is below my weight range for my build). One day I weighed myself and I was all of 127...I had a full on panic attack, the room was spinning, I was completely hysterical! I ended up smacking my head repeatedly on the ground until I blacked out. Over the next 2-3 weeks I went through a messy breakup and ended up at 117. For me, my build, that is underweight, but more importantly the problem was that I got there by unhealthy and destructive means. A few months later life got crazy again, I was working, distracted and ended up gaining back some weight. I was back in a healthy range, but I can safely say I wasn't taking proper care of myself. At least the obsessing wasn't so overwhelming.
After I was married I started to gain some weight. A few months in and I was at about 150 lbs. A year in....160 lbs. With my third pregnancy(the other pregnancies hadn't lasted longer than a few weeks) I got up to about 170. Between the hormones, the nausea, and the stress I wasn't eating right. After I lost the baby I was devastated and wasn't able to lose more than five or so pounds. The next year, at the same time, I was pregnant again! My weight had been staying around 175-180, and the pregnancy didn't change that too much. After fifteen weeks I miscarried. Ever since then(about a year ago) it's been a gradual increase. I spent a good chunk of this past year away from home with my sister as her daughter went through a bone marrow transplant. And of course, I gained more weight. And now...at exactly 200 lbs, I am fighting to NEVER let my weight get out of control again. I've thought through this big time and considering that I have tried a million different diets, and a million different workout programs I have had to just take bits from each. My husband is in charge of the working out part, I'm in charge of the healthy eating. So this is my blog to chart my progress and my journey. It's mostly for me, but if any of it helps motivate anyone else, then so be it! That would be awesome! I have no goal to be skinny, but instead to be healthy and fit.
Enjoy!
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