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.
After the fold, a little photographic evidence of wrong diagnosis and the cure for sodium-concentrating genetic abnormality:
I have decided in the week since I wrote Chapter 1 that I can going to change the focus of this book to "Be Your Own Doctor", but since there are those who have been following Turtle Diary, I didn't want to redirect onto the larger topic of "Be Your Own Doctor" without giving you a followup on my genetic investigation and the unfolding resolution to my own particular so-called obesity problem.
First of all a couple of contrast pictures:
a recent photo - from this week, after 40 pounds of water weight loss:
And the only "before" pic I have, from early August after losing 10 pounds
:
The clothes in the "before" won't stay on me, they are too loose now. And the clothes above I bought in 1998 when I was 100 pounds thinner.
And as promised, my high school yearbook picture:
Look at my hands in the age-17 photo. That is what Jerry Seinfeld calls "man-hands" and he has a point - they are wide, broad-palmed hands. I had to buy a man's wristwatch band - at 15, to fit my favorite Mickey Mouse watch, and wore it until I graduated to a men's Timex upon graduation. This is part of the photographic record I am bringing to the endocrinologist when I go.
I console myself by concluding that I am much too lovely to be considered a hirsute virilized genetic female, and it was my own beauty (coff coff) that has condemned me to so many years of being considered a closet binger.
I wrote a pleading note, with all of my secrets in it, to the Endocrinology Department at the Mayo Clinic - here are the highlights:
I don't believe I am alone, nor do I believe my problem is uncommon. If all a medical person sees is high blood pressure, or a number on a scale, the assumptions will automatically take over. In fact, though I deliberately CHOSE to go to the current doctor that I am seeing, I have heard her make comments regarding me about how important it is for me to watch my diet. Watch my diet!!! I can't watch my diet any more obsessively than I am doing now! Her goal for me is to "lose the weight lose the weight" when the real goal is to "lose the water." Even this little Russian lady, not understanding because she has not seen it enough, has failed to distinguish between bodies whose limbs and torso are riddled with stretch marks from long steady FAT GAIN over time, and those whose bodies are distended from a long term NORMAL INTAKE (or so they say) of sodium. To this point - I can see from my own current nutrient intake that I have been - not overeating all this time, but undernourished, attempting to compensate for a lack of energy and appropriate nutrients by eating sugared snacks for an energy boost at 4 p.m., eating rice cakes (after I went gluten-free) in the afternoon or evening, and drinking a lot of coffee. Just to stay afloat. And "afloat" was a great deal more literal than I ever could have dreamed.
A few resources for those of you who might recognize the symptoms of sodium retention weight gain and 'sudden onset obesity' which for me, it definitely was:
www.wrongdiagnosis.com
Enter all of your symptoms. Because that is how I found mine.
Housekeeping!!!
Scheduled WHEE diaries:
October 24
Sat AM - cdkipp - Green Tea and Your Metabolism
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 17)
October 25
Sun AM - Turtle Diary
Sun PM - kismet
October 26
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - ???
October 27
Tues AM - ??
Tues PM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 18)
October 28
Weds AM - ???
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock
October 29
Thrs AM - A DC Wonk
Thrs PM - ???
October 30
Fri AM - ???
Fri PM ???