About two years ago, I completely changed the way I ate, cut out all my trigger foods, began exercising 5-6 times a week, and lost over 100 pounds. Part of my motivation was that I was simply tired of living in a body that felt like a prison. My more immediate motivation was that we wanted to have a baby.
I worked my ass off, literally, with my goal of motherhood always in mind.
But last spring/summer several things hit all at once and I allowed myself to be thrown off track.
I was diagnosed with reflux and spent a couple of months feeling as if someone had me by the throat. Misery.
I had a severe reaction to the medication I was put on for reflux (called Reglan) and was almost immediately paralyzed by anxiety and depression, my first experience with either. (I subsequently found out that reactions to Reglan are pretty common. My gastroenterologist told me that some people have complete mental breakdowns while on Reglan. I would definitely have been one of those people had an ER doctor not figured out what was happening.) It took me a while to feel like myself again.
About that time, I had a horrible experience with my RE’s nurse practitioner. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and we decided to decided to walk away from fertility treatments. I was then left mourning the loss of a lifelong dream, giving birth to a baby.
For a while I was up and down but stayed within a ten pound range. Over the past few months, though, my weight has climbed. The med I was put on three months ago to suppress my periods has contributed, but mostly it's because I’ve been trying to fill the baby-sized hole in me with food. I knew it would never work and still I ate and the numbers on the scale climbed. I realized recently that I was also probably trying to punish a body that wouldn’t function properly enough to give us a child, or to even let us get a good start on fertility treatments. “Why should I take care of you? All you do is let me down.”
But that’s not the truth. For all the complaining I’ve done about my reproductive issues, it’s a good body. I have no health problems that could plague me as an overweight woman – no diabetes, perfect blood pressure, fantastic cholesterol, no heart issues. It won’t be that way forever, though. Now is the time to get back on track, before I gain all of the weight back (PERISH THE THOUGHT!!!) – before all of this catches up with me.
So this morning, it’s back to eating well and exercising. I expect that it will be a difficult road ahead, particularly emotionally. I won’t have food to numb my feelings about infertility and our extremely frustrating stroll through the foster/adopt system.
But it will be worth it.
Here I go again.
