background

Saturday, April 6, 2024

The Journey Part 3

 Happy Saturday morning!

Haven't written about the weight loss journey for a while so I thought I would throw this in today.

First off, I made it to ONEDERLAND!! Actually a couple of weeks ago, and now I am at 147 lbs down, or 196 lbs. Andrew weighs 190, so of course my next two goals are hitting the 150 down mark and hitting 189 so I weigh less than him.

I left off last time at being at 209, new baby, not being able to lose weight and being told I was just having a little post partum depression. 

Well, we moved back to Illinois when Robert was 18 months old, we moved to Pontiac, about 1 1/2 hours south of Chicago. Life was going along fine, I was still fat but wasn't gaining, I wasn't eating, but I wasn't gaining so that was at least good. I kept deciding sometime surely I would lose my baby fat. 

Then, one day, w were cleaning out the garage and I picked up a trash bag that had broken glass in it. The bag was heavy and I hoisted it up my leg to help leverage the weight. It had a piece of broken glass in it and the weight of the bag against my leg ran the glass deep into my thigh. Deep enough I had to have 11 stitches. (Note: always wrap broken glass in newspaper or something when putting it in the trash: lesson learned). 

Since we were only a little over 3 hours from home, I came home and went to my mom's doctor to have the stitches removed. Andrew worked a ridiculous amount of hours, I didn't have a babysitter in Pontiac and this seemed easier. So, at 12 days out, the doctor went to remove the stitches and decided they hadn't healed. My mom being a lifelong diabetic, and her families history of diabetes, it was the first thing they checked but my sugar was in the normal ranges. They then checked my thyroid and found out it was basically not functioning at all. Robert was almost 2 and the doctor figured I had started with postpartum thyroiditis. So, he put me on thyroid medicine but since I was also overweight and he had found the reason I wasn't losing, he put me on Fen-Phen, which was a combination of fenfluramine and phentermine. I went from my 209 to 145 in about 6 months. Then we moved to Indiana.

My new doctor in Indiana would prescribe any more Fen-Phen as it had just came out that it was causing heart valve issues. He also decided that he would take me off the thyroid meds to see where we were at. 

I gained all my weight back but my thyroid levels would come back fine. So, once again, I was at 218 and stayed there for a long time. I wasn't watching what I ate, wasn't working out, I had just decided to face facts and live with it.

We moved to Olney in 1998, and started working for ERBA in 2000. I weighed my 218 the day I started working for ERBA. My supervisor fast become one of my closest friends and we started walking at lunch, eventually, we started working out and I would lose a few pounds and gain a few pounds and I continued to do that for literally years. I changed jobs in 2004, still working for ERBA but working at the Corporate office in Greenup. I weighed 250 when I started work there. We were living in Olney and I was driving to Greenup everyday so my work day became almost 2 hours longer. The thought of throwing exercise into that mix was laughable so I stayed at 250 for the next several years. I was wearing a size 20W and my health and weight, though I was always "trying", was not on the forefront.

This is probably a good stopping point for today. 

To be continued next month!


Happy Saturday!

No comments:

Post a Comment