I’ve always had an a
strange relationship with my weight, as a child and teenager I was skinny, and
was not a good eater, so much so, that my father had this saying „eat,
otherwise you’ll never be a nice fat one”.
Later, in my
twenties, when we were travelling back and forth between Miami and Budapest my
weight fluctuated. When we were home in the summers I gained, back in Miami I
was exercising more, bicycling, rollerskating, swimming, I quickly lost the
excess.
Then we came home for
good, and was in the higher range, when I got pregnant with Chris. I had
preeclampsia, and I gained a LOT with that pregnancy. But everybody said, don’t
worry, when the baby is out, you are going to lose more than his weight (amniotic
fluid, blood, etc), and if you breastfeed, you gonna back in shape no time. How
wrong they were. When I went into the hospital, I was about 84,5 kg, then I had
the boy, who was small, 3 kg. Three days after his birth we walked over to the
part of the hospital that had a scale, I stepped on it, and broke out crying.
It showed 83 Kg. Don’t ask me how, and why. When Chris was 2 years old, I was
still 75 kg (to my best of 55-58, that was about 60-62 when I got pregnant). I
was so ashamed of myself, I hated my body, I did not like pictures of myself.
No, PJ (Chris’s father) did not said I was fat, in fact he actually preferred
round arsed latino girls, and wanted to see me like that, however, I was
adamant to get back below 60.
Always hated running
even in my teenage years, when I did sports, but I took a long hard look in the
mirror, and said to myself, if it takes running to get rid of the fat on my
body, then running I will. So I did. First I run around the area we live in,
late night. Later around that time I found out (in about 2003-2004) you could
go into the sport’s field owned by the army’s sportsclub, they only asked you
use the outer lanes for running. Then I started to do exercise class, that was
somewhat choreographed, and I liked it. When I started working in the bank in
2005 I also started swimming, and combined the runs, the classes, the swimming
and going to work with bike, and I swear, I’ve been in the best shape of my
life In my mid- and late thirties. PJ hated it, of course, he hated that I had
(a bit of) self-confidence, some independence (because of my work), some
success (at my work). I remember once I was looking at my body in the mirror,
and he barked at me “why are you so proud of yourself, you look like an
anorexic!”.
Then it all broke
down, we broke up, he left (or made to leave – if you care enough to go back to
2008 December posts you can read about it). Then it was like he cursed me. Two
years later (as the result of the 2008-2010 economic crisis), I lost my job in
the bank, and five years hell ensued. Constant job searching, facing constant
rejections, trying to make sense of jobs of which one was worse than the other.
All the while, I had to face reality, that I cannot get from step one to step
two without a university degree, so, like the ram, that has its head down,
ready to charge, I applied to a university, got accepted to a government
subsidized place, and I was doing it with the same determination, as I do many
other things. However, it had a price. Nobody wants an employee, who goes off
to school every other Friday. The high example was another bank, where I worked
for a few months, and through the process I did say, that I applied to the
University, my points are way above the acceptance limit, so most probably I
WILL get accepted to the subsidized place, but if not, I AM GOING to a paid
course. However, when it actually came down to let me go to the mandatory
course, I got my head screamed off, that who am I think I am, nobody goes off a
day every other week (even though on Fridays, after 1 PM, there was nobody else
in the building, except me and the security). I tried to say, that I told you,
we had an agreement and I have enough vacation days to cover those days if they
don’t want to give me study days (allowed by law). The reply was more
screaming: “people have enough vacation days no stay home every Monday, but
they don’t do that, because that ISN’T THE CUSTOM”. Then I was promptly let go.
(Okay, there were more problems with that job, especially with the boss, but
she is not the topic of this post). Things went from bad to worst, and at the
end, from the five years I was going to Uni, I spent 3,5 unemployed. There were
really difficult times, once again I do not want to go in details, because this
story will be long enough without that. The thing is, there was a lot of stress
involved, depression, and all that threw my thyroid off course. It started with
my hair (if you ever wondered why I am not coloring it), then with my weight.
Then the constant trying to control my weight caused gallstones, and insulin
resistance, and add perimenopause to the equation, and you can guess the
result. No matter what I did, the weight kept creeping up.
By now I can safely
say, that in the last 15 years (or rather in the last 20-22 years) I’ve continuously
been on diet, I have not eaten more than 1200 calories a day (1500 if I was careless,
like at Christmas, or when we were travelling), while according to the
calculators, my base (where I do not loose or gain should have been around
1800-2000. Its not like I was eating a lot, or I was struggling with
“foodnoise”. I did not. I logged in a calorie-counting app, what I eat for so
many years, I can safely estimate the calorie-count of most food that finds its
way to my plate. I literally tried everything. Using Infratrainer. Drinking
herbal solutions. Eating packaged high protein meals. Apple vinegar. Walking
10-15000 steps a day. Not drinking sugary drinks. Not eating carbs. You name it
I did it.
Yes, I did go to my
GP with the problem, but she brushed me off.
Around that time I
got to know Norbi, we got together, and he liked me as I was, but still, my
weight did bother ME.
There are two
highlights that tell a lot about the state of things.
Once, back in 2020
(yes, high Covid times), for a few months I started running, thinking it worked
once, it might work the second time (late spring, early summer, when there were
no curfews yet). A few times a week, late night I went out running. Usually 3-5
km’s (mostly the same route I was running back after Chris’s birth. Also kept a
strict diet, counted calories (strictly under a 1000 a day). Over THREE effing
months I lost….
1,5 kg. No matter how
strict I dieted. How little I ate, how much I run. 1,5 kg, in three months. That
was all.
