Mind over Matter

  • Author Stargazer
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  • Blog entry read time 14 min read
I've been putting off writing a blog until I could dedicate the necessary amount of time I would need to write one as I tend to write a wall of text whenever I try to write anything even if it's simple (so time consuming and unnecessary!). But today I have a few hours, a comfy spot and cup of tea so I'm all set to get hand cramps from typing excessively for no reason in particular.

As they say, sometimes in order to go forward, we must first go back. So I'm going back to the start. I've thought about this a lot over the years, just to find where I went wrong so I would know what to change in the future even if I haven't quite mastered that part yet. Know thyself, to quote ancient philosophers of the past. So I'm writing this mostly for myself as a type of writing therapy to hopefully help me in the present tense, but if you're reading this I hope it isn't too drab and if anything hits home with you I hope it teaches you something about yourself too.

*****

I'm 26 years old, turning 27 in June. I'm engaged to be married in September, but that's not why I'm losing weight. I've struggled with my weight ever since I can remember but my partner is accepting (even though he's skinny- not exactly my type but you don't get to choose who your soul mate is, just as he didn't get to choose me as his obese girlfriend!). Until I started Year 2 photos confirm I was very much of normal weight, I have no idea what happened to make me suddenly balloon in between Year 2 and 3. That's when I became more aware of my weight in comparison to other children (I didn't see it in myself, I only saw it in photos, I was in complete denial until I saw photos). I've always been a quiet and introspective person, so being teased about my weight (or it being mentioned in any way) made me an intensely shy child after that. I never spoke to anyone outside of my close friends and could barely manage to look at another person without going beet red! I'm not joking. It was awful and only encouraged my ostracism. Children can be so mean :p

In high school I started getting actively involved in my netball team (when I played Nettas in primary school I was very reserved and lacked the confidence to participate to my full ability). I started listening to those Government guidelines teachers were always preaching, especially in PDHPE where it really hit home about the health effects of obesity. But all they tell you is what foods are "good" and what are "bad" and suggested weight loss was simply about eating more "good" foods, less "bad" foods and always exercise, exercise, exercise! Although well meaning, not overly helpful. No one taught us about "calories" and changing habits/behaviours around food, etc. My parents in particular were of the mindset that exercise was literally all it took- had nothing to do with what you put in your mouth. As a result my father would regularly encourage me to eat portion sizes much larger than I wanted to, meant for an adult male, not a female child or teenager. I can pinpoint that exact time when I began forcing myself to eat until I was sick just to make him happy, while watching TV with the family, that became the foundation of my problems. Eventually when you eat excessively for long periods of time it changes your brain. Normally (I'm simplifying this) your brain tells you to eat, you eat and feel the "reward" system kick in, you become full and stop and your brain no longer wants to eat and you gain no "reward" for continuing to eat. But when you overeat that system breaks down and the "reward" goes on longer, your satiety doesn't change and so you keep eating and eating and eating. This also creates a habit, especially when you're mentally distracted like watching television and you end up mindlessly eating so much more than you would otherwise.

Anyway, I got involved in netball and I just started eating less food overall (I didn't know about calories so I just tried to eat as little as possible which meant not eating recess or lunch frequently, no breakfast, small snack after school and just half of dinner). I had no concept of myself at that time, my self-image was simply what other people told me (especially from the past when I was teased and from my anorexic half-sister that tortured me my whole childhood). Looking back, I lost a lot of weight, without having scales even to weigh myself I couldn't possibly know (an example of how backwards my family was when it came to weight management)- I just looked in the mirror and saw a girl no one liked, who was always too fat. In hindsight, I had probably reached a normal weight range without knowing it. But then things changed... things got hard... my parents were fighting a lot and they separated. I was miserable. I missed a lot of school. I then became anxious about my future, in general, but also what would happen after school, and where I would live. I was in B grade team in netball at the time and if we had won the grandfinal we would finally be A grade next year but we didn't. I lost hope and my family life was falling apart, so I quit netball (the pressure of winning had taken its toll and being alone and unsupported as my childhood felt all the time, I just gave up).

