I can’t lie…the last few years have been SUCH a struggle….and for some reason or another I have associated my weight with those struggles.
The Power of 8
When I got pregnant with my first son in 2007, I weighed 138.
The day I gave birth to him, I weighed 194 (I know I packed on some serious poundage!)
Then when I got pregnant with my second son in early 2009, I weighed 158.
The day I gave birth to him, I weighed 194 (I find it very random that I weighed the exact same each time.)
By summer of 2010, I had lost all the baby weight and gotten back down to 138.
Then I got pregnant again. I lost that baby at 16 weeks and gained 10 pounds. I was now 148.
In the Spring of 2011, I got pregnant again. I chose to terminate that pregnancy at 21 weeks due to Trisomy 18.
I was now 168 and completely broken inside.
Physically, I had some serious issues too, but I didn’t know yet exactly what was going on.
The Road to Health
I started seeing doctors trying to explain the fatigue, trouble with my period and secondary fertility issues,, troubles with my blood sugar and just general malaise, but everyone pretty much blew me off…and since I was 39 they just told me it was peri-menopause and I just had to deal.
So I went from being pregnant to being told I was in peri-menopause in just 4 months.
In early 2012, I started seeing a nutritionist, the only medical professional I could find that would take me seriously, and got down to 158.
Then a year ago, Spring of 2014, I found Dr. Edgerton who helped diagnose me with insulin resistance and premature menopause (10 yrs early…lucky me!) and both are issues that make it very hard to lose weight.
At least now I had some explanation for the years of struggles. (I’d been going to doctors since 2005 about my blood sugar, but no one took the time to run the ONE test that would tell what was going on until 2014.)
With his help,and hormone replacement therapy, I managed to lose a little more weight and by January of this year I was down to 151.
I decided to try the Whole30 plan since I’d heard so much about it.
The full on program didn’t really work for me (since it made me just not want to eat at all instead of just modify my diet)…but by the end of January 2015 I was down to 145.
This new number gets me really close to my pre-pregancy, pre-drama, pre-trauma weight.
I feel that if I could get to 138 again, I would prove to myself that I had survived the last 5 years of loss, adoption and struggle…
And now I could start to live again.
Sometimes losing weight is just losing weight…and sometimes it’s sooo much more.
