Justine Manzano I’ve discussed this before in an earlier blog post about my self-image, but I’ve always thought I’d spent my entire life overweight. I’m not really sure why, because a couple of years ago, I’d cleaned out my mother’s house and found loads of pictures from my awkward pre-teen and teenage years, and discovered I was actually a relatively thin girl.
It could have been because my mother had gained weight during those years and had taken me on her diet journey with her. Maybe I just had body dysmorphia. It’s hard to tell now. All I know is, I wasn’t overweight. But by the time I’d gotten to the age of eighteen, I was.
That was when my struggle with weight actually began. I was in the 220 range at that age. I came down. I went back up. I yo-yo’d. When my son was young, I went on Weight Watchers. I lost fifty pounds. I was the thinnest I’d ever been in my adult life. I gained it all back. As a matter of fact, the quarantine brought me higher than I’d ever been.
However, in my mind, I was the most positive I’d ever been with my body. This was me and I had finally learned to love me, extra folds and all. I embraced the body positive movement with both arms and a firm squeeze.
The seed of this blog post begins at my first visit to a new doctor. I’d been staying out of doctor’s offices throughout the pandemic, and my old doctor went full-time urgent care. I needed a new doctor. Unfortunately, with limitations on distance and insurance, my selection was somewhat limited. I tried a doctor with some good reviews on ZocDoc.
I don’t generally love male doctors. I’m sure that many of them are incredible. But I’ve had two in my adult years. One didn’t believe me when I suggested I had fibromyalgia. I do. The other decided to do less than I asked for during a procedure, because it could have rendered me infertile. This, after I signed several documents and re-affirmed that I really REALLY really was sure I wasn’t going to have a second child.
I should have trusted my instincts. Now, I have a BUNCH of chronic disorders, many of which span from way back before I was actually overweight, many of which are actually genetic. But this doctor listened to me rattling off my various disorders and had one answer to all of them. Weight. It was my weight. I was morbidly obese. I was 245 pounds. I needed to lose weight. He ran a blood test AFTER telling me I needed to lose weight.
This may seem like a weird distinction to make. After all, as you will soon read, my blood tests were a hot mess. But up until that moment, I had been overweight for nearly twenty years without a single issue with a blood test. As a matter of fact, a doctor once joked that my blood sugar was so good, I had “negative diabetes!” That has not changed.
I was disheartened. Moving and exercise is difficult for me with fibromyalgia, which causes pain sensors to react in odd and often alarming ways. Meaning–if a healthy person took an exercise class, they would feel achy for a couple of days. They may feel uncomfortable. I would be unable to walk. Possibly for a week. So what was I going to do?
Another issue, and I know this is ridiculous, but I love food. Food is one of the great pleasures of life. Chocolate and cheese are weaknesses. Trying new, decadent things makes me happy, a feeling that was sorely lacking during a year trapped in doors, only able to see the people in my life virtually.
When my blood tests came back, I learned that at some point in the last year, I had managed to push my body to the point of Hypertriglyceridemia (elevated triglycerides in my blood) and High Cholesterol. Suddenly losing weight was no longer a matter of pride. It was a matter of my health.
I was completely crushed.
I had just written a book all about loving yourself in your own skin and fighting the inherent doubts thrown at you by society. And now I’d have to lose weight by promotion time. Never mind my own pride and the fact that I didn’t like the way this choice would reflect on any teenagers who picked up my book and soon realized the author had shed weight.
And what if I couldn’t?! That was an even scarier proposition.
I curled into myself for a few days, crushed. I loved myself as I was. And now I would have to mourn this version of me. I didn’t even know how to find a new version of myself.
And then, in that creepy way that advertisements always know what you’re going through even though you don’t have an Alexa on in your home and you haven’t googled a damn thing about your situation, an ad popped up during my latest game of Numberzilla (an oddly soothing number game). It was for Noom.
Noom makes a lot of claims. It says it can help you learn how to change your whole attitude toward food. It claims it focuses on education and psychology to help you make better choices. It claims it won’t take a whole lot of time out of your busy day. It claims you can eat anything you want. It says it can help you lose weight on your terms. And it says the weight will stay off.
I joined Noom in January, two days after that awful doctor’s visit. It’s a bit expensive, but I had some Christmas bonus money to burn in my pocket, so I went for it. Same for an indoor recumbent bike. With promises that my husband and son would also use it, I felt a little less frustration at spending big bucks for something I may not even be able to use for more than 5 minutes a day. I wasn’t sure how my fibromyalgia would react to that kind of movement.
It is now mid-March. I’ve lost fifteen pounds. It’s a slow moving process, but it’s happening. As for those claims? My attitude has changed. I’ve stopped eating just because I want to taste something yummy and started eating as fuel. I do snack, but only when I’m hungry. I’ve started to choose foods based on how filling they’ll be, and I get hungry a lot less. It really does focus on education and psychology, although sometimes the idea that there’s psychology behind every single food choice gets to be a little much. I have learned a ton about food and how it works. It takes a little longer than they claim. That 10-15 minutes they promised is just to read the daily articles they send. It doesn’t include talking to your coach, support group, meal planning, exercising, counting your steps, making sure you drink enough water…but I can’t really be mad about it, because those changes are positive. You can technically eat whatever you want…if it fits in your calorie budget, which sometimes means super tiny pieces of what you want.
But I’m losing weight. And I’m not beating myself up about not being able to work out for more than a few minutes.
However, my conundrum remains. Am I still body positive if I’m fighting to change? How can I talk about knowing it’s okay to love the skin you’re in, if I’m changing that about myself?
I don’t know, maybe it isn’t as deep as all that. Maybe what I need is to talk about feeling good in the skin you’re in WHILE you’re in it, while knowing that all things change and shift according to our lives and our needs, and you should never hate yourself because of what you look like.
I hope that’s enough.