Losing my next 30 pounds

bethanderson41

Hi.
My name is Beth and I'm 41 years old. I've had severe anorexia since I was 9 years old and have been hospitalized many times, the last time in 2015. However about 5 years ago I noticed something very strange -- I had put on a few pounds perhaps, but when I cut back like I always did, maybe to about 800-1000 calories a day, I didn't lose any weight! In fact, I started gaining more and more. In 2015 I went back to about 300 calories a day and painfully slowly, lost some weight until I didn't have the strength anymore to walk and I was put in the hospital. In the hospital I was put on a "normal" amount of calories (not to gain weight, just to maintain) and my body just kept gaining until they confronted me and asked if I was sneaking food! I do have hypothyroid, but it was quickly addressed with medication -- but my gaining just continued on and on never responding to calorie restriction, until I had gained about 65 pounds! My highest weight was 177.

I am just under 5'3" (my BMI is usually calculated at 5'3") and this was a very high weight for me! I'd never weighed anything close to this ever before. Well, last fall I went to an obesity specialist who told me I had pre-diabetes and put me on Metformin. At first I had no response, but then a few months later, I started losing weight without trying. Encouraged, I dropped my calories to 1200 and since doing that at the end of January 2019, I've lost a total of about 36 pounds. I went from 177 to 141.

At this point my weight loss has really, really slowed down. And I'm getting discouraged. I have a lot of disabilities and exercise is not always possible for me. I still use a wheelchair part time for one of my disabilities. So I really just count on my diet for losing weight. But I still want to lose about 34 pounds to get back to around 107, which is a good weight for me. It's just so frustrating how slow it all is! Plus sometimes I can't tell if I'm stalling/plateauing or just going slowly. I did get stuck for several weeks, but my doctor added Trulicity and either because of that or just naturally I'm slowly losing again.

I use MFP to calculate my calories and macros but I wanted to join the community as well for encouragment. I hope I will fit in here and that you will welcome me! Thank you for reading!

Beth

bethanderson41

Here are my pictures one year apart July 2018 to July 2019. Please excuse my disheveled appearance!