Growing Pains

This is some true shit right here.

I’ve come to recognize that every rough stretch of time I go through in this process of mine has a purpose.

It’s hell to go through, but as Winston Churchill noted, when you’re going through hell…keep going.

It’s been two years since I started down this road, and even as I type this, I’m nursing one hell of a sugar-withdrawal headache. The holidays are already kicking my ass this year, and they’ve barely begun. I’m on a new anti-depressant which seems to have EAT ALL THE THINGS as a side effect, and since that’s my default setting…yeah. Needless to say, being so close to my goal and fighting depression (and the treatment for it) has made my weight loss even more painfully slow, and dealing with the disappointment of being so far away from where I want to be, having my body not cooperate when I’m doing everything I’m supposed to, eats away at me at times. And when my brain throws up road blocks so I can’t even manage to do the things I’m supposed to do and the scale creeps back up again, I feel like I’m falling apart. Metaphorically.

The people closest to me see it. It’s hard to write about and not feel like a whiny sack of crap.

But then one morning I wake up and the feelings have slipped away, like a horrible storm. I feel like I’ve been mentally tossed around, and on the inside I’m battered and bleeding and so very tired. But I realize that I’m alive, and with that comes that cool, clean feeling like after a storm passes. And as I’m cleaning up the mess, I can tell that I feel different about everything.

In a way, it’s very much like the old me has to die painfully for the new me to grow.

The physical changes are a lot like watching a plant grow, which is probably why the scale is so important to me. In the same way you can pull up a chair and watch a plant, and know that it’s growing, you can’t actually observe it. It’s too slow. My weight loss is that kind of slow. I’m changing, but so slowly that I can’t actually see it. And that has the power to throw me into a tailspin.

But once the spinning stops, I come out of it with new insights. I suddenly have new perspectives on this process that weren’t there before. To be fair, some of them are things that my friends have said to me. Words of comfort, bits of advice, things that seem so very “easy for you to say” at the time. But a lot of it is me needing to change the way I look at things, and my ability to do that seems to only come after a bad stretch of time where everything seems like a pointless waste of time.

It’s so hard to describe those feelings and how they eat away at me. I guess because when I start to describe my thought processes, and how they make me feel, I can argue them. I can say exactly what my fears are, and I can build a hundred arguments over why I’m worried over nothing. Or how I shouldn’t let “that” make me so upset.

And it seems like I don’t want help. In those moments, maybe I really don’t, in a way. Because I know what I’m supposed to be feeling. I know what I’m supposed to keep doing. Yet I can’t feel the right feelings. I don’t feel like I rock. I don’t feel like a superhero doing amazing things. I don’t feel strong and fit and healthy. I don’t feel hope that I’m ever going to be anything more than “less fat.” I don’t feel proud, or excited, or happy. And I’m still doing all the things I need to do, only it all feels useless. Like my life is a house of cards and one wrong move and it’s back to fat pants again.

But there’s no choice for me anymore. I have to keep going. Even when my feelings are all wrong, and when I’m feeling like I needed to switch trains a couple of stops back, only I’m not 100% sure, and don’t know how to find out, but fear I could be riding to the completely wrong destination.

And then it passes. I don’t know how or why. I’m not sure if there’s a catalyst or trigger of some sort that snaps me out of it, but I’ll notice that one thing has changed. And once that one thing is out there, more and more changes come into relief.

Two years later I’m at a point that I have some stuff figured out, but the more I get sorted, it’s like I find more stuff that needs work. And I confess there are days that…well, have you ever set to work cleaning something—like the garage or attic, where there’s a ton of stuff and you only kind of know a portion of what’s ahead of you—and you start moving  things and opening boxes and finding more and more stuff to sort and clean, so you close the door and go “fuck it, tomorrow is another day?” Well, that’s kind of what this process is like for me.

Some days I make great progress. I feel like you do when you’ve gone through a box, got it all sorted, cleaned, and filed away neatly and got rid of the stuff that’s no use to you anymore. Sometimes you feel so good you just grab another box and life is awesome.

And then there are days that the box is huge, all the stuff in it is filthy, and there’s no clear line as to what you should keep and what’s garbage. What if I need it later? Is this even my stuff? Where the hell did I get this damn thing? Oh man, that’s awful and useless and needs to go, but I’m so attached to it!

It’s days like that I feel like I’m sitting in a really dirty garage on the floor, surrounded by piles of crap, trying to weed out the things I need and clean them up and find a place for them, but it’s like the mountains threaten to collapse on me every time I touch something.

I guess if I’ve figured anything out recently it’s that I’m cleaning up a mess that was 43 years in the making, and I’ve only been at it for 2 years. It doesn’t make me much less impatient, mind you, but it helps a little.

As does focusing on all that is well and good, and looking at how much I’ve done in 2 years. Two years ago today, I stepped on the scale for the first time in many years, and I almost quit right then and there. It was all too much. WAY too much.

