For the second time in my adult life, I’ve lost a lot of weight. Yeah, me! Most of my teen life and young adult life I did pretty well with the weight issue. Of course, there was the freshman 15…or more in my case. All those visits to Dairy Queen late at night, plus the party scene which included lots and lots of lovely lovely drinks (18 was the legal age way back then), all led to the packed on poundage. Those pounds did eventually melt away without effort that I can recall. Oh, I do remember always trying some new diet or another. But if I look back at photos, I certainly wasn’t in need of major diet plans. I had a waist, a cute backside, and rather perky chest attributes! Ah, youth.
Then came children. Oh, how I loved being pregnant! Eating for two was a job I took very seriously. I loved baking up an entire can of those Pillsbury cinnamon rolls (or the orange danish for variety!) and scarfing down the entire product. Yummmmmm. It’s all baby fat, anyway, right? Imagine my surprise when I left the hospital weighing very close to what I weighed when I entered the hospital….and yet I had delivered an 8 lb. baby boy! Just how does that work? And contrary to what I had been told, nursing a baby does not make the pounds drop off. However, blessed by two precious sons within two years was more wonderful than the disappointment of weight gain.
As the scales stayed way up there (and I mean WAY UP THERE), I went the Jenny Craig route. (Valerie? Call me.) The pounds dropped off. I looked pretty darn good, thank you. I did the healthy thing and exercised regularly in addition to staying on the diet. OK, when it was Girl Scout cookie time, it was a bit rough. I remember as I popped each thin mint or Samoa in my mouth, I deducted the calories contained in each cookie from what I could eat the rest of the day. Some things are just worth the sacrifice, don’t you agree?
I was so proud of myself for returning to the “pretty me” (in my mind anyway), the me I was happy to go places with, the me I was happy to be seen with.
Then came a rather dark period (the aforementioned lawsuit against my husband, my four year old son and me) during which I went way down that depression path. I had been on anti-depressants several years before when I broke my leg. I had a newborn and a 2 year old and I was in a cast and in pain for four months before surgery and physical therapy finally got me going again. The stress of that seemingly unending situation was huge and I didn’t handle it well. The meds helped. And I was eventually able to come off them. When the lawsuit hit, though, that descent happened once again and I returned to anti-depressants. This time the lovely meds packed on the pounds. Big time. And it didn’t seem to matter what I ate or didn’t eat, the weight continued to add up. After a while, you figure, why bother? Just enjoy the ride. And the food!
Last May I gave up the meds again, and with a few exceptions, I have not felt the need to return to them. Being off of the meds, though, has caused me to face some realities in my life. The meds kept me comfortably numb. May I just say that dealing with reality often sucks? Major sucking going on. However, in my never ending quest for a silver lining, the weight has come off. I believe part of it is the lack of the meds in my system. After I quit them, I did drop 5-8 lbs pretty quickly.
So what is my secret, many ask? You look good, girl, they’ll say…what have you done? I have come up with the name for my personal diet. The Trauma Diet. Add 2 parts trauma (more or less depending on your own circumstances), stop eating, sit back and watch the weight fall off. Is this the healthy way? Of course not. Although all my “counts” for sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure are back to normal. So there is the healthy by-product. Have I been hungry? Well, sure. Some days I’m hungry, but when there is no food that even seems interesting, why bother? Other days I eat whatever there is. Last week was a shocker, though. I ended up with lunch dates AND dinner dates four days in a row. The scales zoomed up five pounds. That freaked me out a bit, since I truly do not want to gain this weight back and have to go through all this again. I am happy to say those five are now gone, along with one or two more. That did take some focus.
For the most part, the trauma just comes and goes. It isn’t a constant thing, thank goodness. Something good did come from it–a waistline! 
And one of these days I will truly deal with the trauma factor. I’ve been Queen of Denial for a long time. I may get an honorary key to Avoidance very soon.
In the meantime, I’m thinner than I’ve been in quite some time. Being in that lovely menopausal state which causes one’s metabolism to totally TOTALLY die, excuse me while I pat myself on the back for losing and not gaining. Who knew it could be done? Certainly not me and certainly not how I would encourage going about it. For now, though, it’s all good.
