Complexity
Goal Post #6
Summer of 2011 was the last time I felt happy with my size. Attending grad school after my divorce, I was in regular therapy and on antidepressants. Life was stressful and crazy but I’m pretty sure the medication helped me lose some extra weight I’d gained in my rocky marriage and rockier divorce.
I'm only bringing this up because stress and medications can make a strange cocktail in our systems, effecting our health in ways we cannot predict. It’s important to note I do not currently have any known conditions, am not on any medications including hormonal birth control, have never been pregnant, and do not have small children.
There are so many extenuating factors that influence our health and our weight. Certain medications and/or the conditions they treat can make managing weight extremely difficult, if not impossible. While exercise and a healthy diet are important for everyone’s health, the changes I made next were right for me and I would never tell anyone else they had to make those exact or even similar adjustments to live a healthy life.
Psychology Today article on stress and weight gain
Summer of 2011 was the last time I felt happy with my size. Attending grad school after my divorce, I was in regular therapy and on antidepressants. Life was stressful and crazy but I’m pretty sure the medication helped me lose some extra weight I’d gained in my rocky marriage and rockier divorce.
I'm only bringing this up because stress and medications can make a strange cocktail in our systems, effecting our health in ways we cannot predict. It’s important to note I do not currently have any known conditions, am not on any medications including hormonal birth control, have never been pregnant, and do not have small children.
On the subject of children, every parent knows we can love and enjoy them while acknowledging toddlers are super stressful
energy suckers. Two years old is still my favorite developmental age even
though my health spiraled drastically the year and a half I worked at a preschool
teaching 2½-3 year olds.
During that year I developed several poor coping methods. (Drinking more wine, Frappuccino’s and Thai iced teas in 2015 than the rest of my life put together comes to mind.) Basically, I drank more sugary and caffeinated calories because they were drops of liquid happiness in a crying in my car kind of world. Did you know lemongrass soup with Thai iced tea can help you feel better after a terrible morning? I still miss that lunch place.
During that year I developed several poor coping methods. (Drinking more wine, Frappuccino’s and Thai iced teas in 2015 than the rest of my life put together comes to mind.) Basically, I drank more sugary and caffeinated calories because they were drops of liquid happiness in a crying in my car kind of world. Did you know lemongrass soup with Thai iced tea can help you feel better after a terrible morning? I still miss that lunch place.
It is totally
possible the stress from that job had more to do with the work environment than
the children. In more than a decade of crappy jobs, I’ve never worked anywhere they
treated employees so poorly. On top of things like not giving bathroom
breaks in reasonable amounts of time and giving us teacher workloads for less than a third of an average teacher's salary, management gas-lighted most of the team into
feeling guilty they weren’t doing more. All of that being said, toddlers are still
super stressful energy suckers and if you have one give
yourself credit for simply keeping both yourself and your toddler alive.
Speaking of
stress. Near the end of 2017 the level of stress in our home went down considerably.
Remember our dog Mac? We had been trying for years to help lower his anxiety
without pills. Running him regularly alongside my bike was the latest effort
that didn’t work. We really didn’t want to drug an animal, especially because
they can’t communicate about side effects. But it didn’t take long for his anti-anxiety
pills to start working. It felt like a cloud literally lifted. Everything got
lighter in our house after that - we had no idea how much tension there had
been until it was gone. Mac is less stressed and we are all less stressed.
There are so many extenuating factors that influence our health and our weight. Certain medications and/or the conditions they treat can make managing weight extremely difficult, if not impossible. While exercise and a healthy diet are important for everyone’s health, the changes I made next were right for me and I would never tell anyone else they had to make those exact or even similar adjustments to live a healthy life.
Psychology Today article on stress and weight gain
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