The Tale of Me

UPDATE: 237. And thank you all. :)

Let's start the week out right. I don't often talk about myself, how I'm built, size, weight issues, medical stuff, etc. A lot of y'all know that I'm ADD and being off my meds is a bad thing. As Mir says, Look! Something shiny! That applies to me. Today I'd like to share with you all a little bit more about me. Do you mind?

I had to ask myself, "Self, are you going to be honest with all your bloggy friends? All these people you're getting to know and enjoy? The ones you wish you could meet in person and hang out with and be best friends forever with? Are you? Huh?"

Then I responded to myself, "Well, what exactly do you mean by honest, Self? How much I weigh? That kind of honest?"

Friends, that's going above and beyond the call of duty, telling you what I weigh, and plus, some of you might be reading this while you're eating. Oh, and too, I don't have a scale anymore. Mine died a horrible death and I haven't bothered replacing it. It was evil. EVIL.

I'm headed to the doctor's office this morning, which made me think of all of this honesty and traumatic weight issues, so I thought I'd write this BEFORE I find out what I weigh. Then I could honestly say that I have no idea. But it occurred to me that I do know how much I weighed at my highest points, as well as how much I weighed last spring when I started seeing the doctor. Wait. This post wasn't supposed to be all about weight.

ANYWAY, I wanted to tell you who I am already! My mom and some of the women in the family have had thyroid problems. My mom and aunt have had their thyroids out. So every time I'd go to the doctor and fill out the health forms and tell them that I was lethargic and depressed, they'd draw blood and tell me my thyroid levels were normal. So yeah, confirming my worst fears, I was just fat and lazy. But I really didn't care so much.

Let's go backwards a little now. Growing up I was very athletic. I played basketball through high school and college, rode a bike to work every day when I started working after college (alright, only because I still didn't know how to drive), ate healthy and stayed in shape. Then I burned down the kitchen of the lady I lived with. And started dating the Hunny and got engaged. And met his family, who ate lots of pasta with cream sauce (yes! real cream!) who drank and taught me to. I was still just a little concerned with my shape.

Then I had Maybelline. And got back into the pre-baby jeans. Then I had Oatmeal Head. And got back into the pre-baby jeans. Then we moved to Florida and I had Little Guy. During that pregnancy I gained over 60 pounds and tipped the scales at about 250. None of it came off after the baby. None. Mr. Ben and Mr. Jerry didn't help any. The plummet into depression didn't help. The migraines which abused me while nursing the baby didn't help any. I wasn't helping myself. And I refused to diet. I'd taken enough health classes to know what that would do to my metabolism and health.

Fast forward to the summer of 2001. My brother has been doing a program called Body for Life and swears by it. Well, if you've ever met me, you know that I've always idolized Lil' Bro. We'd have conversations and email about this program and he convinced me it was the best thing ever. Not a diet! And it's really not. It's a fantastic program. Especially if you read the book. So I started it, with his help and encouragement.

When I started I weighed 273 pounds - my highest weight ever. My knees were killing me and I couldn't walk up and down stairs. I'm 5'8", so was more than 100 pounds overweight. My beginning aerobic exercise was walking on a little trampoline as rapidly as I could while watching Oprah at night for motivation. I couldn't even walk for that long on a hard surface because of my knees and the trampoline was low impact.

Next I forced the Hunny to take me to the used sporting goods store for a weight bench and weights. I felt like such a wuss in the beginning, but by the end of the twelve weeks I had maxed out my little weight bench's capacity and was feeling good. Down to 238! Strong and ready to tackle ninjas! Ready to celebrate. But I had people around me who were discouraging, argumentative, mean. I let myself be dragged to the bottom again and over the course of the next year I slowly gave up and gave in.

The next five years were all about emotional weight loss and health. Between therapy and excellent friends who mirrored my life back to me, I was able to shed much excess baggage, but still not ready to lose weight. My friends helped me to see what I was putting up with that I shouldn't. They helped me to set boundaries, to learn to listen and be reflective. They helped me deal with a lot of stored up anger. I can't ever begin to express how much I owe them. Thank you Jen, Christy and Meg.

Forward in time again to December of '06 and we move to Tulsa, OK, from Florida! I'm really excited because we're moving close to Lil' Bro and Mom! And I'm a big fat cow! Okay, that wasn't so exciting, truth be told. But here we were, in a new life, starting from scratch in so many ways, taking full advantage of it. One of those ways to take advantage of the new door God opened for me was to find a good doctor and put myself in her capable hands.

Let me tell you, I found the best doctor EVER! When I ran down the list of all of my stuff - the lethargy, depression, now dry skin - she wanted to check my thyroid. I didn't see the point, but she insisted on checking the antibodies. That sounded all sci-fi to me, but go ahead. Sure enough, my antibodies were off the chart and she started me on a natural thyroid med. The following month we discussed the ADD, since the stuff I was taking wasn't working for me. She put me on an extended release med which works great. Last fall she looked at my hormone levels and found my progesterone was rock-bottom low. So I now use a natural compound cream.

All in all? When I started seeing her last spring I weighed in at 263. I know this because I asked when I went in last month. And last month? I weighed in at 243. Today I will find out where I am. I might even let you know. Depends. But I can tell you that my energy levels are up, my eating is down, I'm exercising occasionally and all of my clothes fit differently. In fact, I need to go shopping, since everything pretty much hangs on me right now. And I'm not having to work at any of it. When my doctor wold me she wanted to bring me back into balance so she could wean me off of some of the meds, she meant it.

Really, I probably will update later today. And I can't take any credit for the weight loss, which is a bummer. At the same time, I know I probably won't screw it up, either, since my body's just doing what it needs to do. Yay!

Until I write again ...

Flea