For context, I was about a size 4-6, 115lbs when I got married in 2014. Then we moved to Florida for 2 years, and shit hit the fan. My depression became the worst it has ever been, and life altering trauma occurred, making everything 10x worse. I was prescribed a really harsh mood stabilizer, a new anti-depressant, and the doctors down there liked to keep me barely functional with the amount of anxiety meds they had me on. The normal dose for that particular drug is .05 mg, 1mg tops. They had me on 10 mg. Ten. Which made my anxiety pretty much gone, but I was also pretty much a zombie. That was the least of my problems. The mood stabilizer I was put on made me gain 100lbs in one year. I know it was 99% the drug because I was basically not eating…ever. Looking back, there was probably an eating disorder there somewhere, but I didn’t even really notice (thanks to being a zombie). I moved to Florida at 115 lbs, a size 4, and come home to Colorado at 220lbs, a size 16. I couldn’t look in the mirror- honestly it is still hard. When we finally got settled in our apartment, and I had found a psychiatrist the real work began. For starters, she was HORRIFIED at my anxiety med dose. 10 mg is nearing overdose levels- 15mg can be fatal. I’m not going to be mentioning any of these medications by name, but this drug is a benzodiazepine. It’s not a simple medicine- in fact it is tightly controlled. There are a ton of problems with being on this high of a dose of this particular drug…for starters, everytime I had to get it filled, the pharmacy was required to call my doctor because it was SUCH a high dose. Another problem is that this is a really hard drug to get off of. You have to lower the dose extremely slowly-heart attacks are common when you come off to quick, or just stop completely. And I mean SLOW. It was lowered .05 mg every SIX MONTHS. It is 2022, and I am still on 2mg. It’s also very addicting (as all benzos are), and you become very dependent on it. Honestly…I will probably be taking this medicine for the rest of my life.
The next hurdle was my anti-depressant. The one I was on wasn’t doing much of anything. If you have depression you know how hard it is to find the right medicine for you. There are literally thousands, and they take 4-8 weeks to even notice a difference. It’s a game of Russian Roulette- literally. A fun side effect of anti-depressants is suicidal thoughts if you are on the wrong dose, or medicine. It is literally a guessing game with suicide being a very real risk. Ironic right? Thankfully, I was put on the right one pretty quickly. However, most anti-depressants also have a weight gain side effect- mine included. At the time I was put on it (2018), I had plateaued with my weight gain. I was keeping steady at 220. It didn’t make me gain weight (in 2018). I kind of just…accepted my weight at that point. I didn’t make any changes in diet, I didn’t go to the gym…I didn’t go anything. At the end of 2019, I decided that I had had enough. I started doing weekly water aerobics classes, I started paying closer attention to what I ate. By March 2020, I was down to about 190. I had a good thing going…and then COVID hit. My job was shut down, the pool was shut down, the WORLD was shut down. The only exercise I was getting at that point was walking my dogs. It was March and April in Colorado-it was still cold outside. When things finally started reopening, I was back up to 210.
It wasn’t until the end of 2020 that I REALLY started watching what I ate. I did a lot of research and realized that I was eating so much sugar. So much. So, I cut sugar out. Besides the natural sugar in things like fruits, vegetables, proteins, and dairy, sugar was gone. I switched to sugar free pop. Sugar free cereal (which is horrendously expensive). Sugar free candys (or very low sugar). I drank more water. And this combo worked insanely well. By August 2021 I was down to about 180. I struggled in October (Halloween duh), and then around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I didn’t gain any weight, but I also didn’t lose any either.
2022 started out good- I went back on my diet, and went to the gym more. I went down to 165 lbs by April. I didn’t get back into water aerobics…I just felt absolutely shitty in a swimsuit. I finally talked to my doctor about how much I hated the mood stabilizer- I hated the way it made me feel, I hated the weight that I struggled so hard to lose because I was on it. It wasn’t making me gain any more weight, but I had to work even harder to lose weight because of this and my anti-depressant. We finally got me off of the mood stabilizer in April, but I had to get my anti-depressant dose raised. By double. For May and June, I was out of it. The extra dose of my anti-depressant made me so tired, and just…ugh. I struggled to leave the house, let alone go to the gym. I started eating sugar again, and I paid for that decision greatly. I went from 165 to 189. So here I am…6 months left until I am 30, and I have 38 lbs to lose before then to reach my goal. 39 lbs, 26 weeks left. That’s about 1.5 lbs a week- which is actually ideal. The healthy amount of weight to lose per week is between 1-2. So I have a long road ahead of me, but I have set my goals. I am going to start water aerobics again this Monday, I’m going to get back into archery and I am going to start going to the gym again. I think for July I am going to go once a week, then escalate to 2 times a month in August, then 3 in September, and October-January I will go 2-3 times a week. I will go to the archery range once a week. I will be watching my sugar intake, my fat intake and my carb intake.
It starts today.
Wish me luck.
These are me around my lightest- my wedding October 2014 (about 120lbs) and then my heaviest around September 2019 (around 2019).
Body and Mind Under Construction 
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