Here We Are Again

So, after almost a year of doing whatever the hell I wanted, not really eating healthy or exercising, here I am again. Except now it's not so much because I want to, but because I have to. I found out at the end of last year that I have type 2 diabetes. Yay, me. After doing some research, I have a feeling my sudden diagnosis likely has to do with a lovely hormonal disorder I have called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. To get my diabetes under control as well as getting my hormones straightened out I'm having to seriously change my lifestyle. And the more I read about the changes I need to make, the more I want to rail against it all. I love food, more specifically I love carbs like bread and pasta, and I am seriously struggling with coming to terms with what I can and can't have. I sometimes have a tendency to focus on the negative so right now I'm trying not to focus on the limitations I'm going to face. Not that that is exactly easy though.

Fear Being In The Same Place

I abandoned this blog almost a year ago because I was so frustrated and discouraged. If you read my last post in August of last year, then you know that I was planning on setting up a doctor's appointment to determine if I had polycystic ovary syndrome. After some blood work and testing the answer was yes, I do have PCOS. I was given a prescription for birth control pills and that was it. I've been on them for almost a year now and the only difference I've personally noticed is that I'm not longer losing my hair which is growing back to both my relief and annoyance. Perpetually frizzy looking hair just sucks and is a pain to deal with.

Sucker Punch

So I realize it's been over a month since I updated this blog. I've been dealing with a lot personal and medical issues recently in regards to my weight loss and I just wasn't ready to share. Losing the weight has been much harder than I anticipated. I figured once I changed my diet and really started working out, the weight would really start to drop, at least initially just because I have so much to lose. But that's not what happened. I dropped just below 300 lbs once and then a week or two later, I bopped back up to just over 300 and that's where I've stayed. It's been massively frustrating because nothing I do differently seems to make any difference. So I've gotten very discouraged and I've started struggling with the depression again.

In addition to the weight loss issues, a month or two back I started noticing that I was losing a lot more hair than was normal when I took a shower or brushed my hair. Instead of just some strands here and there, when I ran my fingers through my hair, I was getting clumps. And my hair just felt thinner. I've always had very thick hair but suddenly it wasn't anymore. I thought maybe it was because I'd been dying my hair about every two months for almost a year to maintain the red hair that I loved.  So I returned to my natural brunette hair color and worked at really conditioning my hair, hoping that would help. It didn't. When I went to get my hair cut a few weeks ago by mom's cousin, she confirmed that my hair was thinning and told me I should get some blood work done because maybe it was a thyroid issue.

After my hair cut, I went back out to my car and just for the heck of it did a google search on causes of hair loss with women. One of the first results that came up was by WebMD listing hair loss as a symptom of polycystic ovary syndrome. I had a light bulb go off then. My mom had sent me a text months back telling me I should look into it as she thought I might have it, but I more or less ignored the issue. Now, though, looking at all the different symptoms, I realized that I was positive for every single one of them: menstrual problems (up until a month ago, I hadn't had a period in at least five years and then I suddenly started again for some reason), hair loss, acne and oily skin, obesity, depression and/or mood swings, difficulty sleeping, and fertility problems. The last one was the only one I couldn't confirm simply because I've never tried to get pregnant.

Repeat Everyday

Two years.  It has been almost exactly two years since I abandoned this blog and basically gave up on ever losing weight.  It's honestly been a rough couple of years.  I quit my job at the bank very shortly after my last blog post because I hated it so much.  In October of 2014 I ended up attending Extreme Weight Loss Destination Boot Camp up in Denver, Colorado for a week.  We were given meal plans, recipes, exercise plans, and a whole lot of other really great info.  I met some really awesome people, but honestly found it a little hard to connect because there really wasn't anyone else there my age.  When I got back home, I really tried to make things work, but I really didn't enjoy a lot of the food which I felt lacked flavor and could take quite a while to prepare.  So I soon fell off the wagon and returned to my old habits.

At that point I basically stopped caring about my weight and resigned myself to being overweight.  I tried going back to UNM in the spring of 2015, but ended up having to drop all but one class because I was failing them all.  I started a new job in March of last year working for at a dry cleaners.  I've been there for a little over a year now.  I continued to struggle with severe depression to the point that I was suicidal and cutting again.  The binge eating and bulimia also continued and my weight spiked again back up into the 320's.

And that brings us to the present.  I returned to college this past spring at my local community college and for the first time since graduating high school, I was actually very successful.  I passed all five of my classes with straight A's and really enjoyed myself.  I found that I was a much happier person and I think I went through a lot of mental and emotional changes.  I stopped getting so down on myself and stopped caring so much what people think of me.  There are a lot of days that I look in the mirror and think, Hey, looking good, girl!  I'm not stupid, I know that I'm still morbidly obese, I know that by society's standards I look like crap, but I'm learning to be comfortable in my own body, to put more stock in the words of those who love me than those who don't.  Honestly, if someone started talking bad about me, rather than getting depressed and feeling worthless now, I'd be more inclined to flip them off and tell them to shut up.  Um, just to be clear, I don't go around flipping people off, but in that situation, it would be very tempting.  If I was a better person, I would ignore them and move along, but I'm really bad at being passive and ignoring things that piss me off.  As my best friend recently commented, I'm not an indecisive or passive person at all.  I can be very passionate which means that sometimes I react or say things without thinking it through.  Something else to work at, I guess...

Getting Back to the Journey

So I realize it's been over a month since I last blogged and for that I would like to apologize.  I promise though it was not for lack of trying.  I started a new job a little over a month ago and I've been working full-time, but instead of sitting down all the time like my last job, I was on my feet a lot more which as I had mentioned, really affected my feet and I was dealing with a lot of pain from them.  The other side effect, being absolutely exhausted at the end of the day, was a result of a combination of running around a lot more than I was used to and trying to learn a lot of stuff in a short amount of time.  So I would get home from work, eat, feed my dogs and cats, and pretty much crash.  I did try to blog a few times and inevitably woke up several hours later with my cheek pressed against the keyboard and a long string of letters and numbers filling my screen.  So to an extent, I guess I gave up.  So where am I now?  Well, I haven't lost a ton of weight, a little under 10 lbs actually.  I've been quite disappointed with myself for not doing as well as I would like.  Part of the problem is that I went really hard at it in the beginning and I think I basically burned myself out.  So to an extent, I'm starting over, but at a slower pace.  Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint.