Wake Up! The True Cost of FATSICK

godlikepoetyes wrote: »

This is your life. This is the journey. You can decide to delude yourself. You can decide to go for the quick fix that you KNOW will never work. Or you can decide to face your life full-on. You can accept the fact that this has not been and will never be a quick snap of your fingers. You can accept, like I have, that there will always be Pop Tarts. Or Rocky Road. Or Curly Fries. Or mother-in-laws. Cheating boyfriends. Bitter disappointments. Regrets. There will always be difficulties. There will always be potholes in the road. But you can decide not to fall into them. You can teach yourself to walk around them. And you can take a deep breath and learn the hardest lesson of all--that there will be times (oh so many times!!) that you do fall into those holes, even when you try your dead-level best not to. But you can climb back out, dust yourself off, and keep on walking forward.

godlikepoetyes wrote: »

I want to share with you the hard lessons, the hard truth of obesity. There is a cost to fatness. There is a price that you may pay if you get fat and stay fat and then by an heroic effort lose all that fat. While it is possible that you will be one of the lucky ones who bounces right back from a 100 lb loss with six pack abs, it is more likely that you will be like me and have to deal with the very real consequences of abusing your body. Because that's what obesity really is for so many of us--body abuse.

I, like you, had heard all the reasons to lose weight--less stress on joints, especially knees. Less pain. Less illness. Better for the heart. Better for the sex life. Better for climbing stairs. Better for sitting in airplane and theater seats. I had heard that if I would just lose 20 lbs my knees would feel better. I was told and I read in EVERY book that my fibromyalgia pain would get better if I lost weight, if I just got up and MOVED. I knew, logically, that carrying around an extra 100+ pounds of flesh was just stupid. But it was a long time before I did anything to change and when I did, it was because I was just plain sick. FATSICK.

When I was languishing in my bed, my 270 pound body aching hurting occasionally lumbering to the bathroom or down the groaning stairs, the fibromyalgia that had been mild (and undiagnosed) for years bloomed into full-on agony. When I had lost about fifty pounds my gallbladder had to come out. And while I was losing weight I developed a digestive disorder—gastroparesis. Now that I’m down 80+ pounds, much of the pain is gone, but the fat wrecked things in ways that cannot be easily undone. Like the osteoarthritis. Like this knee that will not allow me to do the things I so very much want to do. Parts of me are simply broken.

When I was curled up in my bed, deeply depressed and fat-sick, I cuddled my bare belly. I lay there cultivating my butter fat. I could feel myself growing, putting 30 pounds on top of my already obese body. I knew I was gaining weight but I told myself I could lose it. And this was true. I have lost it. But I didn’t calculate the cost of being so fat for so long. The loose skin. The creaking joints. The feeling of dismay when I look back and realize I really have spent half my life as a fat woman. I regret that I cannot run again. That I cannot zip up and down the stairs in my house. No more jumping jacks. Or jumping rope either. And I can no longer eat the things I want to eat—fresh, raw vegetables and fruits. Beans. Nuts. Seeds. Salad. Collards. Mexican. Dried fruit. Oatmeal. Whole grains. Cabbage. Brussels sprouts. Broccoli.

This is a cautionary tale. If you are reading this and you have 20 pounds to lose. Or 30. Or 40. Or 50. Or 100. If you’re reading this and you haven’t already spent years and years of your life yo-yo dieting, if you are just starting out, please don’t begin MFP until you know you are ready to make real changes. Please do not start a “diet” thinking that it will be over when you get to your perfect weight at which point your life will become perfect in every way. Please don’t do yourself more HARM by beginning a years-long cycle of losing and gaining and losing and gaining and despairing. Do yourself the biggest favor you can—do whatever you need to do to come to terms with yourself and your body and your eating so that you will be ready to make LIFESTYLE changes that you will stick with FOREVER.

