A Weighty Milestone

Yes, This is About Weight

[This post will discuss my experiences with weight gain and loss, obesity, BMI, diet, exercise, weight loss drugs, health care providers, and the health insurance industry. I’m reporting only on my journey and I have no opinions or judgment about yours. But if you might be triggered by my account, please don’t read this.]

I’ve been plus-sized off and on for much of my adult life (size XL-2X), with occasional forays into the size 10-14 range after restrictive dieting. Regardless of my size, since I was 20, my BMI has been categorized as “obese.”

I never felt obese. And Dan (my beloved... my ride or die of 38 years…), has loved me at every weight and size even while always weighing less than me. Yeah, wow.

Self-acceptance and that of my lover aside, my weight has prevented me from accessing health care. This is a long and sordid tale and I’m not going to go into it all here. I will sum it up with this: I was fat-shamed by the student health doctor in college when I was twenty (see left photo above). I’d gone in for relief for my bronchitis. But he was astounded that I weighed 175 pounds, and that became the focus of our meeting. He shoved a 1200 calorie diet plan in my face and barked, “Do you understand?” I meekly answered yes while covering my terrible cough. I walked out of the clinic holding the sheet of paper and fighting back tears.

From that day forward I avoided going to doctors because who wants to deal with that? And there’s not been a single day since when how-to-avoid-gaining-weight has NOT been on my mind. Yet I only got heavier, all the way up to 231 pounds which is my highest, never more. (I hardly gained anything with either of my pregnancies.)

Over the decades, when I had a situation requiring medical care, I would first lose about 25 pounds so I could point to a positive downward trajectory when the doctor inevitably wanted to scold me about my weight. Yes, it took a few months to lose those 25 pounds, so if my troubles were quite serious I would go straight to Urgent Care where I knew my weight would not be the focus. Over a span of decades, I must’ve lost 25 pounds at least eight times, and 50 pounds twice, using restrictive dieting and exercise, to lessen the chance of getting fat-shamed at the doctor or by weight-conscious family members whom I might see over the holidays. I got to my lowest adult weight (the low 180s) around my 40^th birthday which I’m happy to say was motivated by doing what was right for me, rather than to avoid shame. But, by age 44 I was gaining weight again, and when I hit menopause in the pandemic at age 52, whereas weight-loss efforts had been second-nature (familiar and predictable) it was now exponentially harder/slower.

Fast forward to the fall of 2024 when I was bringing my mother to our (shared) primary care physician. Mom had cancer and moderate dementia at the time, and after examining Mom, our doctor said, When am I going to see YOU? I looked at her like How about when I’m not overwhelmed with being a caregiver, maybe? I was 223 pounds that day and mad at everything - but I knew I was getting yet another wake up call and I decided to do something that day.

A few years earier, I’d been on the semaglutide weight-loss drug Mounjaro with few results (and no insurance coverage). My doctor now prescribed Ozempic (again with no insurance coverage, which infuriates me because not only am I “obese” but I have sleep apnea which is a comorbidity, yet they refuse to cover these weight-loss drugs), so I shell out 500/month for it. Yet neither of those drugs resulted in the kind of miraculous weight loss I saw in others whether online or in person. I also do intermittent fasting for 18 hours a day without fail. And 90% of the time I eat the exact same meal of protein and vegetables so I don’t have to make tricky choices in the moment. And I do cardio and strength training to the point of breathlessness most mornings.

I chart it all in a Google spreadsheet with meticulous obsession. What have I learned? There is no simple fix. For me at least, it takes all of the above.

My Most Recent Steps On This Arduous Journey

Sept 2024 = 223 lbs (Mom is dying and I’m losing myself to caregiving, yet I take my doctor’s concern seriously, start Ozempic, and ramp up my exercise routine.)

March 2025 = 208 lbs (Mom dies. I experience a kind of out-of-body grief, as well as a relief to no longer be a caregiver. I stop the Ozempic because I’m at the max and it’s not working any better than I feel I can do on my own.)

A few months after Mom dies, I’m ready to focus on me again. For the first time since I was 20, I go to my doctor without thinking about what I weigh and she refers me to an adult weight loss doctor. I’m skeptical. Nervous even. But this new doctor completely gets my body and my weight loss patterns. I tell her I know it sounds improbable but there is never a day when I’m not worrying about how to eat so I don’t wake up heavier the next day, and I keep floating back up to 231 pounds and I don’t understand why. She goes, That’s because your body DEFENDS its highest weight. In her words I hear logic and illogic all at once. Most of all, it’s support without judgment. I cry. She looks at my food log and listens to my exercise routine and starts me on Zepbound. (Still no insurance coverage so $500/month.)

Sept 2025 = 203 lbs (20 lbs lost in a year)

October 2025 (I have some medical procedures for long-deferred other problems I won’t go into here, which require me to put the weight-loss drugs on hold.)

February 2026 = 179 lbs (24 lbs in 5 months and in 17 months that’s a total of 44 pounds which is 20% of my original body weight which is apparently a big deal.)

Now What?

This has been the slowest weight loss journey of my life. But I think I’m finally onto something. You see, the one thing I haven’t methodically tracked and charted - ever - is my emotional state. But what’s substantially changed in these last five months is that I’ve been processing my feelings - about Mom, about the shit that I’ve been through, and about the shit I’m still going through - instead of holding it in.

On tough days, I might turn to a carb-laden piece of food or a glass of wine for comfort or distraction, but now I notice that not only do those things not give me the taste that I’m craving, they don’t “work” at numbing or distracting me. Instead, my feelings beckon like a Vice Principal standing in the long high school hallway, and I’m all Ok shit yeah, let me go there, let me feel my feelings instead of eat or drink them. I mean, duh, everyone, myself included, knows that “our emotions are at the heart of the weight we carry.” But I went from reading about that as a concept to understanding and feeling the truth of it inside of me.

I process a lot of my feelings while working out actually. On any given morning, I do some combo of punching my boxing machine, swinging my kettle bells, doing my crunches, burpees, and pushups, and I always try to get in 2 miles on the treadmill. I listen to Ludacris, Tupac, Black Eyed Peas, Sia, Salt-N-Pepa, Finatticz, and Katy Perry. Sometimes I spend my entire time on the treadmill watching Instagram reels set to “Unstoppable.” I still intermittent fast like a religion. I’m on both Zepbound and Metformin (still with no insurance coverage for the former).

When I get to 174 pounds, which will be one pound less than what I weighed when that asshole student health doctor barked at me, I’m going to flip him the bird with both hands. Then I might flip off the health insurance companies too, because what a joke THAT has been. And I think I’ll also flip off the people who came up with very concept of “BMI,” because I’m STILL considered obese…

Oh, and I now weigh less than Dan. And he still loves me.

xo