Yes, this blog is about making fun projects, not about weight loss. But let me tell you, weight loss has been a huge project in my life. But not a fun one. I like to think of it as "making a new me."
I have struggled with weight for pretty much my whole life, especially in the last 10 years. I was diagnosed with PCOS early in 2008. The symptoms of PCOS include weight gain, acne, carb cravings, and infertility. I discovered that I had it while my husband and I were trying to conceive our first child. After a year of trying, I went to a doctor for tests, which confirmed that I had PCOS. Luckily after a few months of using fertility drugs, we finally conceived a baby. Angela Faith was born in March 2009 and she has been the biggest blessing in our lives.
Anyway, by then, I weighed 60 pounds more than I did on my wedding day. I tried my best to eat healthy, but it was hard since I was busy with work and being a new mom. Near the end of 2010, we decided that Angie needed a baby brother or sister. I started eating healthy, i.e. low calorie and low carb. We bought a treadmill in January which I used every day. We went back to the fertility doctor and found that I was pregnant with our second child in April 2011. Then at my 10 week appointment in June, I was told that our baby no longer had a heartbeat. That was the most devastating blow of my life. Since then I have continued to diet and exercise with little results.
All along, I have tried many diets and exercise programs. All with little or no results. I even started a strict diet once, eliminating all sugar and counting calories. I gained 8 pounds within the first week. That terrified me. So the whole dieting and exercise thing is a little touchy for me. I feel like I have no control. Which is not exactly true. The truth is I have very little control, but I do have some.
I get so sick of reading magazine articles about women who have lost a lot of weight. They all go something like this:
I had been overweight my whole life. I felt like I tried everything and it never worked. Until I turned my life around and started doing X, Y and Z. I lost 100 pounds in one year and now I'm super skinny and healthy.
Those articles are meant to encourage people. They don't encourage me. They make me upset because when you have already been doing X, Y and Z for more than a year with little results, it's difficult to be happy for those people.
Having this obstacle in my way, it has been a very difficult and endless journey. I'm sure it would be even without having to deal with PCOS. I have been going back and forth the last several years. Meaning I will start a diet and exercise plan and continue it for a few months and then give up after it produces no results. Well, I finally came to a realization:
It's not going to be easy.
It's not going to be fast.
It's not going to be fair.
Since I have PCOS, diet and exercise are not going to produce the same, or even similar results as someone who does not have it. Which means it will not be easy or fast. And it's definitely not fair. Am I okay with that? Absolutely not! But what other choice do I have? So my new plan is to NOT GIVE UP. I certainly don't like the fact that I can spend 6 months on a strict diet, working out on the treadmill every day for 45-60 minutes and not lose a pound. But if I keep going, I will eventually lose a small amount of weight. Some days it doesn't seem like it's worth it. All that work and for so little. Sometimes I feel like I would be a lot happier eating cake and cookies than playing the weight loss lottery. But I am determined to keep going. Now, I have lost some weight in the last year. Just not nearly as much as I would have expected to based on what I've been doing. If I hadn't lost any weight at all, then I'm positive I would have given up by now. It's hard to be motivated if what you're doing doesn't produce any results. I do, however, have a couple other things that motivate me. One is my family. I want to be healthy so that I am here for them for a long time. I also want to be healthy so that one day we may have another child. Although that still scares me to death, I believe it will happen some day, I just need to remember it's in God's time. Secondly, I don't like the person I see in the mirror. I hate seeing pictures of myself because the person I see in the pictures is not the same person I see in my head. In my head, I see me from about 8-10 years ago. When I see how I actually look, it is pretty upsetting. I would like for the real me to look more like the me I see in my head.
So anyway, there is my big, long personal story about what I have been through. I will continue to work on myself until I get to where I want to be. And I am prepared for that to take a LONG time. So from now on, I plan to have "Weight Loss Wednesdays" where I will post about weight loss. Whether it's something that helps, or just my progress, that will be the topic on Wednesdays.
Sarah I admire this post. It had to have been hard to do.
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