WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
Sorry for the lateness of this diary: I was pressed into service rather suddenly by another Turtle of my recent acquaintance who just found out about his Turtlehood by nearly drowning in his own lung fluids and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. He got discharged a day early today, and is, while not jobless, is presently homeless. And I have no home to offer him, since I am living in someone else's basement. It was a busy day. But on to the topic, skip with me over the fold for TurtleMania!
So, when I joined WHEE, and when I joined a closed Livejournal community called #100pounds2lose, I believed that I was an overeater. I believed that I was eating too many carbohydrates and needed to cut down. I believed I was underexercising and lazy. I believed despite the certain knowledge that my calorie intake was about the same was it was when I was 18 or 20. I was convinced otherwise: by those weight charts, by those nutrition experts way back when at my Harvard University Group Health Program (HUGHP for anyone who happens to have been on it), I believed when they said I was mentally disordered, too.
And I should not have believed them; I should have listened to myself, to my body, and to my own certain knowledge - that something else was wrong.
Now not everyone here is a turtle, and while I believe that the instance of 1 in 2000 live births rarity of the various kinds of non-classical adrenal hyperplasia is vastly understated, and that the 11-beta version, which is the one that leads to the intractable severe hypertension, early death and apparent adult-onset morbid obesity (I say apparent because the body fat percentage of these persons does not qualify them as obese but merely overweight) , the true nature of this disease is not yet known. And as long as the symptoms of diabetes, apparent obesity, apparent metabolic disorder, and hypertension are treated as DISEASES (they are not, they are outcomes) rather than the symptoms they are, and as long as doctors still treat all of those who manifest these clinical profiles as lying to them rather than sincere in their desire for an answer and a cure - they have no answer. They have no cure.
You need to develop a healthy skepticism toward health care providers by understanding the limits of their knowledge. They do not know until the geneticists, until the peer reviewed journals, and until the health care formularies trickle down the information on new advances in medicine, feed it to them over their computers, Ipods and Blackberries.
I am lucky: the health organization I chose when I came to Minneapolis pays good money for a good formulary, and they had my disease in their databank. They have enough patients that they can afford a specialty practice in endocrinology. They benefit by being in the constellation of state medical resources driven by the dominance of the Mayo Clinic. And in their clinical presentation they had mine, and they made the referral after doing the tests I requested, finding the results I predicted.
If you have an undiagnosed or mysterious disorder, something that is causing you life problems, obesity, fatigue, depression, keep searching. Keep researching. Keep reaching out for support and reading the excellent and new research in health care and also genetic research. Keep listening to yourself, your symptoms, and don't let their presumptions get in the way of finding an answer to intractable problems.
Doctors ARE NOT GODS. They are not infallible. And sometimes they are in the pockets of Big Pharma and will give you a diet pill or an anti-depressant when you really need to solve a problem and get a diagnosis and proper treatment. This is PARTICULARLY TRUE of women, and particularly true of women who are of a certain age, or of a certain (coff) color.
This is what my doctors - all five of them - never saw, and what I figured out myself by using the information Edward provided on body fat calculation and the Body Bugg. That something was very very wrong with my weight, and was not accounted for by my body fat.
Aug 7, after a month on a strictly monitored low-calorie, low fat diet with 3 days a week of cardio, doctor monitored - I had lost 5 pounds
*Sept 19 after two weeks of a low-fat diet, comparison photo in the same clothes - I had lost 9 pounds.
Oct 2
And two weeks later, after changing to a week of a low fat, ultra-low sodium diet, same calorie level, I had lost 24 pounds. The weight was all in the water, it was not fat. Yet look at the difference - a picture tells the tale.
DO NOT TRUST YOUR DOCTOR. If I trusted my doctor I would be pulling out my hair now, what little hair I would have left after it all fell out from depletion of calcium.
Sign up for a slot on the WHEE forum: it's for and by Kossacks who need to find their way to fitness. It's saving my life, people, let it save yours!!!
Scheduled WHEE diaries:
October 4
Sun PM - cusoon
October 5
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - ???
October 6
Tues AM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 12)
Tues PM - ???
October 7
Weds AM - digitalmuse
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock
October 8
Thurs AM - A DC Wonk
Thurs PM - ???
October 9
Fri AM - ???
Fri PM - ???
October 10
Sat AM - ???
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 13)
October 11
Sun a.m. - louisev - Turtle Diary
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 13)