Endometrial implants grow through the use of estrogen. Even though I was totally spayed (I love telling people that! hahaha), there were still some microscopic implants left behind that could continue to grow and cause trouble and pain. The estrogen-producing ovaries are removed and you do not then take estrogen hormone replacements. That's counter-productive!
That means cold-turkey into menopause...no gentle slowing down over 5 to 7 years...WHAM-O, there ya go!
I knew what symptoms to expect because of getting Lupron shots 3 years earlier to try and control the endo. Lupron is a chemotherapy drug with the desired side-effect of temporarily shutting down a woman's reproductive system.
I had one shot a month for 6 months but they did not help the endo...but they DID prepare me for menopause! And the nurse rightly said, "if you had Lupron shots, then menopause will be a breeze for you"...meaning that the menopausal symptoms associated with Lupron shots are much more intense than menopause itself.
The one thing I wasn't prepared for was the change it would make in my already depressed metabolism. The weight gain was rapid and drastic...30 pounds over just several months = (
Once again, I was at a loss to figure out why I was fat?! Oh, I should've said FATTER, because by now, I truly was fat...only a few BMI points away from the dreaded OBESE.
One really good thing came out of this painful chapter in my life: I became a runner. A dream that I've had since I was 10 years old or so. Sometimes I think back and wonder...how much fatter would I have been if I'd not been running? How much more depressed would I have been had I not been running? How much more body-hating would I have been if I hadn't been able to see the new muscle definition in my legs?
In fact, the running is what finally pushed me to have the hysterectomy! I was tired of never knowing what kind of pain I might wake up to on race morning. I slogged through several races in pain because of unexpected "bad days".
WAY TO GO if you're still reading! I needed to give you those details so the rest of this would make sense = )
So, here I am...running 15 to 20 miles a week, training for races, racing once a month, building up my long runs with the eventual hope of doing a marathon.
And...injured about every 6 weeks because of all the extra weight my poor bird bones were having to carry around = ( I would have to take a week or two off to recover, then start back up again. Over and over and over...
So...again...I'm running, I'm eating healthy foods, truly! The extra weight just will not budge. I try doing things I know to do...I analyze all the diets and eating plans out there. I REFUSE to eat an unhealthy diet just to drop pounds!
If God makes a food, then that food is good, within the balance and moderation that He expects. If a diet tells you to never eat carrots (NEVER EAT CARROTS???!!!) or anything else that God made and has said is good, then I will not follow that diet...it is bad and unworthy of my time and energy.
I knew I needed to lose weight, I wanted to lose weight, I was doing all I knew how to lose weight...but I wasn't losing any...and I didn't know of anything else to do. I was beginning to think that I was destined to be fat because most of my family and relatives are overweight/obese and I figured it was my genetic heritage.
It was in this atmosphere that I had my light-bulb moment. A good friend was wanting to lose weight too and was investigating Weight Watchers. We were looking at the program online and talking about it.
I put my analyst's hat on and proceeded to do my usual run-through, looking for red flags...and I didn't find a single one. These were my thoughts..."this looks GREAT! I can do this one!! it all makes perfect sense!" I got shivers...seriously!
I knew Weight Watchers was a good program, in fact, it's the most successful and medically recommended program out there. But I knew I didn't want to go to meetings and couldn't go anyhow since we lived so far out in the country, so I didn't know if it was an option for me.
My friend was thinking about following Weight Watchers online. I hadn't even heard that you could do that. After investigating it further, I saw that all I really needed was the food points books. All other information was freely and readily available!
I came home from our friends' house that evening, got on eBay and ordered the food points books. I also ordered the food tracking notebook and the little slide thingy that would tell me how many points I earned for all my running = )
I started following the program on October 31, 2003 weighing 165 pounds. I LOVED the program!! It teaches you how to eat healthy, it makes you WANT to make healthy choices over unhealthy ones. You still have the freedom to make the unhealthy or less healthy choices but you're rewarded for choosing healthy. And the healthier the food, the bigger the reward!
The first thing the program showed me was that I was DRINKING my daily points allowance in skim milk...and then eating food on top of that...no wonder I was fat!!!
For years I'd bought into the "low/no fat, eat as much as you want, still lose weight" propaganda that was so prevalent in the late 80's and 90's. I'd bought in BIG TIME. One of the sayings in the Eat Well, Live Well program is "it's the fat that makes you fat". I believed that to mean "if you eat low fat, you won't get fat".
I wouldn't look at calories at all...just fat grams. If they were low, I figured it was a "safe" food and I could consume it until I was full or satisfied.
