Depressed and fat

Today's breakfast: tomatoes, onion, mushroom, asparagus all sauteed into a 2 egg scramble. Cooked in coconut oil and seasoned with a bit of salt.



Good morning all! So where was I..... oh yes, depressed and fat.

This is all still part of the back story so just bear with me.....It was literally one of the hardest times of my life. I cried myself to sleep on a daily basis. To make matters worse, Rob wasn't up for trying again, so not only was I sad about losing my baby, fat from eating poorly and laying around from my low iron count, I was also mourning the loss of any future babies.

What really was making me crazy was that I felt like my husband's body had been taken over by a stranger. He was removed, distant, tired and seemingly unable to express consistent thought. I felt like I was in this alone, and I wanted my best friend back. He was no where to be seen.

Let's back up a little with that. Rob is a fitness and nutrition freak. He loves it. He will rattle on about amino acids and insulin until my eyes glaze over. I like to be a good wife, so I nod my head and try to pay attention, and not think about what I need at the grocery store the next day or what I need to pack in Josh's school bag..

Anyway, around the same time I had tried making changes through the Hormone diet, Rob had stumbled unknowingly onto the Paleo diet. Only to him, he was just eating "stuff that came from the ground, or was alive" as he put it. Mostly meat, vegetable and dairy. Little to no grains, and absolutely nothing processed.

Now processed is not a problem in our house. We simply don't do it. If it has artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, High fructose corn syrup or an ingredient I can't identify, it's simply not allowed. My kids react badly to these things so we phased all that stuff out more than a year ago.

Back to the story. So Christmas comes along, and really, who can resist all those Christmas cookies (made of course with vegetable based food coloring from whole foods) and then Feb comes along and I surprise the family with a trip to Disney World and let's just say yes, the grains had crept their way back into Rob's diet (anyone who's ever have a hot dog at Casey's or a cinammon roll from Main street will understand this.) I find out later that he gains something like 40 pounds in 2 months just from eating grains again (pancakes, bread etc) I'm talking "healthy stuff." With my insulin resistance and diabetes running back generations in my family, you can just bet that we limit sugary treats in our house and teach our kids to eat healthy. Yet still the weight piled on....

Being the researcher and fitness freak he is, (sorry hon, I do love you you know!) he dug deeper. Somehow, he figured out that our youngest sons's gluten intolerance was hereditary which meant he got it either from me or Rob. Ding! Ding! Ding! Rob was indeed the lucky winner. He immediately cut all gluten from his diet and low and behold, my real husband emerged from the stranger's body. My best friend was back we got our life back.

We are guessing that taking out the gluten then reintroducing it in a major way literally wreaked havoc with his body. Looing back, he describes himself as being in a total brain fog, limiting his ability to function. Going gluten free cleared all that, the weight came off, he was mentally sharp and as he put it, felt completely great. His energy also went through the roof. And he was willing to give me my dream of a big family.

So of course, since then, he's tried to convince me that I am gluten intolerant as well. I wasn't buying it. He kept trying, and I kept ignoring. I would never go gluten free. Of that I was certain. I just didn't feel the same way he did when I had gluten. I had none of those symptoms, but he was convinced there was a link between my insulin resistance, pcos and Hashimoto's disease (a thryoid disorder that causes hypothyroid - I developed after the birth of my first son. There is no cure, and I must take synthroid the rest of my life).

While all this was going on, I was back to cutting calories, limiting myself to 1488 calories a day (why 1488? An ap on my phone counts calories and that's the number it calculated to reach my goal weight). Over months I lose the pregnancy weight and then stall at 194 - 196. I am back on the fertility roller coaster of hormone tampering clomid, uncomfortable vaginal ultrasounds, BBT temping every morning and a trigger to ovulate - a pregnancy hormone shot I give myself in the stomach to force an egg to release. Truly, an emotional nightmare that I am forced to endure because of my insulin resistance and pcos. The first cycle is a bust with a "bfn." To you not TTC (trying to concieve) that's a big fat negative on a home pregnancy test. Again, I cry on Rob's shoulder. I put on a happy face for my little family through the weekend, but inside, I am crying.

Monday rolls around and I am just trying to pick myself up and pull it together for my family. So he says to me, you know, I know this sounds crazy, but there are some studies out there that Paleo has some great success with fertility. I am so desperate for any answer that that's all I need to hear...no nagging about gluten and hashimoto's or inflammation, (Another thing he 's been going on and on about). All he has to do is dangle that fat juicy carrot in front of me: "You may get pregnant."

I was in.

And so it begins...

This is my story. Before I can talk about what I am trying, I must give you my history. So bear with me...this first post is long, but necessary to understand what I am fighting.

Hello my name is Shelby and I have PCOS and Insulin resistance. Sounds like I belong in as 12 step group, doesn't it? Well, if you have either of these diseases, syndromes, conditions...whatever you want to call them, you know they they are as imprisoning and as misunderstood as alchoholism once was.

