Up until my sophomore year of college, I was always skinny. My BMI was 18.5 during my last year of high school and first year of college – on the border or “underweight” and “normal”.
Starting my sophomore year, I slowly started gaining weight. So far, the most I’ve weighted puts me about 15 pounds in the “obese – category 1” BMI range.
Five years ago, right after our wedding, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. It took 3 years before I was able to manage it through proper treatment.
A year and a half ago, my husband was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. We changed our diet and I lost 35 pounds. As of this morning, I am 6 pounds away from having gained all that weight back – back into the “obese – category 1” BMI range by 10 pounds.
I have read books, studies, articles and blogs with a wide range of theories on the relationship between food, exercise, weight, lifespan and health. I have done this to try to find a way back to the “18.5” me (or at least the “24” me), to attempt to solve the riddle of what triggered my Hashimoto’s, or to try and figure out if all the things people scream will kill you actually will.
In any given day, I alternate between a staunch defender of “Health at Every Size” and seriously considering various weight-loss advice despite knowing that much of it is wrong or downright unhealthy and that BMI is a crock of shit.
I am starting this blog more as a journal: to sort through my thoughts and try to work my way through body/health/diet/exercise issues. I am doing a blog instead of a journal so that I might be able to both receive support from the online community I know is out there and also to offer that support as well – even if all I do is show others that they aren’t alone. Some days, I might do more organized, thoughtful posts, and other days, I might just vent the thoughts in my brain is a very slapdash fashion.
For anyone reading this and going through this journey with me, I thank you and hope that you find this to be enlightening, informative, maybe even inspiring at times. I’m hoping I do, too!
The Renaissance Woman 