One of the things i noticed happening over the past year or so is that i have been steadily putting on weight. I have always been small and light - in fact for a quite a long time in my life i tried really hard to actually put some weight on. As a young teenager i weighed in the region of 6 stone and just couldn't seem to put weight on despite my love of chocolate and junk food. I eventually managed to get my weight up to 8 stone where i stayed for the best part of 20 years - actually it was 8 stone 3 LOL! I know because i weighed myself quite frequently in those days....
Its very strange thinking back to that time because i was always conscious of my weight - i was extremely conscious of being underweight when i was just 6 stone and i never felt healthy either - any bug about i was guaranteed to get it. When i was 8 stone 3 though i felt happy with my weight but i was also worried about putting on more weight than i wanted to - i did a lot of weight training back then as well so my body was pretty trim but there was always something i didn't like - it was usually this odd bit of fat i had just above my knees - how funny is that??? I have the knobbliest knees i have ever seen so that didn't help, but it always tortured me because it was one area of my body that i couldn't work on in the gym to change it how i wanted hahahaha!. I always thought i had big thighs as well which is just ridiculous to me now i have to say, but that i guess is part of the joys of being a teenage girl!!
Its only really been over the past 6 or 7 years that i noticed my weight creeping up and i didn't really mind too much to be honest - I had a bad car accident 10 years ago which meant i wasn't able to go to the gym and so i did expect there to be a change in my body. I wasn't exactly overjoyed with the fact i was getting lumps and bumps around my previously flat belly, and my thighs just felt like they always did - bigger than i wanted them to be, but all in all i actually felt ok about myself. I was about 9 stone at this point. I also actually seemed reasonably healthy at that weight - i no longer got the cold every 5 minutes at least!
All of a sudden though i noticed my weight going up and up, 9.5 stone, 10, 10.5, 11, 11stone 5 was the last measurement :( - I have never put on so much weight in my life over such a short period of time. I knew it wasn't normal and to be honest i thought it must have been related to my medication - but i still needed to do SOMETHING about it! I was feeling worse and worse about myself and the fact that i couldn't get into any of my clothes was a major issue - it was especially bad when i could no longer get into my 'fat jeans' - does everyone have these somewhere i wonder???? Anyway going from a wardrobe full of clothes to not even being able to get into my 'fat jeans' really didn't do me any good - its hard to go out when you literally have nothing to wear and no money to buy anything either!
Anyway i decided i had to do something about it - i tried to diet, i tried to exercise, i tried everything i could think of and having been a fitness instructor thats quite a lot of things to try and to have nothing work, i mean the more i tried to loose weight the more i was putting on. I did think seriously about coming off my medication, because lets face it if thats what was putting the weight on i was never going to feel better while i was on it.
When i say i would never feel better, let me be clear i am talking about feeling in the least bit happy - i am talking here about serious issues with my body. I stopped getting undressed anywhere near a mirror, i stopped getting undressed anywhere near my partner, i started to feel completely unattractive, i started wearing the only thing i could wear and that was pyjamas. I felt like i couldn't even sit down without feeling choked with the corset of fat that i had developed around my middle, i couldn't bend over, put my socks on even without getting out of breath - all those things that had been not only never been an issue or even something i had thought possible, but to have gone from being a reasonably fit and flexible person to not being able to put my socks on was quite a shock. I have got quite an insight into just a fraction of the problems that people who are overweight have to deal with i can tell you, and that is without me even getting above a size 14 - i honestly don't know how anyone can actually function at the higher end of the scale - and that is a genuine comment - it really has affected me in a huge way both physically and mentally.
It affected me so much in fact that i asked to see a dietitian - i needed help with this before i ended up going down really bad paths. I have to say i did teeter over the edge into binge eating and starving myself and taking laxatives - i drew the line at making myself sick......only just! It was a huge alarm going off in my head!
So what have i done about it? To be honest the first thing that actually made a difference was to actually by a few clothes that fitted me - there is nothing worse that trying everything in your wardrobe on only to find nothing fits at all - even slightly! Everyday what a reminder of how 'huge' i had got. Also as i said i am trying to improve my diet - i have always eaten badly and got away with it before so it really was about going back to basics. I did get to see a dietitian who was very helpful i might add, and i have managed to change things round. I have never eaten so much fruit in my life and i have stopped eating take away food despite the fact that my depression makes it extremely hard to actually cook anything, or even plan a meal. I do still find it very difficult to even think about what i could make a lot of the time never mind actually make something.
I have though tried to start and have simple and easy to make meal ingredients available - even if that is a ready meal - i know its not the healthiest option but i do buy the healthiest ones i can find. I do buy fruit and vegetables as well - and even if it is having some frozen vegetables available to throw into a stew well thats much better than just continuing to eat take away food - its a few steps closer to where i need to be and in my current state of mind those are giant steps. It would be much easier for me just to sit back and continue to eat badly but i know this is something that not only affects my body but also my mind - i cannot expect my mood to improve while i continue to eat in a way that contributes significantly to mood swings even when there is no depressive illness to contend with as well.
I know this is only part of what i need to be doing to feel better about myself, and i know it is only a few steps in the right direction in relation to this one specific area - my body weight. It is however not a straight forward situation - menopause itself does cause the type of weight gain that i have experienced - especially around the middle which has been the main cause of my difficulty with sitting and bending over. I have been on HRT for just 1 month now and already i have noticed some difference in my body - i have lost some weight and i don't feel so constricted around the middle. It is likely to take me quite some time until i really do start to feel better about my body....... but as i said i AM trying to do something about that.....and to a certain extent i am also SUCCEEDING - the steps may seem tiny and simple for those around me but for me at the minute each tiny step is like climbing Everest - i may hang off my personal cliff now and then, and i may even slide down here and there but i am moving towards my goal - i have been for months actually - its just that no-one else has been able to see it.
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