It's not something I created - I was born this way. From as long back as I can remember, I've had symptoms, even as a child of insulin resistance. As I got older, I realized something wasn't quite right. It bothered me after an enormous Italian pasta meal, or Thanksgiving dinner, that I would be starving less than an hour later. And from my very first period, I was irregular and a mess. I can remember years later being in college and being amazed that most women had regular cycles...they actually *KNEW* when their next period would start. I was blown away.

Fast forward to my 30's. I'm engaged to the man of my dreams who doesn't care that I can't have biological children, and still trying to nail down my health problems. I battle with occassional depression, weight issues, getting constant colds or respiratory infections and as always, an irregular cycle. My GP tells me that all my bloodwork/hormones are within the normal range. She doesn't know what to tell me other than to lose 50 pounds (as if I could just do that) and possibly consider "talking to someone about what you're supposedly feeling."

I turn to my GYN who finally refers me to an endocrinologist as she suspects an endocrine problem. Bingo! While there is no cure, I finally have a real name and diagnosis to this thing that has plagued me for years... I have PCOS and insulin resistance. Huh? But my bloodowrk was normal! Here's the thing, while "normal" and "in range", as my GP said, she didn't look at the ratios of the levels to each other. They were all flip flopped.

OK, so I say to my endo - How do we fix this? The answer is not what I wanted to hear.... Diabetes drugs. I get put on Metformin (also known as glucophage) for the rest of my life, with bloodwork to watch for the diabetes that will eventually turn into (I do in fact get gestational diabetes with not only my two bio boys, but even with this last non-viable pregnancy). I am also advised this will happen quicker if I gain excess amounts of weight. Of course there is no advice on how to lose any weight. For me to lose weight, I have to cut calories to about 1200 per day, and exercise like a fiend. I find I an only keep this up for so long before I totally lose it and eat the entire contents of my fridge in one sitting.

As a side note, it's worth mention that while going on Met alone did not cause weight gain, it does allow me to lose it a little easier... I can have almost 1500 calories a day and still lose about a pound a week if I stay with it. That's at least doable...

Anyway, there is a silver lining...with the addition of Met and a drug called clomid, I may possibly be able to have children. This is a wonderful wedding present to receive just one month before Rob and I get married. Unfortunately, I will learn over the next 10 years that miscarriage rates for us Pcos'ers are higher than norm. I will have three with the last being just 3 months ago. Each loss has taken a little part of my heart away. It never gets easier, only harder. But I am greatly blessed with three wonderful children, two boys through Met, clomid, ovidrel and IUI and one beautiful girl through Adoption. Aren't they just gorgeous?



As I said, as recently as March, I lost a baby. It was a miracle baby to me, conceived without medical help and a result, I believe of trying to alter my hormone levels wholelistically. I had being reading a book called "The Hormone Diet." In it the author suggests (among many things) that sleep has a great impact on our hormones. The book was heavy with drastic life changes for me and major information overload... I needed to start small.

I changed my room from sleeping with the tv on (I like to fall asleep this way) to a totally dark room (yay for sleep timers on tvs!) and also adding a specific multi-vitamin that had some of the vitamins that I may be low on (she had tests in the book I took)....magnesium, vitamin D, selenium, chromium... something about those could help my insulin resistance.

I was game, and I tried it. What did I have to lose? And I did feel better after sleeping in darkness (who knew?!) And low and behold, on my 42nd birthday in Feb, I felt wierd and took a test. I was shocked to see a positive staring up at me. I was equally shocked when less than a month later, my RE told me there was no hope. Despite hcg levels of over 66,000, the baby was no more.

To add insult to injury, I had an incomplete miscarriage at home (48 hours of terriblly painful labor in what was I think around 12 weeks). Once the contractions stopped, I continued to bleed until being forced to go to the ER which confirmed(via ultrasound) I wasn't done. There was more in there. I was sent home without a transfusion, a hemoglobin level of 5 or 7 (we still don't remember which) and told to follow up with my RE and to take lots of iron. The next day, my body took care of itself, expelling the last of the pregnancy and I finally stopped bleeding. I was so weak, I couldn't walk without assistance, or do stairs or do anything to take care of my family. I was on bedrest for weeks until I could get stronger. I gained 15 pounds landing me at an all time (non-pregnant) high of 208 lbs. Nothing fit but my maternity clothes. I was too embarassed and depressed to go out. I felt trapped in what I often refer to as my broken body.

Wheh! I think that's enough sadness and sickness for one day, don't you. But I don't want to end this first post on a sad note. So I will post one more picture of me taken last Saturday (17 lbs lighter I might add) with my three beauties on an afternoon of hiking. I will then continue the tale tomorrow...