HisNani
Posts: 54
Joined: 11/3/2008
From: Maryland
Status: offline
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You know, for some people it has nothing to do with how much or what they are eating or what they are doing for exercise. My entire life (since being born an 11 pound baby) I have been overweight. Kindergarten through even now, I have been told by everyone to eat less, to exercise more, to get off my fat ass, to starve myself...my doctor tried to send me to a fat camp. I've never eaten any more than anyone else. My sister has always been skinny, and I ate what she did, and sometimes less. I love salads, and I love vegetables and fruits. I'd take a bowl of watermelon over a candy bar any day. And yet...at age 21, I'm still 285 pounds. I was this weight throughout high school. It didn't matter what I told people, how much I ran myself ragged...I did soccer in middle school. I was on the soccer team, and I ran just as much as the rest of the girls did. I lost nothing, and yet kept running until I almost blacked out and I was barely eating. I tried the SlimFast diet. No change. Tried Adkins, no change. My dad lost 10 pounds after doing 1 week of severely limited carb intake. I did the limited carb intake (called the Intro period, and when you're supposed to lose the most weight in one shot) for three months. I didn't lose even one pound. And I was on a stationary bike in our basement every afternoon, biking at 10 miles per hour with resistance for an hour. Nothing.
No one believed me when I said it didn't matter what I did I couldn't lose weight. Still people avoided me for being fat, and I was the monster in school. Even in college, living in the dorms, in full control of my eating habits and constantly walking across campus and uphill to my job which was over a mile to walk...my roommate's boyfriend asked why I never got off my fat ass. I even starved myself for over a week and walked the long ways to class, went up 6 flights of stairs (which no one else was stupid enough to do). No change. I was never asked out seriously...only in joke. One boy would dare another to ask out the fat girl...they'd assume I was so desperate to have a boyfriend that I'd say yes and think he was serious.
In the winter of 2005, I begged my parents to gift me with GP surgery for Christmas. I told them I was miserable...being 18 years old and never been kissed, or on a date, and having gone stag or with a girlfriend or two to three proms. They were too afraid of the risks...mostly the risk of death. The surgery makes your stomach smaller, and redirects everything so once that little stomach processes the food, it goes straight to the intestines. There is always a full feeling, and your body spends more time actually processing the food. It's a matter of immediately shrinking your stomach without making yourself sick. My parents did promise me, however, that they might get me the lap band system. They said we'd see.
I went for my physical that's required by the school the next August. I went through the whole humiliating process...and then my doctor asked me when I'd had my last period. I had to think...but came up with I'd had my last period either that previous December or January. She asked me again if I was sexually active, and I'd laughed bitterly and told her no. Not remotely. She immediately made an appointment for me to see a gynecologist. My gyno examined me, and then, slightly worried like my doctor had been, sent me to an endocrinologist.
They ran all sorts of tests, took a lot of blood. And, in plain english, the conclusion they came to was that my body was in constant crisis mode.
Crisis mode is when your body doesn't know when it's ever going to see food again, so it stores every carb it ingests as fat, and throws out proteins to be burned (which is why exercise was so exhausting and made me lightheaded and sick feeling) for energy. Anything I eat/ate gets turned into fat, immediately. This condition (polycystic ovarian syndrome is part of it) basically means that my whole endocrine system is spaztic. It makes it very difficult if not near impossible for me to lose weight, super easy for me to gain back anything I'd managed to lose, and difficult to conceive and carry children. Not to mention the stresses the weight put on my whole body.
GP is just...help. I mean, people are like 'oh you'll be skinny if you just get up off your ass' and they make fun of those kids who are overweight and trailing behind in gym class...thinking they don't move enough and that's why they're so slow. Wrong. Those kids who are overweight could be twice your body weight. It's like the skinny kid carrying another kid on top of him and trying to run as fast as kids who aren't carrying someone else. It's hard. It's tiring. And it doesn't work for everyone. Controlling eating and exercise doesn't always have something to do with it. Not all of those who are overweight are so because they can't control eating, or because they eat as an emotional reaction. And that's a major stereotype. GP takes off that extra person...so that kid who was running in last can catch up to the others. Whether he stays skinny or doesn't is up to HIM to deal with. HE has to change how he eats if that's the problem. He has to exercise and get treatment for whatever was the issue. It just gives him a chance in the race, you know?
When I was little I used to have a lot of fantasies...in my dreams I'd go to school and be invisible, and then that night I'd unzip my skin and find out that my whole life I'd been living in a fat suit when I was really this pretty skinny girl, and suddenly the world opened up...and people could see me. I used to look in the mirror at my naked body and think 'if I could just cut off my stomach, and my ass...some of my thighs and under my arms...I'd be okay. I could deal with the rest'. If you're born overweight, you're trying to run the race with a serious disadvantage. And for some people...there IS no chance of ever catching up. GP gives that person hope. It gives them a reason to continue, to keep living. It evens the odds, so they have the same chance as everyone else to be happy, to succeed.
And isn't that what's important?
_____________________________
"Knowing is not enough;we must apply. Willing is not enough;we must do."-Johann WolfgangvonGoethe
"A successful man builds a firm foundation of the bricks that other people throw at him."
"That's very Zen of you, you must smoke pot."-George,DLM
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RE: what's up with gastric bypass surguries, can't peop... - 
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