Moments from Menopause

I've been very honest with my weight struggles over my lifetime.  A 40-year eating disorder that started in my early teens has turned my metabolism into a non-functioning nightmare. Add in this hormone-crazed time called MENOPAUSE, and my weight, like the stock market, has been steadily climbing. The stock market may have in-place corrections, my menopause metabolism does not, so while the market gets, well, corrected,  my weight continues to spiral upward, no federal trade ceiling mandates to stop it. My eating disorder bloomed out of a random statement my father made to me when I was 12. A little backstory is needed: My parents divorced before I was born. My father's mother had been a very famous fur model in the 1940's and 50's in NY. My father had even been a child model. So, back to me. When I was 12 I was the tallest kid in my class and had been since second grade. My father is waaaaay over 6 feet and everyone thought I'd gotten the tall DNA as well. ...

I recently had a doctor tell me that if you change nothing about your diet and exercise regime, you will gain 10% of your current weight every decade after 50. No matter what. 10%! So if I weigh 150 pounds at 50, by 60 I will weight 165. By 70, 181.5 and so on until you die. If I do nothing, make no changes. Why I didn't know this before I ever hit menopause is mind-blowing to me, because if I had, I certainly would have made sure I weighed waaaaaaaaaaay less than I did when it hit me! I think I mentioned once before in this blog that I was on Nutrisystem when menopause hit me full force. I'd lost 30 pounds in three months. The second menopause reared it's ugly head, I gained 32 pounds within 1 month... and still while on Nutrisystem. Yes, you read that right: I gained 32 pounds on a weight reduction program. It wasn't the program's fault. I did everything I was told to do to the letter. It was that my body had suddenly been thrust into a cauldron of sw...

It is absolutely amazing how quickly a body can get out of shape - especially one that wasn't  in the best of shape to begin with. I think I shared that when I was on Nutrisystem last year and menopause hit me hard - almost a knockout! - I actually started gaining weight on the diet.  Now, no sane person ever wants to gain weight on a calorie reduction diet. At this point in my menopause struggle I was ready to jump off a ledge. I'd been exercising like mad, eating the nutrifood and nothing else and here I was creeping up the scale. So what did I do? I'll tell ya: I did what any self respecting moody and flashing woman would have done if faced with the same situation : I gave up. On everything. The diet. Exercising. Basically, life. How did that work out for you, you ask? Not well. A year later and all the weight I lost came back on and my muscles can't be detected under the fat anymore because I stopped moving them. I'm sure with my psych background of knowled...