DATE: August 18, 2009
USERNAME/REAL NAME: rattus/Kim
AGE: 39
BIRTHDAY: August 12, 1970
MARITAL STATUS: Married 06-06-09
SPOUSE’S NAME: Evans
CHILDREN/AGES: It's part of the plan -- probably in a year.
HOBBIES/INTERESTS: Knitting, reading, movies, rock climbing, hiking, skiing (tele and alpine), undeveloped hot springs, board games, plants and fishies, orchids, cello, piano, writing.
PETS: Fishies! Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Smacky, Goldysmacks, Smacky Jr., Blackbelt Sam, Cardinal Puff, Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Biggles, King, Kong, God, Zilla. And the snail, Moriarty.
TOP WEIGHT: 197
CURRENT WEIGHT: 194
GOAL WEIGHT: 145
HEIGHT: 5'4
EYE COLOR: Hazel
HAIR COLOR: Brown and purple!
OCCUPATION: Teaching Assistant and graduate student
GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION: Albuquerque, NM
E-MAIL ADDRESS:
HOMEPAGE URL:
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST PROBLEM IN WEIGHT LOSS: sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar.... potato chips.... I could eat white cake with white frosting every day for the rest of my life. The craving is like an addiction to crack. I've limited my sugar intake due to the PCOS symptomatic diagnosis, but still crave large amounts of it. My friend was making a birthday cake for me last week, and I was absolutely obsessed with it. I kept thinking about it, talking to her fiance about it....
WHAT IS DIFFERENT THIS TIME THAT WILL MAKE YOU SUCCESSFUL: Lower stress, and encouragement from my husband -- plus his first-ever observation that I really do need to lose weight to be healthy. I used to rock climb a lot, and we went out the other day to go bouldering, for the first time in a while and, he suddenly saw the extra weight on me. He gently suggested the idea of weight loss, though he has never called me anything other than beautiful -- even at the time! I am a very lucky person.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?
Graduate school is hard work. Just sayin'. People really don't understand just how completely the work dominates every minute of waking -- and sometimes sleeping -- life. That stress, plus the time limitations on exercise it causes, plus stress from family health issues (my dad has brain cancer), has made me more overweight than ever before. I hovered around 170 for years, even during my climbing and ski patrol days, but now, I'm 25 lbs. higher, and I can feel it straining my tissues -- little pinches and pricks here and there, tingles in my legs.... And the fat:muscle ratio is definitely higher these days. And yet -- I want crappy food more than ever. I just want to find the motivation to exercise some self-control.
A note about my weight loss history:
when I got engaged on 06-01-08, and then found out I had PCOS a week later, I lost 12 pounds by September. Around September 17th, I got pregnant. I had had increasingly light and slow-starting periods, and decided to let my period finish before using a new Nuvaring. After no problems during 5 years of birth control, it took me 3 days to get pregnant. So, in September, I got hungry. I then continued to spot during the next 2 cycles, so, I did not know that I was pregnant since my periods had been light anyway, and I continued using birth control. It was a hideously stressful semester even without my unexplained and deeper-than-usual desire to eat, which I attributed to the new stress of my schedule; plus, due to my Dad's cancer, my parents wanted us to have a wedding as early as possible, so we were planning that, as it was set for right after school ended in the spring. It was likely that either my husband or I would not finish our degrees if we had a child at this point, so I terminated the pregnancy when we found out at the end of the semester; plus I had continued using birth control, which is strongly not recommended by the manufacturers of the Nuvaring.
During the next semester, I pretty much just gave up on controlling my eating due to similar, continued stresses, and general, just... exhaustion. But, I did manage to keep my sugar down, and my insulin and blood sugars dropped during that time. However, between September and our wedding in June, I regained every pound, and my cholesterols shifted -- I've usually had a very good HDL/LDL ratio, but for the first time in years, I have higher LDLs.
So... finally, things have settled down. My dad is stable and in good shape. No more classes or school semesters: all I have to do is TA and do research and work on my dissertation. And, I have to get back into the eating patterns which allowed me some success the first time around, but I'm having trouble. I just don't feel like it. I'm tired of concentrating of all kinds of personal things and neglecting my research as a result -- which is personal, too, in that it feeds my sense of achievement. Plus, eating gives me real and easily accessible joy. I frickin' love eating.
I guess I have to remember the health part. Health, health, health! Plus, I don't feel as good and mobile as I used to. It's not too bad, but, I want to maintain my slight athleticism of movement -- I'm not a real athlete, but I like outdoor, and rather vertical, pursuits, and I love to feel springy -- to be able to launch up the stairs to go to bed, hop up the rocks on a rough trail -- that kind of thing. And to not feel like I'm destroying my joints on the way down! (The stairs or the rocks.)
The carrot kind of makes me feel motivated.
I think I can do this again.
As other people have said, "I am very open and will talk about anything!" If you want to discuss anything at all -- or have any ideas about how I can motivate myself back into weight loss -- please do make contact!!
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