I can honestly say that "I like me," I do! I'm a smart, successful software consultant, mom, wife, daughter and friend. I'm a nice person. I have integrity. I'm someone you can count on. And people do. I babysit, I pet sit, I volunteer in my girls' classrooms and for the PTO. If you need help with your computer or setting up a budget or starting your business or putting together a birthday party just call. That's the way I am. So, if you asked: 'would I be friends with me,' the answer is: "Yes! I like me!" Knowing this, I have to ask myself 'Why HCG, why now?' The answer is simple. I'm fat.
Aside from all the health risks of being overweight, fat is not pretty. And pretty is important. Sadly in our society we not always judged on the content of our character. People form opinions about us based on our appearance and weight plays a big part in that.
In my family growing up skinny was important. Skinny, skinny, skinny. Skinny is still important to my already skinny mom who is my partner on this HCG adventure. Skinny was particularly important for me as a child. I was born with hip dysplasia and had many surgeries on both hips. Keeping thin would help my natural hips last longer. So I was reminded, seemingly constantly, that I need to be skinny. Aside my having a naturally curvy figure, looking back at pictures, I was not a fat kid. But I thought I was. And it’s that little voice inside me that is pushing me to do this program.
At some point in my childhood or adulthood I decided it’s okay for me to like myself even if I’m “husky.” I realized that I have a lot to offer the world and decided to stop feeling self conscious and just live. So I put on my proverbial ear muffs and attempted to drown out that little voice from my childhood. Those ear muffs must be really good ones because over the last fourteen years I’ve gained 80 pounds. I became content being “the fat girl.” I recognized that my self-worth could and should be based on something much greater than my size. So my size kept growing.
My story is probably much like everyone else’s in that there were a series of events that helped me get to my current weight. I did pretty good managing my weight until I started birth control pills when I got married. Eight months into taking the pills I had an “episode.” I had just started a new job and while sitting alone in my new office my face, hands and legs started to go numb. I got into the doctor right away. The diagnosis was a sudden drop in blood pressure probably caused by the birth control which I immediately stopped taking. After my episode I was not the same. I gained thirty pounds in two months and felt dizzy and out of sorts all the time and started having migraines. I had a slew of tests over the next year but nothing was ever found.
I maintained my weight fairly well until my first pregnancy. I gained 60 pounds during the pregnancy. After Sarah was born I lost most of the weight immediately. In the end I was up fifteen pounds. That’s a total of 45 pounds gained since my wedding. I gained another 60 pounds with Kate’s pregnancy of which I lost 55.
Kate was a really hard baby. She cried ten hours a day with tummy issues. I was a mess her whole first year. I felt shaky and stressed all the time. I couldn’t keep a nanny for her. Nobody wanted to babysit a miserable baby. Nannies would quit with no notice and, while my hubby is a wonderful husband and father, I was left to figure things out. During this time I didn’t put much thought into what was going on with me. I chalked it up to stress: job stress, kid stress, house stress. I stayed pretty wound up until Kate was two.
Having lots of hip pain I decided to have a hip replacement. As part of a blood workup for the surgery I was diagnosed with Hashimoto Thyroiditis. This is a condition where my immune system attacks my thyroid. And Thyroid, it turns out, is really important for regulating a whole slew of things in our bodies. At that point I was 50 pounds heavier than I was on my wedding day.
My hip surgery left me with a bad leg length discrepancy. It was a pretty big shock. I was looking forward to being somewhat normal, being able to walk and do things. While I have no hip pain, the surgery made things a lot worse. It’s even harder to walk long distances now.
Regulating my thyroid turned out to be a saga too. Initially I was put on Levothyroxine, which is a generic form of Synthroid. I actually felt worse for several months and ended up gaining fifteen more pounds. Eventually I was put on actual Synthroid. Getting thyroid medication right takes a lot of time. You have to take it for six weeks before you know if the dose is right. I was in and out of the doctor’s office like clockwork trying to dial-in the dose. In spite of all my efforts, I couldn’t think straight, I was having hot flashes. I was shaking and I felt crummy.
In 2008 my hubby accepted a job in Illinois. At that point I was feeling okay but knew I still needed to feel better. I had pretty much stopped working because I couldn’t think. Throughout my odyssey I’d been doing research and found that Armour Thyroid worked really well for a lot of people. I really wanted to try Armour but couldn’t find a doctor to prescribe it for me. A year after getting to Illinois my new physician let me try it. Within days I started to feel tremendously better. The brain fog was gone. My energy levels were up and best of all I could think. Armour gave me my life back - at least partially.
Looking back it’s obvious that something major happened to me back in 1997 when I had my episode. I don’t know what it was but now, almost 14 years later, I’m still not the same. In spite of it all I’ve accomplished a lot in my life. I have been successful in my career, I have two wonderful daughters, I have a husband who loves me. That brings me back to the fact that I like me. I am the person that I want to be. I am content with the life that I’ve built for myself.
Yet, every time I stand in front of the mirror, now 80 lbs heavier than on my wedding day, the skinny, skinny, skinny chatter of my youth comes back to haunt me. How is it that logically I am confident and happy with myself yet deep inside I feel like a total loser because I’m not skinny. My conscious brain knows this is wrong, really wrong but it’s always been there. “You have to be skinny. You’re ugly if you’re not skinny. Nobody will like you if you’re not skinny. You don’t deserve to be happy if you’re not skinny . . . I really hate that little voice so I try not to look in the mirror too long these days. What kind of example am I setting for my little girls?
So back to my initial question: Why HCG, why now? Number one obviously is health. I would like to live long enough to see my girls get married and have kids of their own. I would also hope that losing some weight would make walking with my wacko hips a bit easier. Three: I'm fully aware that I'm not a good role model for my girls in terms of weight. I clearly have psychological issues when it come to weight, I'd like to spare them that drama if possible. Four: I’ve chosen HCG because it does reset the hypothalamus and that seems to work really well for people with thyroid issues like me and it’s permanent if you commit to it. Five: On some level I guess I’m hoping doing this will bring me back to where I was before my episode. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not delusional, but hey you’ve got to have hope, right? The final reason, and I’m ashamed to admit it (so I’ll do it online for the whole world to see) is that skinny is pretty. And pretty is important. And I’d really like that nagging little voice to shut the hell up!
I hope that by blogging our experiences mom and I will be able to help others going through the same issues or thinking about doing HCG. Maybe our different perspectives will be good. Who knows. One thing is certain there is no one else I'd rather do this with than my mom, my true BFF. By doing this together it's going to be an adventure.
