Thanks for sharing ladies. LaMariposa and tsuninight I'm sorry for your losses. Its amazing how much birth control throws our bodies out of whack, seems like a common issue. I also have to factor in that when I was in my middle and high school days I danced, and taught as a student aid in dance classes, did theater, and even one year rotc. I was so active and then I went to college, hated it, hated the whole process, didn't fit in, my family had picked up and moved away and usually at 1 meal a day so when I did eat it I stuffed myself, and was also eating as entertainment. So I was wrapped up in other things that I just didn't think about it.
HAH yeah. I learned as much as I don't like dealing with TOM, it's not worth what happens with DEPO. It screws my body up something good... and I have had girly problems my entire life, so I don't need help in that area.
I found that for me Yaz is by far the best option. YES it means one extra pill a day, but if I don't take it I am super out of whack (I have PCOS), to the point where my DR thinks it's a problem. BC fixes it. It also keeps my skin clear.
Thanks for the kind words regarding my grandmother. She had a great life, and even chose when she died (well to some extent). It's just hard on ppl to lose those they love... I think it would be odd to some extent if it wasn't.
The timing of your question is freakish. I just posted something over on the maintainers board similar to what you are saying. Here is my theory ---
I am currently dealing with phantom fat. When I look in the mirror I see myself just as fat as I was 30 pounds ago. My "fat brain" is not catching up to my "thinner body". But in the past, I would lose a significant amount of weight and then it seemed like just overnight I gained it back. I wonder if my brain did the opposite of what it is doing now. For instance, my clothes were getting tighter and I was going up in size but my "thin brain" was not catching up to my "fat body". And then one morning I woke up and reality hit me like a ton of bricks!
For me, I think that explains why I let it happen. Overindulging in fatty food and not exercising is how it happened.
In a very real sense I "dieted" my way to nearly 400 lbs, starting at 5 years old. I was put on my first diet in kindergarten. I was chubby, but I really think I would have reached and maintained a reasonable (even if a little chubby) weight if I had never been exposed to "dieting."
In the mid 90's at about 350 lbs, I encountered the theory that dieting is the major cause of weight gain, and that if you give up dieting your weight will stabilize. So I gave up dieting.
I gained about 10 lbs, and then stopped gaining. All of my life, I'd either been rapidly gaining or rapidly losing (although the gains were far more rapid than the losing). Also at this time though I was put on birth control for the first time. I was desperate to treat my PMDD because doctors had been telling me for years that if I went on bc, I'd probably gain weight. The combination of not dieting, and hormonal adjustment (because the week I had the most trouble not gaining was TOM/PMS because of rabid hunger "that week").
For almost four blissful years I didn't gain a pound (how I wish I had discovered "not dieting" and birth control in puberty, I might have never exceeded 200 lbs).
Then I herniated a disc in my back and had to lose weight and strengthen my back muscles in order to (hopefully) avoid back surgery.
I avoided the back surgery, but getting back on the diet rollercoaster added 20 lbs. I got off the rollercoaster and my weight stabilized again at 370 lbs. Then I met my husband and like almost every bride-to-be decided that I needed to diet for the wedding. About six to seven months before the wedding, I joined WW with my mother. She lost 60 lbs for my wedding and I gained almost 25.
Traditional dieting doesn't work for me. It drives my hunger to insane proportions, which is why I call it "rabid" hunger. I literally can feel like I'm "starving to death" when my stomach is full to bursting.
Now I understand why. The low-carb literature discribes it very well. Even opposing scientists don't argue the most important part of the equation (to me) that insulin triggers hunger.
Insulin resistance means you have tons of insulin in your blood, but your cells aren't responding to it.
I dated a boy in high school who was type I diabetic. To lose weight, he would deliberately short-change his insulin dose just a bit over several days. Periodically, he would skip his insulin dose, so that his blood sugar would drop low-enough that he could binge. It was stupid. He knew it at the time, but the "diet mentality" is difficult to break once it's taken hold of your mind. You become addicted to the weight loss "high."
When I "accidentally" lost 20 lbs after sleep apnea treatment (my doctor told me I'd lose some weight without trying after using the cpap for a while. I literally thought he was insane, as I'd never lost so much as a single pound in my entire life without trying). Turns out he was right.
Wow did that create a dilemma for me. I was so disabled with obesity and inactivity that I needed to lose weight to have any quality of life, but I had never in my life been able to lose weight without rabid hunger eventually driving me to regain.
Aside from birth control, low-carb eating and keeping hunger under control (even if it means only losing 1 lb a month), has been the "secret" to success for me.
