Weighty Implications

I never imagined I'd be too skinny.  I currently look like I'm anorexic.
Ooooooh Ulcerative Colitis.  You've made me afraid to eat!!

I spent my whole life as the "pudgy" girl, just a little bit overweight (most of the time), because I love cookies too much.

This past year though... has had some extreme highs and lows!



I'm 5'4", and have spent most of my life between 140 and 150 pounds, and between a size 8 and 12 pant.  I've always had a pretty trim waist, and a ginormous booty and thighs.  When I try really hard and exercise a lot I get down near 130 and a size 4 or 6, but always find myself back at 145ish.

Cue pregnancy... and obviously I gained some weight.  Because of my colitis and fear of eating, I actually had trouble gaining weight during the pregnancies, until I started taking steroids.  Gaining weight on steroids is easy!  Anyway, my weight gain from pregnancy was not ridiculous, I ended up around 170 pounds with both babies.

October 2012 - 170 lbs, 9 months pregnant with 1st baby

May 2014 - 165ish pounds, 7 months pregnant with 2nd baby

After my second baby was born, the steroids caught up to me and I blew up like a balloon!  My weight didn't change much, but my face, good lord, my face!  It was like I had a beach ball sitting on my shoulders.  This is known as a "moon face" and is a common side effect of prednisone.  Also, I grew weird long shoulder hair and a mustache.  Not many women first learn how to bleach their facial hair at the age of 32!

August 2014 - 1 month post partum, 175ish pounds - 85% in my face

My UC was bad enough that I was having a very tough time getting off of the steroids, and didn't reach a low enough dose for my face to start melting until around the new year - 6 months after my baby boy was born.  At this same time, I started doing the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and I started losing weight too fast!  My transformation was rapid, and a little bit scary.  I didn't want to look like a beach ball, but I wasn't dieting for weight loss and I knew that losing weight as fast as I was losing it wasn't healthy.  And it just kept coming off...

November, 160ish

January, 150ish but still have that moon face

January

January

May, 125ish, getting pretty sick again

June - 110 lbs, in hospital - my fingers can encircle my thigh.  Gross!!!

June, 110 lbs, in hospital - my "belly" is actually the ostomy bag under my shirt

So in one year I went from 175 to 110... without meaning to.  That's 65 pounds, a reduction of more than 33%!  I would have liked to stop around 130... ok, maybe it was nice feeling pretty thin around 125... but 110?  This is ridiculous!  Size 0 pants fall off of me.  I bought an "S" yesterday in some stretchy shorts at Old Navy that I have to return, they are ENORMOUS on me.  Sitting and lying down is uncomfortable unless I'm surrounded by pillows - I'm all bone!  It's funny - I don't feel skinny.  I feel like I'm still that slightly pudgy girl I've always been and that somehow my bones just grew really big recently.  For the first time I can empathize with someone with a eating disorder - I may be ridiculously skinny right now but I don't FEEL skinny, and when I look in the mirror, some parts of me still seem too big... I still have flabby thighs, my hips are still wide, etc.  But my bones are huge!  My knees can't touch, it drives me crazy to feel that bone-on-bone.  And I tried sitting on a park bench yesterday - I have no cushion under me anymore and I can't lean back either, shoulder blade or vertebrae just poke into the hard back of the bench, uncomfortable!  And my boobs... my poor formerly perfect 34 C chest... deflated pancakes.  Hopefully when I regain some weight it will concentrate there... ha.  Unlikely, but I can dream!  If not, there's always a wonderbra.  Or plastic surgery... I always swore I'd never do that kind of unnatural thing to my body... but that's a whole 'nother topic.

I'm really hoping that I've learned a lesson from being on this opposite side of the weight struggle - as I regain weight post-surgery, I hope that I can learn to appreciate some of my regained chub.  Rather than being part of the weight-obsessed culture, I want to be part of the health and appreciating what you have movement.  Healthy "real" foods, loving yourself as you are, taking care of yourself.  Exercising because it makes me feel good, not because I feel guilty and fat.  No more guilt, but smart choices and appreciation for what I have - a chance to live a relatively normal life and have lots of fun with my babies, family, and friends!