How I Shrunk My Size
I was always the girl who would try to cover up as much as possible because she felt uncomfortable about the way she looked. I would try to wear long t-shirts to cover my legs and wouldn't even think about wearing a sleeveless shirt. And it's been about ten years since I've put on a bathing suit. Needless to say, I've had body-image issues for quite some time, but things have changed.
Before I went to college I started having stomach problems. I would feel sick all the time and would feel full after eating very little. At first I thought it was just a nervous stomach, but even at college it persisted. I began to live off Pepto-Bismol in order to be able to function like a normal human-being, and it was getting old. Soon I found that the less I ate, the better I felt. I even cut out all carbonation because that stuff would absolutely kill me from the inside. It was all working, but I felt nowhere near perfect, and the symptoms never completely went away.
Last summer when I was getting all of the work done on my leg because of the pending skin graft situation, I was going to yoga classes multiple times a week. Of course that didn't last very long because I eventually couldn't even walk let alone hold difficult positions for long periods of time with a bleeding and bandaged leg, but it certainly kept me more active. However, I soon found that I didn't need the yoga to lose weight. In fact, I lost the most weight when I was off my feet, believe it or not. I suppose it was just the restricted diet I was on, but to be honest, it wasn't that extreme.
I would only have two meals a day, drink a ton of water, and try to limit snacks. Yogurt was and still very much is my hero because I have it every day, and my go-to Skinny Pop Popcorn became my daily snack. But I didn't deprive myself of iced coffee and lattes from Dunkin, and I certainly didn't stop baking, yet I was still losing weight and loving every second of it. Before I knew it I had lost fifteen pounds. On the day I found out that I had this sketchy mole on my leg I weighed 155 pounds, and after my skin graft surgery I weighed 140. It was pretty incredible, but the weight-loss wasn't over yet.
Since I was in and out of doctor's offices and hospitals, I figured I should probably look into my stomach issue once and for all. I found a gastroenterologist, who of course was booked for quite some time, but I was willing to wait. It was about mid-August when I finally had my appointment, and it led me down a path of even more tests and procedures. Blood work, scans, you name it, I had to get it done. But it was all becoming frustrating because all the tests kept coming back completely normal. Fun fact: I'm actually super healthy. No gluten allergy, perfect blood pressure, and absolutely nothing wrong with my stomach or gallbladder, which is great news I suppose, just not the news someone who is looking to find a reason behind her stomach issues wants to hear.
Since I started going to this doctor so late into the summer, some of the procedures needed to be done during the school year. In fact, I had my endoscopy on a long weekend, and by that time I was down to 135, and luckily the procedure was how I finally found out that I have gastroparesis. It's a chronic stomach condition, and there is no cure. The only viable treatment for it is a strict diet. Low fat, low fiber, low sugar, and low solid food during those weeks when your stomach just doesn't like you. While it's certainly not the worse thing that could happen to someone, it sure is annoying that there isn't a simple pill I can take to make it all go away. I've have to make some adjustments to my diet, and I rely heavily on probiotics and digestive enzymes to get me through a meal, but at least I finally know.
This condition, though not always fun, does make it easier for me to stay on track. I can literally look at something or read a menu description and know whether or not it is going to make me feel ill. Essentially anything rich will leave me curled up on the floor feeling like death. I also work out more because I love the way I look now and I don't want to go back to where I was. I went from a size 12 to a size 4 and have never felt better. I feel more confident with how I look and feel, and there really isn't a better feeling than confidence in my opinion.
It's taken me a long time to like the way that I look. Upon reflection of all those years of not being happy about my appearance I get pretty depressed. It's not right to think so negatively of yourself in a world with such awful expectations of how we should and shouldn't look. I regret all those years of being self-conscience because that's not truly living, it's hiding, and that's not the kind of person I want to be. Weight doesn't define a person, and I will never let it define me again.
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