I started living with my mother who lived near my school at the time. I started going to school more when things started to settle down, but still anxious about what would happen afterwards as it was now Year 10, not much further to go and I felt lost. I decided to change schools for Year 11 & 12 to a college near where my father lived that I felt would give me more independence and less pressure. I wanted a clean start. I wanted to ditch my old friends (who I'd mostly drifted away from since my parents separation anyway), start at a new school, and focus souly on my studies so I could go to university and get a job and save money for a house, a car, etc. I made no friends at that school (all my friends were online), but I topped a lot of my subjects, finished with a solid score, got into university, picked a subject I knew would provide me with a stable job and income so I'd be able to save for my future (I was oddly fixated on this, while other teenagers were going out and getting drunk I was worrying what would happen when I was too old to work and couldn't rent anymore so I'd need to have a house! I would need money for a rainy day! What if I was sick and couldn't work! I had to save!). Completely unaware and in total and utter denial, I had ballooned to 117kg by my first year of university. By that stage people didn't tease you anymore, they just avoided you or watched you from a distance so it was easy to pretend I was still the same weight as before despite needing ever increasing sizes of clothes. I started experiencing signs of ill health and saw my GP. I was eventually diagnosed with PCOS. My weight was finally mentioned. I bought a scale. 117kg, I couldn't believe it. I'm sure some of you have had a similar experience of shock, disbelief, horror and had a complete and utter break down. I'd never weighed myself before.

As I underwent treatment for my PCOS which included weight management, it was mentioned that studies have shown that some people with PCOS (as it is a "syndrome" which means it's not widely understood) find losing 5-10% of their body weight is enough to reverse some of those symptoms and at a healthy weight range some no longer had PCOS. Some people can be of average or less than average weight and develop PCOS unfortunately, but for some people it appears the weight gain itself is what causes their PCOS. In my case, I stacked on the pounds before I started developing any symptoms. Thus, there was a good chance if I could manage to lose weight I may not have PCOS any longer. I saw a dietitian who specialised in women with PCOS and while she didn't mention calories, she did educate me about low GI foods, as part of PCOS induces insulin resistance and thus it is important to try and control or reduce the amount of insulin your body produces in response to food (high GI foods cause your body to produce more and more insulin and over time to a point it can no longer keep producing as much insulin and hence you get diabetes). While I didn't have diabetes, I did have insulin resistance which is just a precursor. Turns out, diet and weight loss is key to reversing those risks. That scared me so much I was more determined than ever to lose weight.

There is SO much misinformation out there (especially on TV and the internet) about weight loss and what is a "good" diet that people repeat and spread in every day conversations without a hint of evidence to support those statements. Some people actively take advantage of that ignorance for financial gain and it's sickening! Studying nursing at university, however, luckily, gave me the skills I needed to research methods of weight loss and the benefits of certain diets over others scientifically- in journal articles by people much smarter than me (and my parents, friends, those people on TV and internet, etc.), with more experience and knowledge who had studied and experimented for years and years. I knew how to evaluate an experiment based on its p-value, I stalked the Cochrane Library in particular like nothing else; reading systematic reviews became my hobby. I was consumed with finding every bit of information I could to make absolutely certain I would lose weight, with evidence to support it. I even tried to educate my family on the scientific literature I found, but my father in particular is a very stubborn man set in his ways, committed to whatever he was "told" when he was growing up by various people. I learnt some people can't be helped and it was futile trying to reason with them, especially when I realized their knowledge of human physiology wasn't the same as a nursing undergraduate. Various calculators based on scientific formulas helped me gauge what kind of weight loss I could expect. Like most starting out I had some very unrealistic ideas about how quickly and how much I would lose, so these formulas helped to quantitatively measure that for me.

Thanks to that, I lost 27-28kg within 6-9mths simply following a calorie restricted diet (1200 calories) of whatever I wanted to eat; I was aiming for substantial weight loss quickly, I would worry about constructing a "healthy diet" later. When I reached 89kg my weight had already stalled a couple of times and it once again stalled for maybe a week or two and I'm sad to say.... I gave up. It was this time I decided to educate myself on the phenomenon of "plateaus" and while the literature didn't have much to say, there were a lot of people out there who had an opinion which they backed using biological and physiological principles. The problem is, they often didn't also consider the mental and behavioural aspect, or consider that scientific knowledge of the body's physiology is actually more limited than we think or account for differences in individuals genetic makeup. Everyone has their "theories". I read a particularly negative article that made it seem hopleless. I'd lost over 20kg, obviously calorie restriction was working as my method, but this article made it seem like at a certain point if I stopped losing weight for a period of time then either I'm not accurately recording my calories (and believe me, I'm a stickler for numbers, so it definitely wasn't that) or I'd simply hit the my weight "set point" that without further sustained calorie restriction (less than 1200 calories per day which was a challenge to begin with) or increased energy expenditure I would not lose any further weight, perhaps due to a severely reduced BMR which could not be aletered. I felt so hopeless that I was not able to reassure myself, to remind myself my weight had stalled before and still continued thereafter, that other factors would have been at play (water weight, PMS, etc.) that would fluctuate all the time. In my mind those factors didn't matter any more. I couldn't lose any more weight. So I stopped trying.

