I was the stick skinny girl in school. The one who actually wore a size 0 at one point in her life without even thinking about it. Who ate and ate and still fell in the 'underweight' category on the charts. Even my final days of high school, when I was nearly 4 months pregnant, I hadn't broken 120 pounds yet.
I didn't stay that skinny. Four kids and twenty-some years later, I found myself teetering on the edge of obese. According to the BMI charts, I was 'overweight' at 178 pounds, just not quite to the dreaded 'obese'.
I was frustrated. I didn't want to be obese. I ate well; home cooked meals, not fast food. Honestly, even as a teen I didn't like fast food, and by the time I hit 30 I pretty much refused to eat it. Eating out had better mean a sit-down restaurant, not burgers and fries, or I wasn't interested in being taken out to eat, thank you. We didn't and still don't eat out much. I didn't drink soda, as I'd figured out before hitting my twenties that cola gave me a stomach ache, and in my mid-30's I had to give up even my favorite never-caffeinated sodas because their manufacturers had started adding high fructose corn syrup to them. HFCS gives me severe headaches, so I've been avoiding it way longer than the media has been preaching against it. I've always hated potato chips. Prepackaged baked goods fell way short in the taste department, so those weren't my downfall either. All in all, I was a pretty healthy eater.
So why in the world was I so darn fat. (I do realize that a lot of women would look at me and say "178 pounds at 5' 7" tall is not fat." ) I puzzled over it. I researched. I soul searched.
Well, I didn't exercise other than doing a lot of walking and more physical labor each day than most American women my age. And I did have a big sweet tooth. Baking is my specialty. And I do eat like a farm hand (my excuse: I am a farm hand.) But I ate a lot of potatoes and noodles. Those starchy carbs.
So I started exercising in a focused way. In my typical fashion of "if you say you're going to do it, then you better get it done or die trying" (a morale I was taught in my youth: if you make a promise to someone, you better keep your promise. Be a person of integrity), I did it. I exercised five days a week, half hour a day, for about a year and a half. Along with that, I tried to eat less carbs--unless they were fruits and veggies--and more protein. And I lost weight. I lost almost 30 pounds, getting down to 149 when I hit the point that I was starting to think I looked almost too bony (and DH did comment that I was getting awfully bony but then again, I'd been bony when we met, being roughly 120 pounds back then and still with a metabolism that let me consume endless amounts of calories).
Somewhere along that year and a half, I decided I wanted to run the local Memorial Day 5K, and I started training myself for that. 3+ miles, three times a week, with fewer intervals of walking until I was able to actually run (actually more of a jog) 3.5 miles without stopping. I picked up a little weight then, all muscle mass, weighing in at 155 when that 5K came around. I blogged about that, my one and only 5K here.
After doing the 5K, that summer I ran, but not as much. And I exercised, but not always 5 days a week. Then autumn came, and I went to the doctor to get some newly arisen female problems checked out, and ended up being put on severe restrictions in terms of physical activities. The list from the Dr looked something like this: no bending, twisting, pulling, pushing or lifting more than 5 pounds for the next six weeks. I asked about running or jumping and was also told NO.
Needless to say, that was the end of my exercise habit. So I gained a little weight that winter. Lost a little when summer came again, and I was hit and miss running and working out again. That fall was DS1 and family's big move up to MI from SC and into our house for about 18 months. Enter stress into my life big time. Not to mention no space or time to do my workout dvds.
Something in me changed during that winter. I don't know exactly what, and neither do the family doctors I've seen since then--and honestly I'm so tired of getting the same old generalized tests run and not being given a referral to any sort of specialist (like perhaps an endocrinologist)-- even though I've asked for referrals. While, at first, my weight didn't go up much (even though for some reason my waistline ballooned nearly 5 inches in a two day time frame after doing some of those female tests), my blood pressure did. And my iron went down. And then we--the Dr. and I--tried battling my anemia with iron pills, but those gave me digestive upset. And despite having diarrhea every morning, my weight continued to go up. So did the blood pressure. And my resting pulse. My lung function, however, has decreased. Going up a flight of stairs shouldn't affect my breathing, but it does. Going up two flights of stairs--from the laundry area in the basement to the master bedroom--carrying a hamper of clothes about does me in. I am literally coughing and gasping.
This cannot continue. It's time for me again to get serious about a regular exercise routine, and about vetoing those starchy carbs. It's time to switch doctors, and try to find a primary care physician who will listen and not just say "Oh, you're overweight" without looking into why my body got so out of whack that lead to this weight and what we can do to put my body back in stride. It's time for me to do it or die trying. Honestly, I think I'm going to die if I don't try. I'm too young to feel like this.
Last week, I dug out my workout dvds, and I've been doing three or four workout sessions a week, running through a different workout each session, on top of riding The California Horse (which is a huge cardio and core strength workout in itself) three times a week. I'm doing it, albeit in a modified form when I get extremely out of breath, but I'm doing it.
Now to start interviewing, I mean, trying new, primary care doctors to see if we can get to the bottom of what I think is a hormonal/adrenal/thyroid/cortisol from ongoing stress imbalance.
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