Weight Stuck for 5 years

09-21-2016, 08:23 AM

As an adult I have always been overweight. As a teenager I weighed normal for my height 125-130. Then from my first pregnancy (we lost her at birth) through two more pregnancies to now I am obese. (Drs term) I am 5'2" and currently weigh 188 pounds. I have weighed 188-189 pounds now for the last 5 years no matter what I do. I am 65 now and in the last 5 years I have joined weight watchers 3 different times and stuck religiously to their diet. Their counselors have gone over what I eat and how much, measurements and they are baffled. I walk 70 minutes a day on a treadmill and average 4+ miles EVERY day. We have tried bumping up my calories and bumping them down and nothing ever makes a difference. Several times I have gotten depressed over struggling so hard and still wearing a size 16 and have binge eaten for several months at a time. The result.......still 188-189 pounds. I have had my tsh tested and there is nothing wrong there. I keep hearing menopause from everyone but while I understand that menopause can make losing weight harder, my understanding is that it just makes it harder to do and you would still gain if you are overeating as badly as I did for 3 months and more than once. Before the last 5 years my weight fluctuated normally. If I went on a healthy diet and added exercise I would lose weight and if I went to the dark side and ate incessantly I gained up to 210 at one point Now I am just stuck, no matter what I do I weight 188-189 which is obese. My health other wise is fair, I was just diagnosed with Sjogrens syndrome and Cronic Kidney Disease Stage 3 which may be linked to the prilosec I have taken for years for really bad acid reflux or the aleve and advil to mask the pain which I now know is related to my autoimmune disease. I also have high blood pressure. Both the high blood pressure and the CKD conditions make it imperative that I lose weight. I am having lots of pain resulting from my sjogrens, take no meds except my blood pressure meds and prilosec for the acid reflux and am sad and angry that despite eating correctly and exercising 70 minutes on treadmill, doing 50 sit ups and other various toning exercises daily. This has gone on for so long I think it is going to stay this way but I guess if I knew why it might help.

10-06-2016, 08:20 AM

Dear elainea717,

I can really relate to what you wrote. So maybe you can relate to what I share. I can tell you a possible problem right now, because I do it too. It isn't easy to stop because for me in my mind food represents comfort. I can 'hear' myself talking to my self as I write to you and I also need to do something about it.

Food is my addiction. In fact when I eat sugary foods I can almost go into a coma, so it's the "prefect" escape. Well, if it wasn't so dangerous. I have avoided alcohol because of its effects most of my life, and for the most part I don't eat candy, and will eat a few dark chocolate coated dried cherries if I want a sweet. But just recently I bought and hid a bag of candy that is nothing but pure sugar. (Thinking about what I am writing to you, I am going to throw it away.)

This is crazy of me because like you I need to lose around 40-50 pounds. Up to age 18 I was very slender for my height. Up to then I ran everywhere, skated, rode horses, motorcycles, bicycles, swam; then that was stopped forever by an accident that crushed a leg leaving it 2 and a 1/2 inches shorter. Plus I twisted my body to try to hide this under long skirts. years later I allowed my other leg to be shortened 2 inches and wore a lift in my other shoe. But none of that undid the unbalance & the permanent twist in my back.

Even with built up shoes I can hardly walk due to damage from the accident that drastically affected my movement and my looks. So add to that the extra pounds that also affects my health and my looks and I 'run' to food to relax because I cannot run.

What to do? Is there a Binge Eating Anonymous group out there?! Writing to you is answering my own question of what I need to do, and I want to find a group. I'm 67 now and have things like my looks that I lost in my teens that destroyed my self-esteem, which I need to mourn and open up about. I have physical reasons to stop this behavior, too. Liver disease and low thyroid. Excess simple carbs don't help either of those.

Diet & exercise cannot fix emotional issues. For me, this behavior is from crippling emotions. Does any of this ring a bell for you?

Love,

Weight Stuck for 5 years

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