ObesityHelp

How do you start your story when you've been "FAT" for as long as you can remember.  Actually, I was skinny as a kid but my Grandmother who raised me felt that I was, as she called it punny.  She took me to the ever so caring doctors and they put me on Iron Tonic & Cod Liver Oil.  So every morning without fail, I had to take a big tablespoon of each.  The iron tasted like rusty nails smell and the cod liver oil was so awful I don't have words to describe it.  As a young child, I would cry every morning when the time came for me to take "my medicine."  My grandmother would say, "if you would start eating like you ought to, then you wouldn't have to take this anymore.  I guess it triggered something inside my brain, because it was at this point that I started gaining weight.  I entered my teenage years totally overweight and it only got worse.  Being the "fat girl" in school is no fun.  Of course, as many of you know, everything is difficult when you are fat.  Why is there such a stigma attached to our weight.  I had trouble in Gym and there was always the embarassment of finding a gym suit that would fit.  And then you had to do all this physical stuff that your body wouldn't allow you to do.  By my junior year, I had enough and found a medical MD that didn't have a problem ordering me diet pills.  So over that summer I lost 60 lbs.  Returning to school was the best.  I had a new start, a new beginning.  All of a sudden, all the popular kids wanted to be my friend.  Many of them didn't even recognize me and most thought I was a new girl in school.  It was now that I started dating.  Something I had never done before due to being so overweight.  Who wanted to be with the fat girl. 

As time went on, I met my husband and we got married rather quickly.  Our date time was about 2 months.  We actually eloped.  My Grandmother didn't approve of me dating at all.  I am sure she was afraid of lossing her caregiver. 

One year after being married I delivered a beautiful baby girl, we named Angel.  I was so happy to have a daughter.  I was still very young myself.  Who at 19 is really ready to raise a baby.  But I did it.  I had gained all my weight back during my pregnancy.  So here I was again over 200 pounds.  I never lost that weight and went into my next pregnancy at age 20 overweight.  I was so afraid I would have to have a C-section.  Everything I read said that overweight mothers had a higher percentage of C-sections than mother's of normal weight.  With this knowledge I started walking every evening.  I would take my little Angel and we would all go for a walk.  By the time I delivered my son, Richard and I weighed less than I did before I got pregnant. 

Still I wasn't happy with my body.  So I tried what I now know doesn't work...dieting!!  With every pound that I would lose, a few more would come back to insure I didn't do anything that stupid again.  So my story goes....time and time again I would diet, lose, regain.  It became a vicious cycle for me.  And as time went on...I delivered my 3rd child and final child, Jennifer. 

Going through many forms of stress over the next few years only proved to help me put on even more pounds.  I suffered from severe depression and was hospitalized for it.  Of course I had a lot that caused me to get to that point.  Jennifer was a SIDS near miss.  For you that aren't familar with that term, it means I almost lost my 27 day old baby to crib death.  We were one of the fortunate couples who happened to walk into the room at the right time.  Her father was able to perform CPR and brought her back to us.  She stayed in the hospital for over a week trying to find out what happened.  When we were told she was a SIDS near miss, I was devastated.  She was sent home from the hospital with an apnea monitor that we had to keep her wired to 24/7.  The stress was on.  I was suffering from mild depression prior to this and now I had to deal with something that was life-threatening.  At the age of 18 months, we got a normal test back and were able to take Jennifer off the monitor.  It was at that point that I fell to pieces.  I couldn't sleep without the monitor and yet the insurance company wouldn't pay for it unless it was medically necessary.  Well it was necessary for me mentally.  I found that I would sit up all night long watching my baby breathe.  How could I ever live with myself if I allowed anything to happen to her.  After about a couple of months of this behavior, I ended up in the hospital with a complete break-down.  I did recover, but for years I was on first one kind of anti-depressant and then another.  It was hard for my doctor to find a combination of drugs that would put me back into even keel.  We finally got there but these drugs caused me to gain weight.  I would stay hungry all the time and my blood sugar would drop really low.  So year after year, the pounds just started adding up.  What would I do?  How could I ever feel good about me again?

In 1998 my marriage of 27 years ended in a divorce.  It was difficult on everyone concerned but Jennifer, still living at home and being the baby, it was especially hard on her.  I tried with everything in me to stay positive and friendly.  In the end, my ex and I were friends.  We had shared too much history not to be.