During the rest of my university years I tried on and off to continue counting calories, weighing myself and usually disappointing myself as I never stuck to it for very long to make a difference and often relapsed by eating triple that amount, but always petrified I'd put all that weight back on. I'd set points for myself. 95kg? Fuck! Lose it! So I'd quickly lose that, get to 89kg and give up again. Time went by, I finished university, I started working, I saved money and moved out with my boyfriend at the time and my best friend (long story, but I seem to have a Mother Teresa complex :p), I was happy at home and stressed and depressed at work... so I'd come home and indulge in comfort foods, while mindlessly watching my favourite shows (bad habits from childhood coming back to bite me...). I started to realize I wasn't in the relationship I wanted to be in, either. I won't go into details, but it also contributed to my mindset and subsequent dive into comfort foods. That relationship went on longer than it should and allowing that took its toll on my mental health, but I knew no matter how I felt that breaking up would be even worse for my mental health. So it carried on for 5 years. In that time my weight kept fluctuating and so did my self-hate along with it. When I saw the scales creep up to 95kg I let it... 100kg became my new 95kg. When I hit 100kg I'd freak out, lose weight to get back to 95kg and stop. Eventually 100kg became the norm like 95kg did. Like a dangerous slippery slope I fell into depression, anxiety, struggling to keep myself together. I'd hit 105kg and freak out, go back to 100kg. Eventually with everything going on at work, in my relationship, friendship breakdown resulting in suddenly needing to move.... I didn't step on the scale for a while. I focused on anything that would make me happy in the short time just to make it through the day. Food and people who were bad for me but made me feel good at the time, for example. I put a bandaid on a gaping wound hoping that time alone would heal me and I'd be ready to start again and this time lose weight for good.

I broke up with my boyfriend. I stopped relying on certain medications to help me sleep and regulate my mood which resulted in increased anxiety and panic attacks for almost a year. We moved. I'm still supporting him and my best friend until my ex finds a job and can move out. I'm half scared of that day because of how it might affect our friendship. It's been a rocky 1-2 years. But I need to move on, I need to move out, I need to be free to move into a new place some time next year with my boyfriend who will be my husband by then. I'm happy in my current relationship. I have a lot of issues but he's stuck with me for some reason. I'm so happy, that I don't see the number on the scale and freak out anymore. Over the years I've heard so many more compliments than personal attacks that I'm back to being in denial most of the time. But when my boyfriend mentioned his mother was trying Duromine and had a lot of success, and as my own numbers crept up to 112-114.2kg, I decided to give it a go as I clearly wasn't getting anywhere alone anymore. There's been bumps in the road and it's too soon to tell how this will turn out long-term but I've experienced the usual pattern: for the first week I become hypervigilant and obsessed with diet and weight loss, but then my motivation hits a peak and starts to go back down.... I don't think about it as much because thinking about it 99% of the time was driving me crazy (I don't know why I can't do anything in moderation) and issues at work made me reach for the comfort food again.

This is the start of week three on (and off, half the time) Duromine and starting with this blog I want to re-commit to myself and my goals. I've come so far, so many times, that in total I've lost the amount I needed to lose to be in a healthy weight range already without actually reaching it but I keep putting it back on and taking it off again! Which, in case you were wondering, because it's all I ever think about when I'm reminded of this fact- is way worse for your body than remaining the same weight, according to some literature! These helpful facts are part of what contribute to my overall negative thought process, catastrophizing and lack of motivation and resiliance to succeed. People say "mind over matter", but what if your own mind is against you...

