Just figured I'd give a clearer background in case anyone's reading this and wants to know. My highest weight was 265lbs (120.2kg) and I'm about 5'2" (157.5cm). I'll let that sink in. Safe to say I'm on the roly-poly spectrum, but we'll start with how I got here.
As a child I was always lean. Until I got Lyme's Disease, which wasn't correctly diagnosed for months and I ended up with organ failure (kidneys and liver, basically 3 steps from death). By the time they figured out what it was, I had lost so much weight I was skeletal. I was about 38lbs at 8 years old. Thoroughly trashing my metabolism, but me and my mom didn't know anything about that so she was just glad I was alive, I was just glad I could go back to school after 7 months of being sick.
Fast forward to my preteen years, where weight has piled on, I'm hitting puberty at 9 years old, by 5th grade I'm about 5'4" and definitely on the high end of the healthy weight spectrum. Puberty hits like a sledge hammer, and I gain a decent amount of weight. I'm chunky, not obese yet.
High school comes. Here I am, getting shorter without really noticing it, heavier, and feeling like I'm ten times fatter than I am. So I yo-yo diet and starve myself, and do cardio for hours a day while lifting weights. I do get smaller. Height wise and weight wise. By the time I'm 17 I'm close to 5'3", and about 150lbs. I'll put a picture of me below. I thought I was fat. Don't chew me out too bad, I was a teen, I was stupid.
While playing a varsity tennis game (trust me, I sucked), I felt something in my back snap and crunch. I'm used to joints cracking, but this was different. That shrinking I had failed to notice? Spinal compression, what lucky genetics! My L5S1 disc had fully deteriorated on the left side, and my sciatic nerve was pinched between the deteriorating vertebrae. Fun. So much fun.
In my infinite teenage wisdom, I lied about how much pain I was in and kept on trucking. Hindsight is 20-20 guys. I know. The weight began to pile on because I couldn't do what I was once doing to maintain 150lbs. By the time I graduated high school (which was SO DAMN HARD trying to pretend I was okay, that I could handle the constant stabbing pain down my left side), I knew I had to see a doctor. I got spinal surgery at 18. After dealing with the pain for over a year, I was looking at three possible outcomes. Death, paralysis, or it would work. Lucky to say, it worked. I'm not dead, or paralyzed.
Thing is, I was still crippled. Couldn't lift, bend, twist, nada. I had done so much damage to the nerve that it will cause me pain for the rest of my life. Sometimes it's bad, most times it isn't. I was 200lbs when I went in for surgery. Got surgical MRSA, ended up on vancomycin for 8 straight days. A year of rehab, relearning how to walk, and coupled with a starve-binge yo-yo diet, that weight dropped and spiked.
Cue the next 8 years of being an idiot and not helping my body to heal, inside or out. I was obsessed with my weight in such an unhealthy way that I would stress about every single bite of food that went in my mouth. Didn't matter what was clean or healthy. My hormones were in the garbage bin, I felt awful, and nothing worked. Everything made me fatter or sicker.
Recently I stopped caring about my weight. It is what it is. My primary focus is to heal my body from the inside. After breaking out in sternal and flank rashes (thanks, candida), developing food intolerances (thanks, candida), and sky rocketing to 265lbs (thanks, me), I decided that I had to focus on my health and my hormones.
I found keto. I've never felt this good in my life. My brain is clear, my mood is up, and I'm not a slave to my appetite, nor am I worried that a single bite of food is the difference between healthy and fat. Food is fuel, and you have to find what works in your body. I'm finally not being an idiot and taking care of myself, instead of punishing my body.
Here's to living.