And if you, like me, have already spent half your life battling your mouth and your body, then you have choices to make and real work to do. If you start out again with the same plan you’ve tried and failed with before, if you decide that last time you just didn’t restrict calories enough and this time you're only eating 1,200!, if you start out desperate to fit into your new dress for your daughter’s wedding, if you are shooting for low-carb or low-fat or smoothies only or gluten-free or whatever sort of magic you think will surely work for you this time—STOP IT. You’ve been here before and I bet you know, on some level, when you’re playing games with yourself, when you’re setting yourself up to fail. So stop it. Wake up. There is no magic. You already KNOW this!

Everyone here who has lost weight and kept it off will tell you the same thing. There is no magic. Don’t try a fad diet. Don’t deprive yourself. Make out a food plan that you can sustain FOREVER. There is no MAGIC. You can’t trick your body into dropping pounds. You cannot exercise the weight away. You can’t melt your fat or punish your body or starve yourself enough to slip into those size zero jeans. Losing weight is a long, slow process and that process is forever. That process is your life. Weight loss is not linear. But really, the MFP boards are full of such advice and if you’re back after some time away, you know this already. And if you are just getting started, you will find this advice over and over and over again. Heed this advice—these simple truths that you will hear over and over from people who walk the walk. Listen to them and ignore folks who are touting their magic bullet to perfection.

This is a cautionary tale. Because I am living proof of what fat can do to your body, your life, your knees. I am living proof of what fat-sick can rob you of. Was my digestive disorder caused by the years and years I abused my body? Maybe, maybe not. But my gut tells me that the answer is YES. Just like my arthritis. Might I have this arthritis even if I hadn’t spent all these years overweight? Sure. But my gut tells me it wouldn’t be so severe. My gut tells me that being fat, yo-yo dieting, being fatsick, wrecked my bones and my belly and that is a real shame. There’s nothing I can do to take it all back. I can only go forward.

I feel better than I have in years. More energy. More bounce. More zip and zing. More everything. But I will never feel the way I felt before I chose to blanket my body in fat. I will never have the body I would have had if I had spent years taking care of it instead of abusing it.

I caution you. To listen. To breathe. To wake up. I caution you to stop abusing yourself cause it can get worse. Your body can get even larger. Your knees can hurt even worse. Your body can get so out of whack that you cannot bounce back. You can, like me, wait to wake up until you’re 50 years old (or 70 or 80 or 90). Or you can wake up right now, before you go down a path that will make you fatter, that will make you sick, that could very well wreck your body for always.

This is your life. This is the journey. You can decide to delude yourself. You can decide to go for the quick fix that you KNOW will never work. Or you can decide to face your life full-on. You can accept the fact that this has not been and will never be a quick snap of your fingers. You can accept, like I have, that there will always be Pop Tarts. Or Rocky Road. Or Curly Fries. Or mother-in-laws. Cheating boyfriends. Bitter disappointments. Regrets. There will always be difficulties. There will always be potholes in the road. But you can decide not to fall into them. You can teach yourself to walk around them. And you can take a deep breath and learn the hardest lesson of all--that there will be times (oh so many times!!) that you do fall into those holes, even when you try your dead-level best not to. But you can climb back out, dust yourself off, and keep on walking forward.

I have lost weight. I am healthier. I feel great! There is a spring in my step. But I will probably never be able to eat fresh raspberries again. Or oatmeal. Or sprouted wheat bread. And I'm looking at a left knee replacement in the next couple of years and my right knee ain't what she used to be. I have bursitis in my hips and the fibromyalgia still flares up sometimes. I regret the choices I made to land myself in this particular spot. Does this mean I was terribly unhappy as a fat woman? No. Just the opposite. Until I was—very unhappy to be so very FATSICK.
Would I do things differently? Hell yes! If I could do things differently I would be drinking a tall glass of cold water after my five mile run instead of jogging in the deep end of the pool with a bright yellow noodle holding up my weight to protect my bum knee. If things were different I would be coming into the house from a long, long walk with my dog or showering after a pickup game at the gym. If I could go back......well, you know.

-rebecca