The Beginning...

So I think it's finally happened. I've had a couple "aha" moments regarding my health and weight. One moment in particular has stayed with me and I've been thinking about it several times a day for the past week. As I sit here thinking about where to start and what to write, my head is swirling with so many thoughts and emotions that I fear I won't be able to do justice to them in print. I'll try...though I don't quite know where to start. Maybe that why it's such a good idea to actually make the effort to write them down.

I'm 29 years old. Almost 30...whatever that means, though I suspect it means something. I've been steadily gaining weight since I was about 18/19 years old. It's added up to about 120 lbs in 10 years. Quite a bit. To be honest, I have moments where I feel pure terror of just how out of control my weight has become, and I wonder if I will ever be able to stop it from increasing. Moments of optimism have diminished over the years as the weight gain continued to rise. I long for the days where I was hoping to lose 20-40 lbs. Every pound I gained decreased that sense I used to have of hope. Hope that I can turn this around. Hope that I will live a long and healthy life. Hope that I have the energy to face why I've gained so much weight. Hope that I won't feel so hopeless.

Please excuse the melodrama, but something about this topic is raw.

I was at the doctor's office last week for a 3 month check-in regarding my sugars (she's been monitoring my blood sugars, because I'm sitting right under the cut-off for Diabetes). I believe I have what's so optimistically referred to as Pre-Diabetes. There is a level of denial about this. I logically know how close I am to tipping over into the range of "Diabetes" and yet I spent the last months doing nothing to try and turn it around...aside from feeling sorry for myself I suppose. Of course, that doesn't help because it usually results in my wanting to eat to feel better, but I digress. So I saw my doctor this past week and after looking at my numbers, she suggested that I start Metformin (diabetes meds). I felt fear when she said this. Fear of what it meant if I had to take medication for diabetes; that it would somehow all become real. How can I deny something when I have to take medication for it every day? That kind of brings it into my awareness. I asked her if I could have time. If she would give me time to try and move the numbers in the other direction. She was fine with that. She wants to see me again in 3 months time, after which if nothing as changed, she will put me on medication. Time is running out. I hear the tick tock of a biological clock, but not the maternal kind...the kind that tells me the longer I wait to put off getting healthy, the harder it will be. That I don't have an unlimited amount of time in this life, so I would like to make the best of it.

I'm 29 years old. I have to repeat that again because it seems as though I have the medical work-up of someone much older. I'm only 29, and yet if you saw my numbers you would think I was much older. Numbers, numbers, so many numbers...blood sugar numbers, blood pressure numbers, cholesteral numbers, scale numbers, waist size numbers, clothing size numbers, BMI numbers...so many numbers. My head is swirling with numbers. Numbers I am, numbers I want to be, number I should be...too many numbers. The word numbers has lost all meaning. It looks like a pseudoword on the screen as I type it. The more I focus on it, the less real it seems. Somehow that seems related to the focus on my weight...