Well, The story continues..as I said yesterday, I had gained back all the weight I lost plus some..I was depressed and dissapointed in myself. Before I knew it, everything that had made me happy about myself again was gone...and I did it by overeating. I let food control my life again. I was sick over it....What do I do now?
I started all over again...looking for the one thing that would stick. I was one BIG fish in an ocean of weight loss ideas in an ever-growing market. By now, I had a nice accumulation of weight loss tapes, cob-webs growing on exercise equipment,every weight loss book probablly in print, and a husband that was tired of the spending money on "gimmicks" to lose weight when I wasn't gonna stick to it..I had started to believe that for myself, but I still kept trying.
I don't know what it is about losing weight, but it is like something having a death grip on you and it will not let go....no willpower whatsoever. I was extremely self-concious about my weight. Everything was personal. I had a chip on my shoulder and it wasn't coming off anytime soon. I didn't know where else to go, or what else to do..soooooo I went back to what had worked in the past. I went back to the Doctor I had seen where I lost all the weight. I was so excited and gung-ho like I always get at first. I got my exam and my diet pills and was ready to go. My husband said that he was going to invest into the weight loss business because of how easy it was for them to make a quick couple hundred dollars off me. As usual, I did it for a couple months and then I quit. I didn't want to give up food. I felt deprived and convinced myself that I could'nt enjoy life on a diet plus I couldn't do this anyway so why bother. That has pretty much been the way it has been till recently.
About a year ago, I started having some really bad pains in my chest. They would come and go but when they hit me, it was an extreme pain I had never felt before. It would only last for a few minutes and then stop. I thought it was indigestion and would not worry about it again. It started to happen more often over a period of a few months. I am not one to run to the doctor for every little thing, but the pain was getting to be so intense at times that I was afraid my heart was a problem. One evening, right after eating dinner, it was so intense that I could not breath. It felt as if someone was squeezing me so tight that I could not catch my breath. It went on for a little bit, and shortly after my kids went to bed, it got so bad I asked my husband if I could just drive myself a few blocks to the Emergency Clinic to be checked. He offered to drive me, but I did not want to wake the kids, especially if it was nothing. I drove myself there and was seen quickly. They took my vitals and said that my EKG looked ok. They thought it was my Gall Bladder and I was rushed to the local hospital via ambulance. I sat in the ER for about an hour in extreme pain while waiting for a doctor to come in a write an order for pain medicine. I thought I was gonna die and begged them to help me. I had never known such intense pain.
I finally got to a hospital room and got some pain meds. The next day, I had Gall Bladder surgery. I went home in a couple days and felt way better. After being home for a week, I started to have that same pain again. On my way to a follow-up visit with the surgeon, the attack got so bad again that I returned myself back to the hospital and went quickly back into ER. They say they think that a Gall Stone had been hidden somewhere and we hoped it was not stuck anywhere and would require surgery again. We prayed it would pass. To top it all off, I had gotten pancreatitus! OMG, I never really thought about my poor eating habits causing all of this. Pancreatitus is no game..People die from that. I allowed my eating habits to cause all of that in my life. I had plenty of time to think about it. What would my kids do without a Mom? Were my kids gonna have to deal with losing a Mom at a young age too? I can't begin to tell you all the things that went thru my mind those days. I was very scared and so was my family...because I was on straight IV fluids for almost 2 weeks..my lips were as dry as the Sahara Dessert. I was very sick. I lived on Morphine. Not my idea of a vacation. My youngest came to visit one day and said Mom, why don't you just get healthy and come home. I miss you, he said. I want you to lose weight. It killed me that my 8 year old was upset because my weight issues had landed me in the hospital. Yes, I survived it..but I was a differrent person coming out of that. I made it back home to heal and finally got back to work. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it for me. When I returned back to the doctor, he informed me that tests taken during surgery showed that I had a fatty liver. At first I thought little of that, but he quickly informed me that you can't live without one, and that a Fatty liver isn't a good thing. He made it clear that at the current state, it wasn't where it wasn't still possible to fix by weight loss. He suggested that I find a good program and get started losing weight. That is what brings me to Medifast and the next Chapter for my book of life. I'll get into that in the next blog.
In The Beginning....What Led Me To This Place...
This is my journey, my life....good, bad, wrong, or right....I can't change the past, but I can certainly change the path I'm on, and make a better future for myself and my children. This is my story of weight loss and getting healthy.
As a kid, I was pretty active...always into something. Looking back I would say I was really good at starting something, but never good at seeing it thru. I grew up in an Italian family where food was a part of the culture.... Any good Italian family back in the day had a pot of sauce going on the stove, and a big loaf (or two) of Italian bread hanging around for dipping. Pizza and Pasta was a staple food in my house....so were TV dinners, McDonalds, and our favorite trip to the DQ.
I was a very active teenager. There was always a neighborhood game of Baseball going on at the school yard. We rode our bikes everywhere, and in school, I participated in Track and Field, Volleyball, Basketball, etc. By far, my favorite way to pass time was Roller Skating. I lived and breathed it. There wasn't alot to do in Nebraska.
