Rock Bottom

I am officially the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, including the times I was pregnant with my 8lb kids. Then, I was a mere 102kg and I was technically two people at the time. Now, I am 120.8kg and my poor, poor knees are suffering. And my hips. And my back. And I’m pretty sure I’ve shrunk in height.


So today I went to my GP and asked for a referral for gastric surgery. Biiiiig step. Many changes, lifelong changes. GP recommended I start with the usual diet (yeah, I know what to eat, what not to eat, and all about portion sizes, yadda yadda...) and exercise (aaaand here we all fall down. I hate exercise. I hate being seen to do exercise because I wibble and wobble, fall down in an asthmatic heap and am usually beyond beetroot purple at the time), but has gone ahead and referred my case to the guys in Aberdeen who will bring my case to their meeting where they discuss all the cases, that’s all she can do from there and I thank her for the way she’s handled it thus far.


Anyone who has known me longer than 5 years has known me thinner and has known me bigger. My weight fluctuates THAT much over a relatively short space of time. The only time I was able to maintain a somewhat svelte figure was when I was on Thyroxine. I was a UK size 10/12 and had just met my hubby (sooooo, Feb 2009). I was taken off Thyroxine and put back on an antidepressant around three months after that and then the weight started to creep on again. Fast forward to New Year 2013 and we started to diet together after the birth of Taylor. Late October 2013 and I’m back to a size 12 and *ping* almost 3 months pregnant with Kaiden. Sigh. I didn’t diet straight after having Kaiden because we managed to make breastfeeding work. It was June 2015 before he weaned finally, but by then I was on an antidepressant and an antipsychotic (neither known for their slimming side effects). I was around or just over the 100kg mark for New Year 2016 and a size 14/16. Taylor got meningitis at the same time we buried my Nan, cue weight gain. By June I was in size 18’s. Switched meds in November and by Xmas, size 20’s were snug. New Year 2017, 120.8kg. Fuck this shit. I’m fed up of this yo-yo dieting crap and what it’s doing to my joints.


Thankfully, I’m in a good place mentally with it, which I’m attributing to the new meds. I see my body as a vehicle that gets me from A to B. My internal shadow is a lot smaller than my actual shadow (and it’s a bigger shadow than my actual shadow when I’m skinny, go figure), so it’s only when I’m reminded of how I look that I feel what I do about this vehicle. But importantly, my size and weight doesn’t make me depressed any more. I wasn’t happy when I was skinny and I’m not exactly thrilled to bits now I’m big; it’s a huge revelation to me that my size/weight has zero implications on my mood.


But anyway - can’t carry on; joints wear out, asthma’s getting steadily worse and I really don’t want to be developing type II diabetes (which I’m at a higher risk for since I was a gestational diabetic both times). So a permanent measure is needed. That means surgery.


In the meantime, there’s no harm getting fit so that any future surgery has the best chance of a non-coffin outcome - hence the walking. At the moment it’s half an hour, any way I can manage it. We’ll see how many times a week I can manage that before trying to improve on it. Hoping that by the end of the year I’ll be #FatGirlJogging rather than #FatGirlWalking and doing it (fnar fnar) every day of the week.


Got a blood test on Friday, thyroid panel and fasting glucose. If there are any hidden nasties (like, OMG maybe she’s got an underactive thyroid or, OMG here comes the diabetes train, toot toot) we’ll know in a week or so.


Until then, imma keep on walking. Let’s make it an officially unofficial New Year’s Resolution.