Honesty

It’s been 7 months since I posted to this blog. Well, there’s the thing. Life happened.

The summer before last when I was very thin and into last spring, which is when was the last time I posted, I was wearing smalls and small-mediums and size 10 jeans and at 160 pounds. I still had to 10 pounds to lose to be “a healthy weight for my height.” Woohoo, right?  Wrong. I secretly hated the way I looked. HATED IT. Thin skin hung and yes, flopped everywhere. My boobs were so deflated that they looked just like the same thin, floppy skin that hung from beneath my arms. Now this from a gal that has spend years being a DD cup at least! I undressed and dressed in the dark. I didn’t want to have sex for fear that my husband would realize that I looked like a terribly old, wrinkly, saggy skinned woman. I’d lost 150 pounds. WHEN DID I GET TO BE PRETTY? I was frail. I started having uncontrollable anxiety attacks. My depression became worse.

Everyone applauded me. I was an inspiration. Every time someone would say that I would think, “Don’t make me your inspiration!! No, No, please don’t! I’m not inspiring! I’m a FRAUD!! I don’t want to be Sporty Girl at the gym all the time! I don’t want to eat salad every day! I’m a FRAUD!” But I would smile, and thank them, and say my mantra, “Everything in moderation.” Because I truly hoped that someday I would feel like I could eat the things I wanted and loved in moderation, but not then. I felt denied. I lied about it, because I kept thinking that if I just sucked it up and accepted that this is how I need to eat now, that eventually I WOULD accept it and it WOULD feel “normal”. 3 years later I still didn’t feel that way.

But all I felt like was that I’d lied to everyone who was inspired by my weight loss, and in return, they were encouraged and accepting of my becoming this thin and “healthy” to the point that society was happy but I…was not. I literally hated my new, thin body. THIS is what I get for all of my sacrifice? My children would beg us to stay home with them from the gym, just one night. “Please, Mama? We miss you. You are gone every night and lots of days. Please?” This is what I hurt my kids for? To look like this and make society and my doctor happy? Actually, nope. I still had 10 more pounds to lose. I thought that healthy equalled happy?? It felt like I was trying to be perfect. No light at the end of the tunnel.

So now that you know what my mental state was , I can share what happened to my overall health. The illnesses started. In the past 7 months, I have been sick with one thing after another almost continuously. I had/have stomach lining inflammation. It was bad enough that every time I would bend or kick, or squat, or lift a weight, I’d get acid reflux so badly I thought I would throw up. A couple of times I did. I had every test done on ones stomach that is possible, and got on some medication. It’s similar to an ulcer in a way, but it’s my entire stomach lining. During this time, I was unable to exercise, and ate pretty much crackers and soup. Apparently it’s caused by stress. They weren’t very clear on it, because it isn’t very common.

Along the mid to tail end of that crisis I began to also have daily, all day migraines. Pain bad enough to make me cry when exposed to sunlight. I had migraines constantly with no end to the pain for 38 days. During this time they tried every migraine medicine available, and finally went for a daily migraine medication.

As I was getting comfortable with the daily migraine medication, we went on a trip and stayed with people who smoked. I’d been ill for about 3-4 months at this point, had not managed to go to the gym more than once or twice and those experiences were painful. I was miserable. I was depressed. I wasn’t healthy or eating right and I had started to regain weight. So my previous thoughts, issues and problems, grew. Finally my husband and family, and close friends started saying, “Get well. You can worry about re-losing the weight after you are well.) Who knew that would be such long a time period? But at least it took some of the pressure to be perfect off. Yet, now every time I stepped on a scale, I started counting backwards. Now I have 20 more pounds, 30…

At any rate, by the time we returned home I had a sinus infection. My asthma had flared horrifically and I was just ILL. Since my head was full of all of these thoughts about my weight, and my health, I wasn’t really talking to anyone about it. Also, my regular doctor became ill herself, so I wasn’t dealing with the same physician that I’d had through my weight loss. By the time I went to the doctor, I had a sinus infection, ear infections and bronchitis.

The sinus infection, and bronchitis pairing has repeated itself twice since September. I’m sick with it again now. I’ve been diagnosed with chronic infections. I’m on super penicillin and steroids. The super antibiotic has plenty of side effects on it’s on. It hasn’t been fun. Hopefully this will finally kick it this time. So I have actually been sick and unable to go to the gym since basically July. I stopped eating right about that time too.

Something inside of me burst during those months and the honesty kept floating to the surface of my thoughts. I was SICK of eating like a bird. I was SICK of sitting by while the people around me indulged (and yes, I know it IS an indulgence) in scones or cookies at the coffee shop. I was sick of smiling when someone offered me a piece of cake at a party and saying, “Oh no, not me, thank you. I have xx many more pounds to lose.” My WHOLE LIFE had become about how many pounds I was supposed to lose, about how many time or hours I could spend at the gym. It never did. I cannot BE that girl who focus on pounds and inches and races, races to reach some goal on some board for the doctor.

It made me miserable. So sick for months and unable to work on being healthy at all and trying desperately to cope with this depression and figure who… who I was and what I wanted for myself, I have regained a good 50-60 pounds.

I feel like a failure. I feel like I let people down who thought I should look like I did in high school. I’m 46 years old. I’d rather read a book, or walk in the park or play a fantasy game than a sports game and any of you who knew me then should remember that is *exactly* what I was like, even if it’s not what I LOOK like anymore.

Gareth and I are supposed to go to a club/bar and see friends play in a band. Friend we haven’t seen since I was thin. I am too humiliated by how much weight I have regained to go. I want to cry, because thin or fat, I feel like a failure.

My plan, my hope is  to get back to the gym when I am well. Not every day. I’m already working on eating better again. I’m going to lose some of the weight I’ve regained. But not all of it. I deserve to have the curves that I think are sexy, and I deserve to be able to get undressed with the light on and not feel bad about that after as many years as my sweet husband and I have been together. Not only that, he let me in on his secret that he finds me more attractive more curvy than I was in a size 10. So there, society. Kiss my now fat, but (hopefully in the next year to be fitter and curvy) arse.

I realized before that I pushed so hard and so fast that I really did NOT lose weight in a very healthy manner. That’s okay. What I lose this time will be based more on strength training, more PiYo, more Yoga, Zumba for cardio because I love it not because I feel like if there’s a class I have to go. That’s crap.

I have to try be happy. That has to be the goal. Right?

So if you saw me 2 years ago and I was very thin, and you see me soon, and I’ve regained weight, I hope you aren’t disappointed in me. I’d like to think that if you are my friend, that you’d understand that sometimes life happens.