Good-Bye to the Frog Lady

OK, so I don’t know if you know my story or not…I’ve never been really a “thin person” but I kept things at a pretty good level for most of my life.  I always felt that I was about 15 pounds overweight and life rocked along with me never feeling like I was at the “right weight” but, still, not bulging into the dreaded category: obese. However, when I had the hysterectomy, some sort of dam broke.  I stayed about the same for the first three months, and then….WHAM!! within two months, I had gained 60 pounds!!  That is one pound per day!!!!

Complications from the surgery caused me great, continual pain, and I wasn’t sure if I would ever be “normal” or not.  I was having hot flashes which I call “fire storms” that soaked whatever clothes I was wearing and dripped off of my hair.  It was no “gentle change”… I went from a normal 39-year-old woman to Fat, Crazy, and Hormonal with ISSUES!  Enter the Frog Lady.

As my weight grew, I would catch glimpses of this frog-lady in the mirror…a shadow of the “me” that I remembered, but definitely frog-like.  Swollen nose, arms, even my lips were bigger!  I hated her!  “I want my body back!” I was in “recovery” from that surgery for two difficult years.  Finally, I felt like I could actually get out of my sick-bed and get up and lose the weight that had come on so quickly.  Surely it would go just as quickly!  Guess again.

Eventually, I started going to a gym three days a week – and then up to four!  I started a cycle of work that still astounds me.  I spent an hour in the weight room and then an hour and a half in an aerobic class.  I upped the weights.  I gave it all I had in the aerobics…but I hit a plateau.  I kept DOING more and EATING less, and NOTHING!!! Then…well, life happened and essentially, Miss Frog never really left…she settled in for a long stay.  She took over my body in 1999 and this is 2012!!!  I’ve lived with the hated frog for a LONG TIME!!! 

So, here I am again, the SAME plateau poundage that I was at BEFORE the hysterectomy.  I haven’t been below this weight for 15 years.  It is like there is a barrier that will not budge. 

But, I am more stubborn than my body! I will rid myself of Miss Frog!  I still want my body back!  Sometimes, when I look in the mirror now, I don’t see the frog…I see me again! It is like an old friend has come home.  “Oh! There you are!  You haven’t changed a bit!” 

GOOD-BYE MISS FROG!