I came home from school on November 25th last year for Thanksgiving break and I was greeted with open arms.
Until dinner time, when I was accosted with concerned looks and harsh words.
I hadn't seen my family since they'd dropped me off in August, back when Rochester was actually hospitable. At that point, I was at my "fighting weight," as my dad would say. I'd just come back from studying abroad in Paris where I'd made some great new friends and met my amazing boyfriend. I was so happy.
That's me in Prague!
When I got back to Rochester, you could say I was a bit disappointed. It's not that I don't love my friends and classes, but after living in Europe all summer it can be a challenge to move back to Rochester. I don't think I was necessarily eating more or moving less (though I probably was), but my diet and exercise habits were pretty pathetic to begin with. As a child I grew up thinking that sports would "distract" me from my music. (Yeah it doesn't make much sense). I never was interested in any sports largely because I'm very competitive and wasn't good at any of them. And as someone who's always been naturally skinny I never had to worry about what I ate, so I didn't. I guess that it finally caught up with me this year.
At the beginning of October, I looked like this:
By Thanksgiving, I looked like this:
And by January I looked like this:
Wow. How did that happen?? I didn't have answers for a long time. I should also probably point out that because these are just pictures, a lot of the way I look is affected by the lighting and by the camera angle. Maybe in the first two images I wasn't as thin as I think I was. Who knows. All I know is that I would look through these picture and feel awful. And not only was I experiencing this rapid weight gain, but I also felt very tired all the time, I was moody, I would get headaches, and I got some serious night sweats. I didn't even know what those were. Imagine waking up in bed after someone has dumped a gallon of room temperature water on you: that's what it feels like.
So, why was this a good thing? Well, it got me to take my health seriously. I started reading books and articles about nutrition and about exercise. I finally started listening to my mother, a prominent journalist on health issues. I learned about the importance of nutrition, about how to be conscious of what I eat, about how sugar is in everything (seriously), and about how I need to start taking exercise seriously. I've started to do things I'd never thought I'd be capable of: I've cooked meals for myself, I've gone to the gym, I've even started going to Crossfit!
It turns out it's all paid off. This is what I look like now:
Just kidding. But, wouldn't that be amazing?
I spent a lot of time on a quest to find out what was wrong with me. In the end, it turns out I have Hashimoto's Disease (an autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid). I may or may not be able to start getting treatment for it soon, but ultimately, I guess it doesn't really matter. Even without my immune system attacking my thyroid I still would have been fatigued and gained weight just based on the way I was treating my body. This illness served as a wake up call for me to change my habits. I guess it's true what they say: sometimes things have to get a lot worse before they can get better.