I'm actually thinking of a transition from medical/surgical nursing to mental health which I think is where my passion really is. Ever since I can remember I've been fascinated by human psychology (well, actually, my parents worked all the time and I was sent to pre-school, school, after-school care and various day camps on holidays or to stay with relatives with no siblings my age so while I was looked after in terms of having a house over my head and food to eat, I was neglected in terms of love, attention and affection so I turned to books, and ironically my parents had a lot of books on psychology so I read them a lot and became fascinated- it was a way to understand myself and other people). It would be nice to turn up to work in casual clothes instead of scrubs and know that my patients were not physically sick and vulnerable with the possibility of sudden death constantly lurking (seriously, we have one specialist who insists on removing his own surgical drains from patients for some reason, on the ward... which is what he did one morning in preparation for that patient to go home that day.... she died less than 15 minutes later with no indication that would happen although she was in her 90s).
With mental health there are increased co-morbidities so they may still be sick and they're definitely vulnerable in society, but in a mental health ward they have to be psychically well enough to be there, and although they're mentally vulnerable to varying degrees, my action or inaction or administration of medical treatments won't be a likely factor that could contribute to their ill health. I'm actually considered a "good nurse" by my superiors, but it doesn't change the fact that I endlessly worry about what "could" happen- that's probably what makes me a "good" nurse, because I'm aware of it and therefore try harder to avoid and prevent those things from happening. But it's too much pressure. I know it contributes to my mental health issues. So that's going to be one change I make to help get my mind back on my side, to be able to worry less.

I've seen psychologists, I've got all the books, I know what the literature says, but implementing changes like mindfullness, meditation, cognitive behavioural therapy, reappraisal, exercise for stress relief, yoga/pilates, journaling, taking a bubble bath with scented candles and music, etc. all takes time that I'm reluctant to sacrifice between work, sleep deprivation from poor rostering and maintaining a relationship. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it. It's so hard when the feeling of anxiety, worry and guilt is constantly bubbling away at the surface destroying any sense of inner calm, control or motivation to help yourself. It will be easier when I live with my partner and work in mental health. But in the meantime I will have to keep trying to adopt those principles into my life and think realistically/positively instead of negatively and hoplessly. If you're like me, I hope you get help too.

If anyone is reading this and has read to this point (no hard feelings against those that didn't, I wrote this for myself after all), wish me luck and remember what goes around comes around so your luck and good fortune will be returned to you! Ironically I feel more love and hope for all of you than I do for myself. No matter what happens I think we should all congratulate ourselves on our effort and remember hard work pays off.

x

Comments

P
I can relate to a lot of what you have written here. Esp the 'set point' thing. I was around 66kg through uni, after I started working and lifestyle changed that went to 80kg then 90.9kg. Then I had kids and weight always returned to 90.9kg After my second child I aimed to lose weight and I got down to 80kg before falling preg again. After preg I tried again and saw 79kg for a day, when I ballooned up to 94kg a couple of years ago I tried again. Again I got down to 80kg and I stopped. By this stage my kids were a little older and I was able to incorporate regular exercise so my climb back to 94 and actually up to 97kg was a little slower. I think I actually maintained 85kg for about 6 months at one stage. The weight ceiling I gave myself each time, I seemed to think it was a temp fluctuation but next time I weighed it would be even worse. The ironic thing is I have asked about duromine previously and was knocked back by the doctor, I was around 85kg at the time and as it turns out this was around the time my thyroid issue presented itself or at least more obvious symptoms started though it would remain undiagnosed for a few years. Now I can probably get to that magic 80kg mark within the the 3 month period I am on duromine and I'll be facing getting below 80kg on my own. Hopefully now that I am on medication for my thyroid I'll be able to tackle that 'set point' once and for all.
 
April
Thank you very much for sharing all those thoughts and your personal story with all of us. I also hope that it will help you somehow to reach your goal, and it sometimes does really help to turn your mind 180 degrees when you let out your thoughts and feelings, be it in writing or telling. I congratulate you on your effort, I wish you all the luck in the world and I know that you have a strong enough personality to go all the way till the end of this journey and become proud with your achievements. You know so much and, as hard as it may be, you are capable of using all your knowledge and put it into practice. I hope that you will keep updating and sharing your thoughts, ideas and progress. Fingers crossed for your success!
 

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