To do it, I had to unlearn almost everything I thought I knew about weight loss, including my definition of success. I was losing far slower than I had been at every quitting point in the past. Every diet I ever quit in the past because I was "failing" (losing too slow), I was losing far faster than I am now. I guess that means I've "failed" off 88 lbs. If only I had realized in the past, that I could lose all the weight I needed to at the "failure" level.
It's tempting to say that the failure was all in my head, but it wasn't. One of the reasons I would often quit Weight Watchers was the shame of constantly being given "consolation" for slow weight loss. If I lost "only" one pound, the weight recorder would ask me if I knew what I'd done wrong that week, or would wish me "better luck" next week. Even they didn't see "one pound" as success for me. It wasn't only me labeling me a failure for losing weight slowly. Most of my life, I had doctors who saw anything less than 20 lbs a month as "too slow" wieght loss for me.
My current doctor "set me straight," when I complained that I was losing only 1 lb a month, and should be losing "at least two pounds like normal people."
My doctor told me I was being ridiculous, that there is no such "normal." Most people give up, so even 1 lb per month was putting me in the front of the pack, not trailing behind. Even losing 1 lb a month is tremendous success.
All the members of my TOPS (taking off pounds sensibly, a non-profit weight loss group) chapter also agree. At every meeting, we go around the table and announce our loss or gain for the week (most groups just say whether they've lossed, gained, or stayed the same - in our group we also share the amount). Losses and turtles (staying the same) are all applauded, gains are met with "we're glad you came," (not "what did you do wrong?")
I've gained weight and lost it a few times in my life, and every time I gained, I was oblivious.
I was a skinny kid. Around age 10-11ish, I started putting on weight because I no longer had as much desire to go run and play; there was no physical activity to replace what I'd gotten, and combined with lax eating habits (stuffing my hand in a bag of cheetos while reading a book), I gained. Lost it in high school when I became more conscious of my appearance and more active again (going with friends to the French Quarter, taking the bus and walking to visit my boyfriend).
Gained again when I left college and was no longer walking between classes. Went to Jenny Craig and dropped about 70 pounds, which I kept off for years thanks to working retail and running my butt off (literally) in my store.
The big weight gain happened when I stopped working retail and got a desk job. I gained 60 pounds in a year. You'd think I'd have put the brakes on, but nah--I just didn't think about it much. I felt unhappy about it when I looked down at myself, but I solved that problem by not looking down.
Saef described it brilliantly as feeling like " a head in a jar"--I wasn't fat, because the "I" that I was existed from the neck up. My body? That was just the cumbersome thing that supported me, that I had to drag through life because no one had yet invented robot bodies. Besides, my body did everything I asked it to do, so why worry about it? It didn't hold me back from having a love life, going out with friends, holding down a job, any of the important stuff, I figured (meanwhile, a part of me was thinking, "you can barely recognize yourself in the mirror any more and you can't walk half a mile without getting out of breath--who are you kidding?").
I'm now 41 and I refuse to be oblivious any more or to silence the voice that tells me that all of me--my head and my body--deserves my attention and care. It does matter to me that I look my best. It does matter to me that I accomplish daily tasks without pain or discomfort. It does matter to me that my hips no longer touch the sides of the tub when I bathe.
Is it weird to say that I actually enjoy this process? I'm liking the fact that I can move our big coffee table out of the way so I can vacuum under it. I'm liking the fact that I can vacuum without my back yelling at me. I love taking walks with my husband. I love looking at myself in the mirror already and I'm only thirtyish pounds down. There've been times of struggle, but overall, this is actually FUN.
Whew, didn't mean to write a novel there. I guess I had a lot to say on the subject. I love this thread, though, and find the posts on it fascinating.
Both? I've been heavy most of my life. I did WW with my mom when I was 13 and was down to a healthy weight. At 13, I tore a ligament in my right ankle and was either A) in pain or B) on crutches until I was 14. Plus, I was diagnosed with PCOS at that time, so the combo of suddenly being totally inactive AND having hormone issues caused me to gain weight.
14 to 16, I did ok weight wise. Mostly stable, but still heavy. I started battling depression at 16 and my best friend and I built our entire relationship around food. I put on another 20lbs.
In college, it was mainly a slow, steady gain. I put on forty lbs. in three years (I JUST did that math....holy moly!), but that pretty much just translated to buying just slightly bigger clothes every time I had to go shopping. When you're already a size 18, 40lbs really is only two sizes gained...its easy to just fool yourself with "brands differ" and "i'm just bloated" for a long time.
