My Butt | Rockin' the Suburbs

Two Thousand Fart Teen – This is what the boys in my house have dubbed this year.

Oh, 13, 13 was an asshole. I didn’t write much about it because you can only come back to read the same story so many times. I was unstable, a lot. I was setting the same goals over and over and just treading water, never really getting back on top.

It seems like I come around during the summer, then I lose my ground when school starts, then the holidays come and I get homesick and Bam- Im out until about March when the sun starts to come out again. But this summer we went home for two weeks and it was amazing and I fell apart when we came back to Ohio. So my “season” sort of jump started.

What is helping is identifying what my triggers are and my habits when it’s sneaking up on me. I know exactly what I do before the storm now, which is sort of a gift. This season was vastly better than winter of 2012.

I don’t really know what to do with myself this year. I’ve not really adjusted to having the kids in school and have pretty much shopped my way through the school year so far. I need time alone but find an empty, quiet house to be overwhelming. I have a hard time relaxing and end up panic cleaning or going to sleep.

Last year I was really focused on mental health, this year I need to get my body moving. It needs less diet coke and more water. A major health pit for me is I go-go-go all morning with the kids- then they go to school and I have errands to run and I haven’t had anything to eat,,, I get shaky and nasty and drive thru for a burger. This happens A Lot- I get to the OMG Im going to DIE if I don’t eat RIGHT NOW. So, I already have a few bottles of water, Larabars and almonds in the car so I have food handy and I don’t throw my hands up in the drive thru. Im liking the eight hour diet, where you fast for 16 hours and eat for 8 every day. example I don’t eat until 11 and nothing goes in my belly after 7. I feel a little more focused with the time restriction and that seems to help with better food choices.

So, yeah- really- this year is exactly like all of the other years. I want to feel well, be well, live well. It would be so much easier if junk food tasted like shit, not chocolate and melty cheese. You know?

I’ve been tired since Ben was born. Bone tired. But I am able to stay up late, it’s my body that’s really complaining. The heavy limbs and achy muscles and joints. Near constant headaches. It finally came to a point three months where I told my nurse practitioner who handles my meds that I’m still physically dragging and I can’t seem to shake it. I mentioned my healthy diet and busy days and gym time (which is seldom right now, I’ll admit) but that despite being aware of my food and exercise, I have gained weight. I was frustrated and after talking for a bit she decided to run a massive blood panel. Everything she could think of was tested. I was afraid something big was wrong. It’s been years of feeling this way and trying and trying and trying to change things on my own.

Last fall I went through a long period of depression. One that I recognized right away so I did what I know to do. I ampped it up, started a Whole 30 and hit the gym. Sometimes, just sometimes I can Tom Cruse my way out of it. It didn’t work at all. It lasted, I think, about 9 weeks. I gained weight. So in January, I did whole 30 again. I lost 3 lbs. My meds weren’t working and something else seemed to be going on.

In the past six months I’ve had a few changes in my medication from adding vitamins to increasing my current dosage and finally adding on a new drug. Before I had my blood results back I decided that I wanted to quit the one I have been taking for nearly four years. I look at pictures of then and of my life now and honestly, the only thing I can see that has changed is starting meds and excess weight. What I was taking wasn’t doing its job and with the new one I was feeling better than I have in quite a while.

From the blood work I learned I have a simple problem! Just a vitamin D deficiency. I was relieved it was something and nothing all at once. A good vit d level is between 50-100, mine was 17.2. So pretty low. Low enough to answer most of my questions. The exhaustion and body aches and pains and some research has indicated that the more deficient you are the harder is it is to loose weight. But the drug I’ve been taking for 4 years is a classic weight gainer. So one adds and the other wont let you subtract. When I had Nate, I wasn’t medicated, the weight came off easily. It took 5 months to loose 52 lbs. With Ben, I’ve been medicated the entire time and, considence or not (?) I still haven’t lost the weight I gained with him. Which come on, he’s almost 3, at this point its just fat, not baby weight. And I had a trainer for over a year, did bootcamp, two whole 30’s went exclusively paleo, two stints of weight watchers, I even tried Sensa, for fucks sake. I just can’t get this weight off.

My next appointment we talked more and added a metric ton of vitamin D (I’m taking 20,000 units a week) and we will retest in a few months. She changed my prescription for my new med , doubling it’s dosage and wrote instructions for weaning from the old.

I’m not off the old yet. I have two more weeks before I’m done with it. The first two weeks were not pleasant. But I hope in the long run changing to something new and ditching the old and getting my vitamin d to a healthy level will allow me to feel like myself again. I hope.

I’m not expecting to wake up 30 lbs lighter once it’s out of my system but I do hope that the work that I do to take care of myself will help me get back to a healthy weight and keep my head healthy. Cause I’ll tell ya, fat jeans are depressing on their own.