I was SHOCKED to discover that alot of times there were MORE calories in the low/no fat food than in the full fat food. And the added sugar in the low/no fat food actually made you crave more food because of the sugar highs and lows! And when you remove the fat, you remove part of the food's ability to satisfy you for longer.
Hence my belief that drinking skim milk was almost like drinking water and I could have as much of it as I wanted...and I wanted ALOT. So that was the very first major change to be made. Some people going on a diet give up cokes right off the bat, I gave up skim milk! hahahaha
I added more high-fiber foods, more veggies, more fruit and yes, I embraced my hunger. For some reason, even to this day, I have the mentality that if I'm not FULL, I'm hungry. And that's simply not true! It's ok to feel "light" or "there's no food in my stomach".
Now, to be honest, that's an uncomfortable feeling for me. I LIKE feeling very full...all the time. But I don't like feeling OVER-full...that's uncomfortable in the same way as under-full for me.
Right now, as I type this, I'm feeling "empty" even though I just had my afternoon snack of a slice of cheese, 3 kiwi fruit and 26 pretzel sticks with mustard. I KNOW there's food in my stomach but my brain keeps telling me "you're hungry...eat, EAT!!"
I have no idea why this is but one of the best things Weight Watchers has taught me is that it's OK for my common sense to overrule the hunger screams from my head. My head wants me to eat more food and more calories and more fat and more sweet and more salty...more more MORE... than my body truly needs.
When I follow my brain, I gain weight. When I follow common sense, in spite of my brain's signals, I will be a healthy weight. This is the daily struggle that I've tried to explain to people...those who have been or are overweight understand perfectly...to others, it's just CA-RAZY!
Ok, back to the story...where was I? Oh yeah, so WW (Weight Watchers) taught me what not to eat and what to eat and basically how to live to have a healthy, normal weight, lots of energy body...and did it in a gentle, easily acceptable and put into practice way.
I had set two goal weights: the first one was the 108 pounds that I had reached when I was 28 (I was 37 when I started following the WW plan) on the Eat Well, Live Well plan.
And then from the runner's perspective I was going for a "minimum body fat, maximum muscle" that would allow me to see what I was capable of in the running world, whatever that number might be.
So I hit 108 in May of 2004 but stayed at the same points level and continued to lose. My activity level had jumped dramatically though, because I just felt so fantastic I wanted to be active and moving ALL THE TIME!
I hit 98 pounds in August and discovered the "min fat, max muscle" weight range that would allow me to run and race at the competitive level... 98 - 100 pounds, 12% body fat, my Tanita body analyzer scale told me I had the body and metabolism of a 12 year old! I felt AWESOME, I was running GREAT, I had energy to spare and the constant "empty" feelings had lessened so I didn't have to drum up so much motivation to ignore them.
On the days when my weight was 97 pounds, I could feel a slight drop in energy and also see that same slight drop in my running pace, that's how I knew 98 pounds was the bottom of the healthy weight for me.
It also bears mentioning that a number of my friends did not feel that I was healthy...that I was too skinny. It might have been the concern that I was going to keep on losing and become anorexic or I might have looked too skinny to them. Fast runners DO look very skinny! That's what helps them run fast...and I wanted to see how fast I could be = )
I was decently fast...not amazing or anything close to "elite" but I was consistently placing in my age group at races and even won Overall Female Masters at a race! All my PR's are set during this period.
I'd also like to mention that Petey lost about 30 pounds simply from eating the way I was eating. He did track his food points for a couple weeks but then he just seemed to know how much he should eat and did it. Grrrrr... no struggle involved!
While 98-100 was a good weight for racing 5k and 10k, it was not the best for marathon training. I ran my first marathon in February 2005 with a finish of 4:44. If I'd not had IT trouble for the last 5 miles, I'm sure I would've cracked the 4:30 point = (
I still maintained 98-100 through 2005 until the winter when I was training for the Houston Marathon in January 2006. I was really struggling with nausea in the later miles of my long runs.
I was having ART treatments at the time and I mentioned it to the doctor. He said that I didn't have enough body fat so my body was breaking down muscle to use for fuel and the waste products from that process were making me feel sick to my stomach.
He said if I gained 5 pounds, I would see a difference. So I worked at that over the next several weeks. It was a scary time because I felt that if I started gaining, I wouldn't stop...like last time = (
My marathon PR is 4:07 from that 2006 Houston Marathon where I weighed 103...right before my 40th birthday! I maintained 103 - 105 for the next couple of years.
And then...wait for it...I got tired of writing down what I was eating and keeping track of everything...so I stopped...and so it began again...
To be continued...
Pony, thanks for sharing all this. I look forward to the next installment! :-)
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