![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Feel free to keep scrolling if you're not at all interested in "weighty" issues.
Since I was a teenager I've struggled with my weight. I had a growth spurt and hit puberty at age 9 which means at AGE 9 I was the same height I am now - basically at 5 foot 4 inches I felt like godzilla next to all the other little girls. I look at photos of myself back then now and realize I was not overweight at ALL, but I felt bigger and that translated.
I was doing shiftwork in my early twenties and stacked on the weight at that point. I've struggled to lose it ever since. Two years ago - I lost 35kgs which put me at a relatively healthy weight (I think 35kgs is around 75 - 80 pounds for you US folks) and then I don't know - I freaked out and put (most) of the weight back on. I couldn't believe I had done it, how FAST it had happened. I wasn't even eating that much.
It mystified me that I would basically have to starve myself to see any weight shift, which is not maintainable. I would go down to about 1000 cals a day - which is way under someone of my size should be eating to lose weight, but if I went up to even 1300-1500 which is recommended, I would start putting weight ON which seemed illogical.
Oh well, I thought. It must be this hard for everyone.
I would get SUPER frustrated and fall unceremoniously off the wagon when diet and exercise just didn't shift the weight like it should. Recently, I've had some chest pain. I naturally panicked, sure I was going to drop dead any second. Went to the doctor and blood pressure, chest X-ray and everything else all normal. ECG came back abnormal, but in a way that's "normal" for women so I have an appt with a cardiologist to make sure everything's good which my doctor is pretty confident it will be.
In amongst this, I have blood tests to check everything else. Cholesterol, etc. All of that comes back normal, except my liver reading is a little high - probably to do with my weight but also, my thyroid comes back as being WAY underactive. Like, a normal reading is between 0.5 and 4 and mine came back 10. I'm getting another blood test per the doctor just to make sure because sometimes these things come back wrong but he's pretty sure it will be the same given the high reading.
Doctor says, so, do you find you have trouble losing weight and put it on more easily than seems normal.
YES!
Well, that's probably why he says. How is an underactive thyroid managed I ask because I had a friend who had an overactive one and they removed it BY CUTTING INTO HER NECK YE GADS. He shrugs and says, medication. Pretty simple.
I ask myself, why didn't I go see someone and say, THIS CAN'T BE NORMAL. Why did I just accept it, think that it was normal to struggle this much?? I may have wasted years agonising and struggling only to have a simple answer, and I KNOW that it will not be that easy, that the medication will not make the extra weight magically drop off, but it will normalise everything also I won't get frustrated at the process because there's a reason it's hard.
Argh.
Since I was a teenager I've struggled with my weight. I had a growth spurt and hit puberty at age 9 which means at AGE 9 I was the same height I am now - basically at 5 foot 4 inches I felt like godzilla next to all the other little girls. I look at photos of myself back then now and realize I was not overweight at ALL, but I felt bigger and that translated.
I was doing shiftwork in my early twenties and stacked on the weight at that point. I've struggled to lose it ever since. Two years ago - I lost 35kgs which put me at a relatively healthy weight (I think 35kgs is around 75 - 80 pounds for you US folks) and then I don't know - I freaked out and put (most) of the weight back on. I couldn't believe I had done it, how FAST it had happened. I wasn't even eating that much.
It mystified me that I would basically have to starve myself to see any weight shift, which is not maintainable. I would go down to about 1000 cals a day - which is way under someone of my size should be eating to lose weight, but if I went up to even 1300-1500 which is recommended, I would start putting weight ON which seemed illogical.
Oh well, I thought. It must be this hard for everyone.
I would get SUPER frustrated and fall unceremoniously off the wagon when diet and exercise just didn't shift the weight like it should. Recently, I've had some chest pain. I naturally panicked, sure I was going to drop dead any second. Went to the doctor and blood pressure, chest X-ray and everything else all normal. ECG came back abnormal, but in a way that's "normal" for women so I have an appt with a cardiologist to make sure everything's good which my doctor is pretty confident it will be.
In amongst this, I have blood tests to check everything else. Cholesterol, etc. All of that comes back normal, except my liver reading is a little high - probably to do with my weight but also, my thyroid comes back as being WAY underactive. Like, a normal reading is between 0.5 and 4 and mine came back 10. I'm getting another blood test per the doctor just to make sure because sometimes these things come back wrong but he's pretty sure it will be the same given the high reading.
Doctor says, so, do you find you have trouble losing weight and put it on more easily than seems normal.
YES!
Well, that's probably why he says. How is an underactive thyroid managed I ask because I had a friend who had an overactive one and they removed it BY CUTTING INTO HER NECK YE GADS. He shrugs and says, medication. Pretty simple.
I ask myself, why didn't I go see someone and say, THIS CAN'T BE NORMAL. Why did I just accept it, think that it was normal to struggle this much?? I may have wasted years agonising and struggling only to have a simple answer, and I KNOW that it will not be that easy, that the medication will not make the extra weight magically drop off, but it will normalise everything also I won't get frustrated at the process because there's a reason it's hard.
Argh.
From:
no subject
You have a fix for your medical problem! Yay!
(I am choosing to focus on the bright side of what is possible from here, and not the really sucky stuff that led up to it. Cue Monty Python, "Always look on the bright side of life ...)