Then we went to Italy
for ten day. Yes, I was less strict with my diet, though I did watch what I
ate. When N. ate a huge meal, I had a small portion. I had one ball of ice-cream,
he had 4… three times. We did walk a lot on that trip (practically, anywhere we
go, we walk a lot), anywhere between 20000 -45000 steps a day.
When we came home,
both of us got on the scale. Guess what? N. lost 5 kilograms (yes, in ten
days). Me??? I gained back the 1,5 I lost with all that running the three
months before. Then for months after I struggled with my knee, that started
cracking and joints getting out of their place. Even walking was painful.
The other highlight,
that tells a lot, was when I tried a “boxed diet”, high protein things that
came in the packages, thinking that I kind of like those soups that you only
need to pour hot water over, what could go wrong? Well, each package had 200
calories, cream soups and porridges, I think, and I do not remember what else.
You were supposed to eat 4 package, 800 calories each day. However, those
protein things tasted so awful, I could not eat more than two one day. With 400
calories a day, however slowly, but the scale started to go down, but one
cannot live on that. I was weak, constantly tired migraines and headaches were
always there and my sight started to blur.
So after a few weeks and about 2 kg of loss, I started forcing myself to
eat three of those meals a day. At 600 kalories a day the weightloss stopped,
and when I ate the 800 calories I was supposed to, the scale started to go up.
UP and UP.
Of course, I’ve tried
so many other thing, but these two example are the most memorable for me.
The highest was in
December 2021, 96 kilogram (might have been somewhat more, but that was I had
written down. I still hardly believe I did put that number here) I wanted to
kill myself. I cried myself to sleep. I had to buy clothes in sizes I never
imagined. The weight did affect my health. Not only gallstones and high
bloodpressure, but my feet constantly hurt, my back, I was always out of
breath, I could not go up one flight of steps without heaving, I needed help to
get off buses. I got fairly good at hiding it with dressing, most of the photos
of me from that time are in historical clothes, and historical clothes are a
special class, as I always say, when I talk about them, but there will be
another post about that. Using knowledge of historical clothing I managed to
hide some of the weight in modern clothes too, though there are pictures I
still do not like to look at. I think one of my breaking points was when my
father told be, relating to that old saying, that “I am not telling you will
not be nice and fat… because you are.” No it was not nice of him, though he did
not mean it in a hurtful way, and he has no idea, just how much I struggled
with it, but still.
And I said enough. I
am NOT getting up to a 100 kg.
At the start of the
next year I started intermittent fasting, the only thing that ever seemed to
work. For the next year I managed to stay between 85 and 90 (which was still a
lot, but an improvement from the 96).
In 2023, I found out
that my GP retired, and I had to look for a new one. By that time Chris was
working and he said they have a good GP, I should try her, so I sent an email,
if she would take me on, which she did. Within a few months, I had blood tests,
blood-sugar tests, Insulin tests, UH exams. Of course, I did run into walls,
even with her help, like the diabetologist, who laughed me “what are you doing
here?” “My GP sent me” “But you are NOT diabetic yet, these results only show
prediabetes” (all the while the insulin tests showed like three times the
normal level at 30-60-90 minutes). But with my GP’s help we did see that (to
simplify things down) out of the three system responsible for one’s weight
(thyroid, insulin and hormones) all three is messed up badly. I got meds and
slowly, but surely, the kilos started to go off. It was NOT a linear thing,
sometimes I gained something back, but then later I lost more, but I fought
like hell for every 100 grams of loss. This year I’ve tried to give it my
everything, and finally it shows. The fact that I am over menopause might have
also something to do that I finally managed to lose, but there are meds, and
very strict intermittent fasting (on most days I only eat once, but never more
than twice).
Changing doctors
meant such a difference. With my old doc, for years I could not get a glucose
and insulin tolerance test for YEARS. With the new doc, they were taken care of
within a few weeks. So, nobody should
let doctors brush her/him off. Go after what you need.
At the moment I am
between 65- 67 kg, which counts as “normal” BMI. The high end of the normal
BMI, but still “normal”.
And what it all means
to me? So much and more.
Getting back to the
size of pants I wore a decade ago feels great, but much more important that now
I can choose clothes based on what I LIKE, instead of what I can squeeze myself
into. It means constant surprise, like the other day I wanted to wear a skirt I
had in my closet, that I loved, but never actually fitted into, and if fell
off. Literally fell off, not loose at the waist, not I can hold it with a belt,
but falling off. I have panties that I cannot wear, because they are too big. I
have a nice collection of racerback bra (my favorite style), that I have to get
rid of, because they are too big. At the beginning of the year I had a pattern
for a coat printed (in size XL), but now I asked my friend (who made the same
for herself) to bring hers, I want to check the size, and her size M was loose
on me. I have historical clothes I cannot wear anymore, because they are too
big. Yes, I do not mind that I will need to make new ones, I am absolutely
happy to do so, and not only for the smaller sizes, but also, because I learned
so much since I started to make them, the new ones will be so much better.
However, the fear is
in me. Can I keep the loss up? Where will my size end up? What if I stop the
strict diet? Will the weight creep back? How much? What if I make something for
my current size and I gain some weight back? Or should I loose more? (I am
still not at the weight I was at my mid-thirties, but then do I want to get
back to that size?) Of course all this loss means that my the skin is loose, my
muscles are loose, and I have plans for more exercise, and hope with time they
will tighten up a bit.
That is where I am
now. It was not easy, it was hard as
hell. It still is. I guess it will always be hard, as nor my thyroids, nor my
insulin system will get back to normal ever again, even if menopausal hormone-changes
calm down.
But I do not hide
behind others on group-photos.
