The Burden of Being Heavy…

American society is obsessed with the thin woman, though of course, it must be within reason, she can’t be too skinny. I imagine that I am not alone in my internalized shame for being a large woman. It’s hard to not take on some of the unworthiness associated with being “fat” when that’s all I heard throughout my childhood from my peers, and I am sure I am not alone in this. I am exploring every avenue possible to lose weight, I know that I am doing everything I possibly can right now, and yet sometimes when I look in the mirror, I am still completely saddened by the state of my body and I have to quiet the voices that want to tell me that I am “ugly”, “fat”, “not good enough”, “unworthy”. 

My health journey started in 2015 and has gone through many ups and downs since then. I found a holistic chiropractor who looked at markers in the blood to determine what exactly was going on in the body. We discovered that I have a genetic mutation called MTHFR on two gene alleles (at least 40% of the population has at least one marker). 

*MTHFR means that my body cannot methylate its B vitamins, that I struggle to process synthetic chemicals, think laughing gas and anesthesia,  and that my body does not detox itself at the same rate as those without the mutation. 

Finding out I had this genetic marker was game-changing for me. At the time I was in daily pain which was also reflected in my blood work with the presentation of autoimmune factors. Under the care of this chiropractor, I went from hurting and needing to nap anytime I did anything physical to feeling so much better, working out a few times a week, and within the next year, I was able to hike a 14er (Mountain reaching over 14,000 ft). 

I changed so much but I never lost a single pound. At the time, I was mostly unphased by my inability to lose weight because I lost so much inflammation which meant I looked way smaller, even if the scale didn’t reflect it. 

The next time that I went searching for answers was when after a year of trying to conceive, I was nowhere closer to having a baby. I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2016 and given metformin to try.

(The requirements for a PCOS diagnosis had changed- you had to have two of the three markers: high testosterone, irregular periods, and cysts on the ovaries. I didn’t have the cysts but I did have the other markers.  I now know that what has been lumped together with PCOS is actually a metabolic disorder.)

The metformin bottomed by sugar out constantly so that didn’t work and then I was offered a pill to force ovulation. I thankfully did not explore that option as my husband ended up getting deployed so we put the idea of a baby on hold (I have since learned that while you can force the body to ovulate, if the hormones, specifically progesterone, are not sufficient, the effort will just result in a miscarriage). 

I was pregnant within six weeks of my husband returning from deployment, divine timing to say the least. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. From there I breastfed for two years, got pregnant again, had my son, and breastfed him for 15 months which led me to January of this year. This is the first time that I have had my body all to myself in the last five years….

Before I stopped breastfeeding this last round I knew something was not right within my body and went to a naturopath in October. I had injured my back in March and lost a lot of muscle/gained weight but that didn’t explain the overall body pain and inflammation. Blood work showed a return of the autoimmune factors including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. It also showed high levels of inflammation, low thyroid levels, and a whole host of other issues that were contributing to me feeling like crap.

My doctor suspected that the inflammation and autoimmune had to do with my gut health. She had me do a comprehensive gut health test (fancy term for sending your poop in to be evaluated). This test showed extreme overgrowth of bad bacteria (mainly yeast) in the gut, dysbiosis (growth of gut bacteria in the intestines), and an extreme deficiency of good gut bacteria. Essentially I had such an overgrowth of bad bacteria within my system that there was no room for good gut bacteria to grow, meaning that every ounce of healthy eating and supplements that I was taking wasn’t making a dent in my health. 

The detox that my doctor put me on was rough but she made it very clear that not only should I see an end to the sugar cravings but that I should also see pretty immediate weight loss. I was miserable on the detox but I knew that it was very clearly making changes in my body, I just wasn’t losing weight.

We slowly introduced good bacteria to my gut while still doing the detox to kill off the bad and then eventually completely switched over to adding good bacteria and support for the good growth. I got my energy back pretty quickly once we started the introduction of the good, but no changes in my weight. My doctor was kind of baffled that things hadn’t started shifting weight-wise but was convinced that it would soon. 

At this point, I decided that I was going to continue doing all of the steps listed by my doctor but that I was going to get a Fitbit and track my steps and calories. Here comes the internalized shame again… I was genuinely questioning whether I sat on my ass all day eating a ton of calories. As I am sure you could have guessed,  what my fitbit made very clear is that I move a tremendous amount throughout my day (especially on the days when we go do something physical) and I eat really healthily (I make most of our food from scratch so it should have been a no brainer to realize this but obviously if you’re heavy you eat like crap, right?). 

When my weight still hadn’t moved after 7 weeks of a complete push for the good bacteria, and my hormones started acting up, we decided to do another round of blood work (this is about 7 months after the first round). 

This round of blood work showed a decrease in the autoimmune factors, a significant drop in inflammation, and better thyroid levels. Clear evidence that all of the work we were doing with my gut was working. However, what it also showed was high testosterone, high cholesterol, and high insulin. It seems that fixing my gut health was not enough fix the insulin resistance (common symptoms with PCOS)and the high testosterone and clear imbalance of hormones could definitely be causing my hormonal symptoms (cellulite, night sweats, low libido, oversensitive nervous system).

We went back over my history and the fact that I technically had a PCOS diagnosis (despite having two children without intervention) and decided that we would attack the testosterone and the insulin resistance and see where we are at in three months with another round of blood work. It seems that what is going on in my body is not the classic PCOS but actually a metabolic issue. 

When my husband came home from work after I had my appointment,  I broke down crying as I told him about everything and what we are doing next. I just kept telling him over and over how tired I am. I am tired of carrying around an extra hundred pounds. I am tired of doing everything I possibly can to fix my body and there is always something more. I am tired of knowing that I am active and I eat very healthy, but still feel this self-blame for not being able to lose weight. I am tired of feeling jealousy over seeing people gain weight when they eat a bunch of processed crap and know that if they just ate better they would lose it all. I am just tired. 

So if you’ve made it this far in my story and feel like no matter what you do to lose weight it’s still not enough, I see you. If you feel shame over your body size and would do just about anything to be thinner with the guarantee that it would work, I see you. This journey goes beyond all the body struggles. It goes beyond trying to fix years of misinformation and lack of support that my body had. It goes deep into the feeling of unworthiness and lack of self-love. I am walking this path every day and if you are too, I hope you know you are not alone. I will continue to share my story so that one day the shame will melt away. Stories shared in safe spaces are how we defy shame. We are all worthy, we’ve just got to embed that knowing into our core belief systems.