PERSONAL INFORMATION: Hi, I'm Leanne, and I started out as a stay-at-home mom who then became a romance writer and got a job working as an editor for an online publishing company.
I am married to a wonderfully supportive man who works weird hours and doesn't often do his share of the chores. But that's okay, I love him anyway.
We have one daughter who is 15 going on 30. Busy, busy, busy teenage socialite life (very unlike her mother who would stay at home behind her computer all day if she could).
I spend my time tending to household chores, running the editing department of an online publishing house, and writing when I feel so inspired. (Yes, I'm actually published.) I read, and my favorite pastime is travel. Anywhere I can any time I can.
DIABETES INFORMATION: Type II diabetes. 15 years ago, not long after giving birth to my daughter, I was diagnosed with PCOS. I went for a second opinion and was told that no, I didn't have it, I just needed to lose weight. I wound up losing 80 lbs using diet pills, and kept it off a couple of years until in 2003 when I had a miscarriage. Within a month of the miscarriage, I began gaining weight rapidly, no matter what I did. I sought a doctor's help, and was told that I wasn't exercising enough. (I was walking 3 miles a day). I went to another Dr. who told me "You obviously don't know how to count calories." Yeah, because I'm a moron and didn't count every calorie that went into my mouth every day. (I was eating around 1000 cal a day and still gaining.) At this point all they kept checking was my fasting glucose and my thyroid levels. Those were fine, then.
I kind of gave up on doctors and myself for a little while. I live in Canada, so doctor hopping isn't easy, seeing there aren't enough doctors to go around. About a year later, my period had completely stopped and I was topping the scale around 330 lbs (the 80 plus another 20 I had originally lost). I was able to get in with a different doctor by being sneaky. I was very sick. No energy. Headaches and blurred vision.
The new doc ran a huge panel of blood tests and gave me the bad news. I was diabetic, and I had turned diabetic because my PCOS had not been diagnosed and treated.
That was 8 years ago. Since then I've also been diagnosed with an ASD (a hole in the wall of my heart that needs to be fixed with open-heart surgery). The surgeon won't touch me until I get down to at least 250lbs (I weighed 316 the first time I saw him 2 years ago)
DIET / EXERCISE REGIMEN: Right now I'm 5'7" and weigh 270. I'm on the Ideal Protein diet (just a month into it) and have already lost 12 lbs. I'm hoping to hit the 250 mark by this summer, and then surgery in the fall. Though I'll stay on the diet through the summer to get off as much as possible.
The only exercise I can do is walking, because of the ASD, I have back flow into the right side of my heart, which makes it very difficult to breathe when I get exerted. This is fine, since on IP they say don't exercise. I try to go out for a nice walk a few times a week.
Over the last couple of years, to get from the 330 to where I was 285 before I started IP, I was put on Metformin, which helped me lose about 20 lbs. Then I went to the gym for a few months and lost another 20 until I tore a tendon in my rotator cuff. That was 2 years ago, and until IP, I've only been able to maintain, not lose.
SPECIAL HOPES / ASPIRATIONS / ACHIEVMENTS: Since starting IP, I've been able to lose weight, and it feels great. My ultimate goal is to get below the 200 mark on the scale. I haven't been there since I was a freshman in high school. But my biggest goal is to get the heart surgery done with so that isn't hanging over my head...also I'll feel much better when it's fixed, and will be able to do many more things.