Well, here goes...

McKeeJayne

I've been using this as an app for about a month, but haven't ventured beyond logging my food until today, when I had a doctor's appointment and she encouraged me to start using the rest of the site...so far, it hasn't been a great experience, I'm seeing more judging than encouraging in the posts I've read...but it's new, I maybe just haven't figured out where to go yet, so I'm gonna try to stay open to it... For my 'about me', I guess I'll just copy what I put in my profile:

I'm an an artist and naturalist, a wife of one and mom of three.

I've always been an outdoorsy, active type...my job has me hiking and adventuring quite a bit, and I used to kayak, trail run, ride dressage and rock climb. Even used to do some personal training and fitness contests. It all came pretty easy to me.

A few years ago I had a perfect storm of horrible stuff happen in my life - my husband and I both lost our jobs, lost our little organic farm and I had some other traumatic things happen that are too personal to get into somewhere so public... So, I ended up with PTSD, lost my entire sense of identity and feel like I've just been asleep for the last couple of years.

Now I feel like myself again, like I've just woken up...and am horrified to find myself in this body that is almost 100 pounds heavier than it was, and unable to live life the way I'm used to living it...I'm not even sure I could fit this *kitten* into my kayak if I tried.

I don't care as much about being thin as I do being strong and energetic...I just want to be able to do things I want my life to be full of doing. I want to recognize myself and be able to think about what I'm doing instead of constantly thinking about how hard everything is to do.


For the last few months I've been eating well (and yes, I do know what that means, and no, I have not been lying to myself about it), exercising a lot (miserable as it's been), seeing my doctor regularly...and still kept gaining weight. Since I've gotten serious about it, I do feel a lot better...on good days...but I've also started having a lot of days where I'm sleeping up to 15 hours a day and barely awake once I get up. My metabolism is just shot, I'm insulin resistant...and so today I started taking phentermine to jump start it. I'm well aware of it's issues and drawbacks, I don't see it as a miracle cure...and there's a chance it will bring the PTSD back to being out of control...so my expectations are reasonable and my dr is very carefully monitoring me...this might not be an option if I start getting 'triggered' or my blood pressure starts going up... But, that said, I'm a good candidate...my husband is active, my friends are active, my family is active...we're all a bit 'crunchy' and into healthy eating, being healthy in general...relatively speaking, I've never had problems like this before, so hopefully if we can just get my metabolism revved back up, take off some of this weight so that it's not so hard to move...fingers crossed I can take over from there and keep this up after I go off the pills. If not, it was worth a shot.