I guess I would say that I first took note of my weight as a teenager, but what teenager doesn't. I was skinny and tall, but when I looked in the mirror I would ask, "Does this make me look fat?". I thought I needed to be skinnier, so I started my dieting life here. My method of choice was over-the-counter diet pills. I remember it feeling like I had drank 40 cups of coffee at the same time.. I was wired up. I guess that explains the energy to participate in tons of sports and activities. Lol. There were times when I thought starvation would do the trick....but after a few days of that, I was so hungry I would eat it all back in a few days. So that's what they refer to as yo-yo dieting! I think it should have been called doe-doe dieting, because I was a doe doe for doing it! I think I did a real good job at screwing up my metabolism. At the age of 12, my Mother died. I was not a very happy child after that. The rug had been pulled out from under me..... Eating and food became comfort. It was a very rough time in my life.
Let's fast forward to the 20's. The teen years could be a whole different blog for me. There are plenty of stories to tell there. Who knew drinking and drugs caused you to have a case of the munchies.... Ok, I am trying to keep this about weight. I had alot of female issues as a young girl...surgery started at 18 to try to fix things, and ended in a full hysterectomy at around 26. I was devistated. I had alway wanted kids, and now that was gone. Again, food was what brought comfort to me. I think hormones being out of wack didn't help what happened next, but the weight started coming on fast, and I couldn't control it anymore. What I could eat before and never gain an ounce from, was making up for lose time now. I went back to dieting. Over the years leading up to now, I had done practically every diet known to man. I became an expert at the art of dieting, but never was successful at losing the weight. I read books, exercise tapes, diet programs, Doctor assisted plans, etc and yes, I even took phen-fen for a short period of time...I knew everything one would need to know about losing weight.....except for the secret on how to stick to any of it.
One in particular time, was a Doctor asissted meds program to lose weight and it worked at the time. I had about 60 pounds to lose and I did it plus some... I was so excited. I looked great, felt great, and I swore I would never go back to being overweight. I was suppose to go thru a maintenance phase and opted not to because I had thought I had this weight thing all under control. Well, not quite. I gained a few pounds, wasn't worried....gained a few more, oh I can do this....until, I got right back where I started from with an added bonus. I was even heavier. To be continued tomorrow.....
As a kid, I was pretty active...always into something. Looking back I would say I was really good at starting something, but never good at seeing it thru. I grew up in an Italian family where food was a part of the culture.... Any good Italian family back in the day had a pot of sauce going on the stove, and a big loaf (or two) of Italian bread hanging around for dipping. Pizza and Pasta was a staple food in my house....so were TV dinners, McDonalds, and our favorite trip to the DQ.
I was a very active teenager. There was always a neighborhood game of Baseball going on at the school yard. We rode our bikes everywhere, and in school, I participated in Track and Field, Volleyball, Basketball, etc. By far, my favorite way to pass time was Roller Skating. I lived and breathed it. There wasn't alot to do in Nebraska.
I guess I would say that I first took note of my weight as a teenager, but what teenager doesn't. I was skinny and tall, but when I looked in the mirror I would ask, "Does this make me look fat?". I thought I needed to be skinnier, so I started my dieting life here. My method of choice was over-the-counter diet pills. I remember it feeling like I had drank 40 cups of coffee at the same time.. I was wired up. I guess that explains the energy to participate in tons of sports and activities. Lol. There were times when I thought starvation would do the trick....but after a few days of that, I was so hungry I would eat it all back in a few days. So that's what they refer to as yo-yo dieting! I think it should have been called doe-doe dieting, because I was a doe doe for doing it! I think I did a real good job at screwing up my metabolism. At the age of 12, my Mother died. I was not a very happy child after that. The rug had been pulled out from under me..... Eating and food became comfort. It was a very rough time in my life.
Let's fast forward to the 20's. The teen years could be a whole different blog for me. There are plenty of stories to tell there. Who knew drinking and drugs caused you to have a case of the munchies.... Ok, I am trying to keep this about weight. I had alot of female issues as a young girl...surgery started at 18 to try to fix things, and ended in a full hysterectomy at around 26. I was devistated. I had alway wanted kids, and now that was gone. Again, food was what brought comfort to me. I think hormones being out of wack didn't help what happened next, but the weight started coming on fast, and I couldn't control it anymore. What I could eat before and never gain an ounce from, was making up for lose time now. I went back to dieting. Over the years leading up to now, I had done practically every diet known to man. I became an expert at the art of dieting, but never was successful at losing the weight. I read books, exercise tapes, diet programs, Doctor assisted plans, etc and yes, I even took phen-fen for a short period of time...I knew everything one would need to know about losing weight.....except for the secret on how to stick to any of it.
One in particular time, was a Doctor asissted meds program to lose weight and it worked at the time. I had about 60 pounds to lose and I did it plus some... I was so excited. I looked great, felt great, and I swore I would never go back to being overweight. I was suppose to go thru a maintenance phase and opted not to because I had thought I had this weight thing all under control. Well, not quite. I gained a few pounds, wasn't worried....gained a few more, oh I can do this....until, I got right back where I started from with an added bonus. I was even heavier. To be continued tomorrow.....
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