Weight management is a wonderful
topic to cover. I was very excited about this chapter of learning. I have struggled
with weight my entire life. When I was a teenager I always had body issues. I
was a healthy weight but because all my friends were a size 0, 3, or 5, I
started body shaming myself as young as age 12.
I
have struggled with an eating disorder that I wasn’t even aware at the time was
considered one. I used to binge eat and then swallow a ton of laxatives to try
to get rid of the excess food. I did this for about 3 years around the ages of
26-29. The funny and depressing thing is it never made me skinnier. I was about
170 pounds during this time.
I
have been on all ends of the weight spectrum. I have been as small as a size 7
and as large as a size 24. I am the real life Oprah who yo-yo diets through my
entire life. I have tried many different diet fads throughout the years. The
most success I ever had on a diet was with weight watchers. That program helped
me get from 254 pounds to 170 pounds. I went from a size 22 to a size 12. After
that experience, I thought I could diet on my own and stopped attending
meeting. Fast forward 4 years and I am now at my heaviest weight of all time-
tipping the scales at 287.6 pounds. I am morbidly obese. I joined weight watchers 2 days ago and know I
have what it takes to turn this around. Yesterday I went to get an MRI and I
was so fat I could not fit in the hole without my arms squishing in on me.
At
a point of extreme desperation 2 years ago, I attempted to take phentermine
diet pills. I went to red mountain weight loss and they gave me a prescription
every month. The pills made me lose my appetite. They also made my mouth
extremely dry and came with crippling migraines. I lost 12 pounds my first
month, 7 pounds my second and then the weight loss stalled. I also started to
get heart palpitations. I had to go see a cardiologist who hooked me up to a
heart monitor and diagnosed them as PVC’s. I had more than 148 heart
palpitations in a 24 hour span. To this day I still get them randomly. For
anyone who has never experienced heart palpitations, they are the weirdest
sensation in the world. I had them constantly for over a year after I stopped
the use of phentermine. I have never been as unhappy in my life as I was when
my heart did that. There was a point where I actually felt comforted with the
idea of dying to no longer feel the palpitations. I will never touch another
diet pill in my life.
I
was very excited to take a nutrition class as the recommended elective for my
degree. I felt that with proper knowledge maybe I would stop hurting myself and
stop hating myself. I hope to learn how to make my body my friend instead of
the enemy. I want to learn how food works for good and not use it as an abuse
towards myself. I know that healthy eating and proper diet have as much to do
with what is wrong in my head as much as it is about proper nutrition. I know I
have to fix more than what I am putting in my mouth to make any real changes.
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