I've Been Turned into a Cow...Can I Go Home?: The Sequal

No really...this time I HAVE been turned into a cow. I stepped on the scale this morning and weighed in at a whopping 280 pounds—that makes 20 pounds gained since Adriana was born last December. I'm not proud of this by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, this is the first time I've ever admitted to anyone other than my husband and the DMV what I weigh. I didn't get this way overnight—although it was pretty stinking close. I've always struggled with my weight. In fact, one of my earliest memories is that of a girl in preschool telling me that my thighs were too big. At four years old, I had just learned what my thighs were!!! During my formative years, my Mom (who's going to kill me if she ever reads this) was going through a very difficult time personally. And as her female ancestors before her, she turned to food for comfort. It wasn't uncommon for us to sit down together and spend some nice quality Mommy/Daughter time on the couch scarfing a bad of snack sized candy bars. She insists to this day that she bought all that chocolate for my Dad, but I know the truth. From the time I was three or four years old, my Dad had half of his stomach removed and as a result couldn’t eat that kind of stuff all the time like he used to, because it would make him sick. If she wanted to go out, it was to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. Not the six ounce ones that they call “large” today. No, back then they served a large in a 32 ounce cup. Would YOU give your 9 year old a QUART of ice cream?!?!?!?!?!? I wasn’t allowed to do this ALL the time— only when Mom was doing it. Unfortunately then I would just sneak it. Children don’t understand the concept of binge eating. They just know that for what seems like forever, it’s “all food all the time”. Then it stops—no rhyme or reason. I don’t know a child who could be exposed to that for long periods of time (thirteen years in my case) and then just be expected to stop. Most adults I know don’t have that kind of willpower. Coupled with my vice of being fiercely independent you get a child who wants to eat and will do anything necessary to get it. Knowingly or not, my mother created a monster. I’m not saying that I’m not responsible for what I do now. Regardless of WHY I make the decisions I make, I solely am responsible for my actions.

Another piece to this puzzle is my thyroid disorder and the PCOS that I currently have. Both, if left untreated, tend to add vast amounts of weight to a body. Do you know how many times in my life I’ve been told just to “diet and exercise” and that should take care of my problem? I stopped counting at age 18. It seems a logical answer to my problem. However, I did a little experiment last year. I spent four months working out 5 days a week for an hour and ten minutes. Two three of those days I spent forty-five minutes on a pretty rigorous workout on the elliptical machine and 25 minutes doing weights. Then on the other two days a week, a friend and I took our lunch hour plus a break (an hour and 15 minutes) and walked close to four miles—two miles one way and two miles back. I also made sure that my caloric intake was no more than 1800 calories per day. So here’s what the math looks like on that:

MWF
Calories: 1800
Eliptical: -810
Weights: -315
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Net Calories: 675 per day.

Tues/Thursday
Calories: 1800
Walking: 610
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Net Calories: 1190

Total for 5 days: 4405
Total for 5 days w/o exercise: 9000


Do you know how much weight I lost? I think I managed to lose five pounds—not in 5 days. In FOUR MONTHS. I’ll be honest—I wasn’t always 100% faithful. There were days I went home and ate a pint of Haagan Daas for dinner or only worked out twice a week. But following a 90% 10% plan (good diet and exercise 90% eating junk and no exercise 10% of the time) you would think that I would have gotten a little more out of it than a measly 5 pound loss. Is it any wonder that I have no motivation to exercise right now? And with my thyroid so out of whack (and the PCOS in tow), I could eat just enough for my body to function and I’d still gain weight. I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way. I guess if I could SEE something happening, I’d be more motivated to keep going no matter how slow the process.

Ben called me this afternoon to tell me that our insurance was now officially switched over from Kaiser of Colorado Springs to Kaiser of Denver. Now I can make an appointment with the endocrinologist recommended to me by the doctor who diagnosed my thyroid condition 24 years ago (I don’t feel like I should be that old…). Hopefully he can help me get my thyroid under control. Once that’s done, then we can work on getting the PCOS (and subsequent insulin resistance) taken care of. I can only hope. That seems to be all I have left right now. And even that is running dry.

posted by Brandi at 2:29 PM