Long Time, No See…
Where did you come from; where did you go?
Clearly, I’ve been gone a while.
I’m so sorry to anyone who was actually following my journey. I can’t really say why I went away, why I stopped posting… I suppose the most general answer is that it was the end of the school year, final exam time, and just crazy busy. But then it wasn’t, and I was doing better, but I stopped posting.
In my last post, way back on April 1, 2022, I was bemoaning the fact that a loss of over 50 pounds had not made any appreciable difference. Well, it had, but I was not seeing it as much as I would have hoped to for being 50 pounds down.
And that wasn’t the end of it! By the time summer hit, in June of 2022, a year into my journey, I had lost 52.9 pounds total. That was with some plateaus and some ups and downs along the way.
But that’s where it stopped. I started to plateau again. I spoke to my doctors again, and they were sympathetic. They had one more thing for me to try, but it wasn’t included in my $99/month program cost, and it wasn’t covered by my insurance since it was being used off-label. That meant an out-of-pocket additional expense (even with coupons) of another $40 to $50/month, so, I never started it, and the program docs said there was nothing else they could do, no new thing they could try. I was crushed, but persevered for another month or two. I even bought myself nearly a whole new wardrobe for the new school year with lots of cute dresses and more color than I used to wear.
But, without seeing any continuing results,
I finally quit the program—$1200 is just WAY too much for a 50-pound loss, and I had other bills piling on that the money could go to. Besides that, I had tons of extra meds from the program from every time they switched something or added a second med to the first and also refilled the first even when I didn’t need it.
In fact, I still have some of those meds and am still taking them to this day (one was an anti-depressant, and I don’t want to just quit it out of hand; as I get nearer to the end of my supply, I’ll wean myself down to half a dose, then a quarter dose for a couple of weeks each—but that won’t happen for quite some time).
So, anyway, somewhere along the way, I stopped bothering so much. I didn’t care as much, didn’t pay attention as much. And I knew I was putting weight back on, but something in the back of my brain just kept saying it’s fine, you can just start again when you’re ready; you know what to do. Ugh, what a horrible thing to do. I didn’t get brave enough to weigh in again until a couple of weeks ago, when they started the Biggest Loser Challenge back up at my job.
The morning we were to weigh in at school for the initial setup, I weighed at home in the same manner I’d been doing for my Wednesday weigh-ins: naked and just after using the restroom. I stood there and cried at the backward progress I’d made. My new weight on January 16th was 313.1 pounds!!! That’s putting back 37.1 of the pounds I lost!
I spent $1200 and a year of my life for a net loss of only 15.8 pounds.
How did I let this happen? I feel absolutely unworthy. Of respect, of care whether I’m fat or not, of anything really. Why should anyone trust me with anything? Why can’t I just be/do better?!?!?!? I am just … utterly disgusted with myself. I cannot comprehend how anyone can look at me.
And so, here we go again.
I am going this afternoon to a new doctor, one recommended to me by a colleague. I’m a bit frightened to do so; it has been so long since I’ve been to the doctor. I need to bring a list of all my meds I’m taking, and I don’t know how he’s going to react to some of the FOUND meds and that program. But I have to do something. I have to start somewhere. I just don’t know how this is going to work. But it has to work. I just can’t be this giant balloon of a person anymore….