Fluffee
I used to be a healthy person. I spent my younger days as a slim, healthy, athletic & active girl. I was vibrant. I lifted weights & ran several miles almost everyday. I was a volleyball player and a cheerleader.
In my teens I started to show signs of what I know now to be PCOS. By the time I was 17 I began to gain weight. By the time I was 18 I was starting to puke up my food in an attempt to manage my weight. It didn’t work. Somewhere in there my own mother started to harp on me about how I was gaining weight. I wasn’t her beautiful slim beauty queen anymore. Did I tell you I was even a pageant girl once? HA! So funny now. My mother, like everyone else, didn’t understand that I couldn’t stop what was happening to me. I wasn’t overeating. I WAS active.
When I got married at age 21 I had stopped most of my physical activities & had to wear a size 12 wedding dress. I remember standing in the bridal shop, in horror that the size 10 didn’t fit. Size 12 was double the size I had been a few years before. I was marrying the love of my life… but somehow a tiny bit of the joy was stolen that day because I felt like he wasn’t getting all he bargained for in me. And, I felt like on your wedding day you’re supposed to feel like a princess and I didn’t.
By age 22 when I finally was diagnosed correctly with PCOS I was a size 16. By the time I was in my mid-20's I was several sizes larger, and by 34 I was probably a 28. It's about so much more than size though. Weight has so much to do with feeling “womanly” and “feminine” and beautiful…. What I want more than anything else is to become healthy and know that I am going to be around when my kids are growing up and that I am not going to fall over from a heart attack and leave my husband alone to raise 6 little ones on his own.
I had never done much "emotional" eating until I got to be about 30. When my mom and sister were both diagnosed with cancer I found myself comforted by food. The weight came on pretty fast then. I can't believe how hard it is to get control over that source of comfort. After a year of doing research and arguing with my insurance company I was approved for gastric bypass. I had surgery on March 19th, 2008, and that is the beginning of my story.
Getting Healthy…. THAT is my goal.