We havne't gotten Portal 2 yet. But yeah Portal one was halarious. I had my GPS set up so it was GLaDOS talking to me.... but she monologed too much so I had to turn it back to the brittish guy. lol
I've always been on the heavy side, but I didn't really notice my weight gain until my mom sent my some pictures of me and my husband. I knew that I was an emotional eater. I would always eat when I was stressed out and my new job was definately doing that. When I quit it was a blessing in disguse because I was no longer stressed and I didn't have any more excuses. I've lost more weight now than I did the first time and I have 27 more pounds to go before I get to wONEderland! That will be the first time I've been under 200 lbs since I can't remember when!
I was always a chubby-ish kid, and by high school I'm not sure how much I weighed but I remember wearing a size 13 and thinking it was ginormous. (Much of this had to do with the fact that all my friends were size 3s and 5s). I was really active though...I was a cheerleader, I played goofy football games with the neighborhood boys -- so I sort of maintained until college.
That's when I discovered drinking and late night burger and pizza runs. I was just eating like crap and the word "exercise" totally fell out of my vocabulary. By 21 I was out on my own, and the drinking continued but my roommate and I were broke so we survived on salads she'd bring home from her waitressing gig. Rolling Rock and lots of vegetables brought me down to about 135. Breakfast of champions, right?
I'd say the slow upward climb started in my mid-20s. I was still partying a lot, eating late at night, or doing the nothing all day then a huge meal for dinner thing. By the time I divorced and met my current boyfriend I think I was up to about 220, the weight I moved out to CA at 10 years ago.
From there it was just very slow and steady...5 lbs here, 10 there...a year of maintaining then an 8 lb gain the next. This was "new relationship" weight -- going out to dinner, bottles of wine, late night post-coital runs for fast food (romantic, right? lol). I wasn't a big eater or an emotional eater...I'm still not. I just ate all the wrong things at the wrong times of day, and I never, ever exercised.
I finally got the big b*tchslap into reality when I teetered over the edge of 300 to 309 lbs. I remember that day, and just wondering what and how and why and when I got that way. I took off maybe 30 lbs, a loss which I maintained, and then my father passed in November of 2010.
Amidst all the heartbreak, I had the moment where I realized that walking around at 280 lbs was no way to honor his life or mine. And honestly? I just wanted to stop caring and crawl into a hole and not even deal with it. I made that a non-option and depending on the time of day and the scale (hah!), I'm down 50 lbs. I'm hoping this time is for real and what finally needed to click clicked.
I'm loving reading everyone's stories. Please keep them coming.
Mine was a combination of not knowing how to eat healthy, a lot of soda, fast food, eating out for most meals, high stress job and not working out. Also I have a lot of parental/grandparent issues.. I was told I was fat when I wasn't and it lead to some serious body-image issues. I literally became that fat girl they kept telling me I was. I weighed 120-130 in high school but I thought I was the fattest person on the earth because they kept telling me I was. It was pretty terrible. Looking back on my school pictures I really wish I could go back in time and help my "former" self.
I've always been the kind of person who loved food, loved grease, and preferred real coke over diet. Why would anyone settle for less than the good stuff, I thought. I didn't start gaining until halfway through high school when I quit dancing. The exercise had staved it off, but once that was gone, up I went to 190. I kept myself content by thinking "at least I'm not as fat as some of my friends".
In college I naturally gained the freshmen 15. But once I dropped out, that was when things started getting really bad. I realized I had a problem. I tried to diet, struggled, gave up, and then rationalized that even though I ate huge amounts of fattening food, at least I was "happy". Then I'd gain and get unhappy, and the cycle started again.
Looking back at the things I used to eat, it's completely understandable that I gained so quickly. I mean, I'd binge on the equivalent of 1 1/2 large Dominos pizzas and a full 2 liter of real coke, everyday, sometimes with candy thrown in. "Treat" days included a large bag of Doritos and chocolate pb ice cream slathered in toppings.
But I take comfort in knowing that I'll never be that person again. Now that I'm far too aware of what calories are in foods, I could never let myself go that crazy again.
Last edited by Jo Kittibuck; 03-23-2011 at 09:05 AM.
When I was about 7 years old, my dad won his weight in celebration chocolates (he's a heavy man!) and I came home from school to find about 20 boxes of them on my bed! Then - we noticed they all expired in 1 weeks time, so we complained and they sent us ANOTHER load and told us to keep the others! So we had over 400lbs of chocolate all over our house and obviously I ate it (except the yucky ones like bounty!) and from there I just got bigger until I was 15 and finally decided to do something about it
lol). I wasn't a big eater or an emotional eater...I'm still not. I just ate all the wrong things at the wrong times of day, and I never, ever exercised.
It was pretty terrible. Looking back on my school pictures I really wish I could go back in time and help my "former" self.
