At the peak of my delusional #eatingdisorder / body destruction in 2012, I took a fully nude picture and posted it on G+ (@divisionbyzero I'm sure remembers 🤣) Where I showcased everything wrong with my body and to chart my #healthtracking goals for hitting my ideal weight.
I had a blog where I meticulously documented my 4 1/2 hours of DAILY workouts, my starvation diet, every morsel of food I ate once a week, and all my struggles to figure things out with no doctor and no insurance.
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This was when I knew nothing about how my body actually worked, didn't understand how #PCOS, #Hashimotos, thyroid issues, #cortisol response, #InsulinResistance, fat storage in response to obsessive cardio and not eating, extra #testosterone, as well as all the other the hormones my body put out to deal with #chronicpain, actually affected my weight and overall body. I was always under the impression, and made to feel by EVERYONE including previous doctors, that I was lazy and ate too much.
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But as I learned over the course of 12 years ... NONE of my problems actually had anything to do with FOOD or how much I did or didn't EXERCISE. And that starving myself and over exercising RUINED my body more and caused my metabolism to crash and burn.
I know now - thanks to 12+ years of obsessive data collection, correlations, my own self-education, and finally doctors who listen and READ said data - that ALL of my problems were hereditary issues ... unfixable by me or anything I tried.
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It is thanks to NEW and CURRENT research on #PCOS, #InsulinResistance, #MetabolicSyndrome, as well as the UK's absolutely ASTROUNDING amount of research and stigma-free research and work on obesity, that we now have medications that can make a huge difference for people like me stuck in a never-ending cycle of what our body is doing ON ITS OWN, no matter how much we try and counteract it. #PCOS is awful. #Hashimotos is awful. And every woman's experience is different.
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Some women with #PCOS can't gain weight no matter how much they try, it completely messes up their fertility, and they have symptoms of ME and #chronicfatigue. Other women can't lose weight and their bodies are caught in a constant state of inflammation and fighting it all the time which makes them equally exhausted and drained of energy. Not to mention the extra hormones and androgens, the beard growth, the massive and rapid muscle gain that makes your body bulk out and look more masculine.
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And to be suffering with these things and having doctors and people tell you that it's something YOU ARE DOING WRONG or that you're NOT DOING ENOUGH or that the problem is in any way YOU ... it's absolutely so DESTRUCTIVE.
A lot of body issues, ESPECIALLY for WOMEN ... have zero to do with what they are doing. Women's bodies are fascinating, complicated, and everything inside is trying to kill us half the time or keep us in pain 3 weeks out of 4 every month. Men have no fucking clue.
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ALL this to say that thanks to 12+ years of KILLING myself, collecting data, understanding my body, and competent, non-racist, non-fatist, non-judgmental doctors who ACTUALLY listen and DO THEIR JOBS PROPERLY ... I've been able to finally reach the FIRST of my weight goals from even PRIOR to 2012 ... and I didn't have to destroy my body to do it. I just needed proper medication ...
One teeny tiny little thyroid pill and one weekly injection and my life has completely changed.
COMPLETELY.
It is easy to tell on the chart ... WHEN I got proper meds and how effective they have been ...
I will say that for all the madness I experienced ... destroying my body, my metabolism, my spirit ... I did LEARN a ton about how MY body works and what kinds of things I could control and couldn't control. I don't want to say I developed an eating disorder ON PURPOSE ... but I knew that what I was doing wasn't healthy but I also knew from research that #keto was one of the key components to my #InsulinResistance and this was LONG before keto was a thing that everyone was doing.
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Starving my body of ALL SUGAR in order to try and FORCE it to burn fat instead of glucose was the one KEY thing I learned back in 2012 ... with #MetabolicSyndrome your body "forgets" how to burn fat ... and the cortisol response your body is constantly producing when you have #chronicpain just makes MORE glucose. Your body lives on that and stores fat especially when you do 4 hours of cardio a day and create stress on your body.
Understanding ALL of that was the beginning of clarity.
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So, as I was just saying to @IronButterfly ... I learned SO much. I NEEDED to put myself through all that in order to understand HOW my body worked specifically with the #PCOS, #Hashimotos, thyroid issues and beyond.
My issues were specific to ME and I needed to understand my medical history, what that meant for how my body worked, why my body responded ways that other people's didn't etc ...
I WRECKED my body BUT I learned everything that helped me going forward into BETTER health.
Quick liquid meals like #Soylent are AMAZING for people like myself with food aversion because it removes the process of dealing with food, smelling food, MASTICATING ... which is like nails on a chalkboard for me.
DRINKING a meal is a whole different mental process and much easier.
So, before you JUDGE how people choose quick meals or whatever ... keep in mind that for MANY people it's one of the only ways they can get what they need in their bodies due to GI and other issues.
I was an EARLY backer of Soylent and when it came out I remember people saying ... just eat, just make a sandwich, you're so lazy etc.
Make a sandwich? Do you know the kind of mental TORTURE it is for someone with food aversion or recovering from a severe eating disorder? There are so many STEPS involved and all of them involve handling food or things related to food and it just turns you off completely from wanting to eat.
EVERYONE is DIFFERENT and people are dealing with different issues.
My epic endocrinologist who retired never used the words "meal" or "food" with me. She was always telling me I needed to eat more but she was delicate in the way she would talk ... "getting me healthier", "making sure I was getting the right nutrients" and things like that ...
Those words were insanely triggering for me back then. "EAT more FOOD" or "EAT more MEALS" ... those phrases would throw me into a several panic attack.
She was a GREAT endocrinologist. The first who EVER read my data.
The end result of that eating disorder is I do still have CONSIDERABLE issues with food and my relationship to food. I still have to force myself to eat several meals a day and even then, there is an extreme aversion to food ... it is something I have to expend a TON of mental focus on. It's not as simple to just "eat when I'm hungry". I'm NEVER hungry. Even when I exercised 4 hours a day, I only at one 50 carb meal A WEEK. And then I would fast for two more ... food wasn't necessary AT ALL.