[seattlepoet]

08/28/2017

Dear Amazing people,

My name is Rebekah. I am 44. I weight 318 pounds and I want to lose 137 pounds to get to my weight goal of 180. I am here to offer and be supportive to others as well as asking for compassionate and empathetic, consistent support. I am an empath and a highly sensitive person myself. I am a writer but am poor and unemployed and looking to change my life.

I have fibromyalgia, insulin resistance and polycystic ovarian syndrome. I have struggled with my weight all of my life. I grew up as an adult child of an alcoholic with extreme emotional, physical and verbal abuse and other forms of neglect and abuse. I was made fun of in school as a fat kid and got bullied and even beaten up by BOYS just for being a smart kid who was overweight. It was a horrible time and then to have to come home to ****. Then, I starved myself and lost weight in 8th grade and I went down to 85 pds. I normalized to 120 pds in high school and stayed that way until my senior year of college. I was an athlete...a swimming and a cyclist...I graduated college in 1996. I am a survivor of domestic violence in which the guy tried to kill me and I survived. That was in 1998. Around that time when i got away from him, I weight about 170. I started gaining weight and eating from stress. By the time I met my husband in 1999, I was 220. In 2003, I found out I had Insulin Resistance. I then lost 110 pds on Weight Watchers and I was a great success, but when I started struggling on the program and gaining it back, the people in the town started shaming me about it. That was in New Hampshire. I am in Washington state now...and in a bigger city and better place. However, my doctor is unsupportive and a fat shamer and I do not want to get bariatric surgery as I have fibromyalgia and other health issues. I want to do it on my own. However, exercising is a deep struggle due to the chronic pain from my fibromyalgia. Because it is the "invisible illness" ...it is difficult for people to see and understand the excrutiating pain I can be in with it.

I commonly experience doctor lecturing me about my weight without helping me with the things i really need help with.

I am looking to change my entire life and I am a member of Weight Watchers, and I had success on the program as stated above, but now I am like the toucan fat person and I share and feel everyone stares with VERY LITTLE understanding of what it is like to be over 300 pounds.

I can eat fruits and vegetables, high protein and low carb and drink water ...but I struggle doing it b/c I struggle with consistency due to being unemployed and having sleep problems (have sleep apnea and a machine) and sometimes I only have one spoon out of ten and that is hard for others to understand as well.

I am reaching out to ask all of you for help and support. I am looking for ideas and support from other women about how to be successful on this journey.

Thank you for reading this in advance, and I cannot wait to hear from all of you.

Love and Peace, Rebekah

[Emma121]

Hey rebekah. Welcome. I wanted to write a lot but am on my phone the keeps correcting everything i write.
We can all help eachother on this journey. You are more than welcome to write me a private message if you want a weight loss buddy.

[grannynancy]

Hi Rebekah, welcome. I have not been where you are but have been as high as 275 but have not faced all the challenges that you have had to contend with. I am sorry for the past as I know the pains of childhood and youth carry forward. This seems to be a caring place and there are a LOT of us working from a place people don't understand.

Some of the things that have been helping me in my plan (and a lot of different plans will work): cutting out sugar and flour has really stopped my cravings. Eating lots of vegetables. Planning meals the day before. Only eating 3 healthy meals a day and not snacking [some will differ]. Realizing hunger is not an emergency. Not worrying too much about exercise yet...just focusing on what I eat. Realizing the scale has a mind of its own and that you WILL lose weight if you consistently eat less than you need though the road down may be bumpy.

EDIT-I wanted to mention-I know that alone feeling and people don't tend to be as active on the boards on the weekend and I imagine will be glued to the TVs a lot this weekend.

[TheSecondHalf]

Hi Rebekah. I'm also a WW member. When I started I was almost 300 pounds (and I'm not tall). I had knee problems, hip problems, T2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. I was a mess. It's been about five months, I'm down almost fifty pounds (need to update stats here!). My knees don't hurt, my hips don't hurt, my A1C, cholesterol, and bp are all in a healthy range and I'm on half the meds I was on before. In five months. I feel SO DIFFERENT and so much better. I wish I had known five months ago that a totally different life was not that far away. I didn't even know how tired I was and how bad I felt until I felt better. All of this to say, changes add up.

WW is not really set up for deep, personal sharing. I think it's a time constraint as much as anything. In my meeting, we tend to stick to things that might apply to everyone and everyone is LOVELY but no one is sharing really deep, personal stuff. There just isn't time. I have noticed a lot of people in my meeting who tend to be sharers also mention that they go to OA, which seems to encourage a more personal, emotional kind of sharing. Have you considered that? WW is a wonderful weight loss program and I have found everyone to be incredibly supportive and kind, but it just isn't set up for a more, IDK, group therapy type situation. I don't think the leaders have that kind of training.


Connect is also a great reasource, although it took me a minute (or week) to get the hang of it. A lot of people find a lot of support there. It's a very active community.

As for exercise, I'll be totally honest - I walk a few days a week. If I miss a week, it doesn't make any difference in my weight loss. I do it because it's good for my heart and my blood sugar, but it is totally possible to just do WW without exercise until you get to a point where your body feels comfortable with activity. If someone had expected me to walk or run the first month or so when my knees and hips still ached, there is no way I'd still be doing WW. I think people who don't have chronic pain don't understand what they're asking when they expect you to just suffer through.

I'm not an expert and I hope I don't sound like a know-it-all but I'm excited to find another WWer who isn't trying to lose fifteen pounds (my meeting is full of people who are trying to lose fifteen or twenty pounds and I wish them ALL the best, but it's hard to relate when you know that you have to lose fifteen pounds like ten times).

Good luck! Hang in there!