• I was 358.7 pounds.
• I had plantar faciitis. I could not walk or stand without pain.
• My resting heart rate was in the mid-90’s and my blood pressure was around 140/100.
• I couldn’t go up a flight of stairs without being out of breath and needing to sit.
• I had recurring yeast-type infections on my skin from chronic high blood sugar.
• My acne rosacea was very pronounced, with a very red face.
• The symptoms of PCOS and perimenopause were present: hot flashes, flushing, very heavy periods, and a chin full of pimples.
• I wore a women’s size 4X, 28/30. My feet were a 9.5 wide. My bra was a 46D.

I really did almost quit right at the start. I’ve gained and lost hundreds of pounds and the process is never, ever fun. I don’t like it at all. And the sure and certain knowledge that whatever I lost would just come back eventually with even more weight sucked.

But I’ve written about all that at length. And God bless you if you’ve hung in with me for the past two years. Writing about it keeps me accountable, and it’s cheaper than therapy. And I’ve had the added bonus of knowing that there are a few people out there who can identify with some of the stuff I’ve written and have found it within themselves to give weight loss another try. I know that hearing “ME TOO” from other people has helped me feel less alone, and if you’ve read something here and felt less alone as well, that’s pretty cool.

So, it’s my two year Fativersary, and lots of stuff has changed. Here’s the state of the union:

• I’m down almost 175 pounds. I’ve lost just about half my body weight. The amount of pounds left to lose is, in the grand scheme of things, really small.
• Plantar faciitis has buggered off. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it in ages.
• My resting heart rate was 55 at my last doctor’s appointment, and my blood pressure was 104/70.
• Stairs are no problem. I used to get to church and by the time I got to the top of the stairs that lead to the sanctuary, I had to sit for a few minutes to catch my breath before I could warm up. I can sing while going up the stairs now. I no longer take the elevator to go up a flight. In fact, I pretty much run up a flight of stairs without even thinking about it.
• I can still tell when I’ve had too much sugar because there’s a couple of spots on my abdomen that will break out in a yeast infection. To that end, I keep my intake of sugar on the low side, but I don’t cut it out completely. Moderation is the key.
• My face is a LOT less red these days. My dermatologist would like to take credit for that, but it was clearing up before I even stepped foot in his office. So he can suck it.
• My gynecologist said that I pushed menopause back by a good ten years. I’m not sure if this is good news or not. But I do know that my skin has completely cleared up, my periods are regular and on the light side, and I would actually kill for the occasional hot flash because now instead of being sweaty all the time, I’m probably going to freeze to death.
• And I’m wearing a size large (occasionally an XL) on the bottom and have retired my Lane Bryant charge card since I’m too small for their clothes now. I wear a size 16 pants and a 12/14 on top, and my bra is a 34D. I get called “skinny” all the time. Which is funny, because I’m really not. Oh, and my shoe size is now an 8.5 medium. Heh. I had fat feets.

I think the difference is most pronounced with my clothes on, to be honest. Clothes cover a lot of sins, man. 

The pics above say a lot to me. In the “before” pic, I’m wearing a 4X sweatshirt and a pair of black stretch pants because that’s all that fit me at the time. I was working at a fair at the church and had to take four Advil every four hours just to get through the day. And I was so sore at night I could barely move.

In the “after” picture, I’m still wearing black stretch pants, but they’re compression running tights, and they’re a size large. I’m also wearing good running shoes and a running sweatshirt (also a large) because guess what I did that day? I ran. Probably 3.75 miles. No Advil required. And I wasn’t even sore later. In fact, I took the kids out trick-or-treating that night.

But I think there’s a lot of honesty in pictures with less clothes. Because with all the good you can see, the drawbacks to extreme weight loss are much more obvious, and I think it’s easier to see why looking in the mirror at my unclothed body is still difficult. I think it’s important that people see what being morbidly obese does to your body. Because while I’ve been able to fix a whole host of health problems by losing weight, I can’t do shit about what I’ve done to my stretched-out skin suit. And while on the one hand, it’s a reminder of the good that I’ve accomplished so far, it’s a pain in the ass to deal with, and it also reminds me of what I had allowed myself to become in the first place. 

It’s cool and everything, but it’s an honest picture of what I see. And if sometimes what I see makes me sad and angry, that’s okay. I have a right to feel what I feel when I feel it.

And today, the holidays are kicking my ass and it’s only just past Thanksgiving. So many parties full of good food…

Sigh.

Reining it in is hard. Fighting depression is hard. Fighting the treatment for depression is hard. Winter is hard.

My goal for the next 6 or so months is to maintain my weight. If I lose a bit, that’s cool. But if I can keep my weight within five pounds of 185, I’m good with that for now. I’m going to have to maintain eventually, and I need the practice. And I could use a bit of a respite from chasing that goal. I’m practicing my patience and persistence.

After all, winter is a time of dormancy around here, but life goes on. And then all at once, one day, it’s Spring.