I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most people are aware that going up to someone you don't know or you are just acquaintances with and saying 'you're looking fat' or 'have you actually lost any weight yet' or 'well you don't look like you've lost weight', is not only politically incorrect, but also highly inappropriate and just down right RUDE! I really believe that everyone knows this, so why do so many not realise that telling someone they look too thin can by just as offence?
I have always been on the smaller side of things, and was grateful that I could pretty much
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Thailand 2008 with my bestie. Me on the right at
healthy and happy 53 kilograms. |
eat whatever I wanted to without it having any impact on my weight. I could literally eat a family block of chocolate every night and still the scales would not hit over 53kgs. I loved my body, I had a tiny waist and big double D boobs and nice full cheeks. I have always known that this isn't the norm, and that a lot of my girlfriends consisted me 'lucky'. I was also very aware that I could lose weight extremely fast and it would be very easy for me to get under weight. This first happened back in 2001 while at Uni, I got quite sick with glandular fever which developed into pneumonia and therefore wasn't eating all that much and I dropped down to a small size 6 very quickly.
Since then my weight has alway been about the same, like I said before just sitting at about 50kgs to 53kgs for years and years. Then I went though my pregnancy with my first baby, who is 3 now. Throughout the whole 35 weeks of this pregnancy (I gave birth to a tiny premmie) I put on a total of 8kgs, most of which I lost again within a few weeks after giving birth. I then went on to breastfeed for almost 8 months, I stopped at 8 months because my weight had dropped right down to 46kgs! I had put on 8kgs, but then had lost 12kg, and nothing I did seemed to help me put any weight back on. Stopping breastfeeding was emotionally hard on both myself and my baby, neither one of us was ready to stop, but it had come down to thinking I had no other choice if I wanted to start gaining weight again. Well in the end it didn't work, I did not gain a single kilo until I fell pregnant again 4 months later.
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An hour before my Caesar
weighting in at 58kgs |
This second pregnancy was tricky, I was trying so hard to stack on as much weight as I could, as I was thinking the more I had in stores the longer I may be able to breastfeed for, but because I had Gestational Diabetes in the first pregnancy I was also trying to be good and keep my sugar levels low. It was like trying to push to negative magnets together, it was just never going to click . I ended up putting on 12kgs which took me back up to the same weight I was at the end of my first pregnancy, I would have really likes to have gained more as I was pregnant for 4 weeks longer and this baby was double the size of my first, but my weight plateaued after I was diagnosed with GD again.
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| Feeling thin in Thailand 2013, 43kgs. |
Once bubba was born I was determined to eat for Australia and not lose too much weight, this worked for a little while and I even gained a little bit early on, but then almost over night it all unraveled. At 4 months post birth my weight dropped down to 48kgs, this got me worried, I started having anxiety attacks and I got extremely upset, all I could think about was having to stop feeding my baby earlier than I planned. I was so down at one stage I thought I may have had Post Natal Depression, my best friend even called my husband to see if he could fly home early from his swing. He did and within 2 days of him being home he had dragged me off the GP. She quickly settled my fears about PND and put it more down to anxiety and fear about my weight loss, she was fantastic and we chatted for a long time about action plans and what we would do, I really felt like she was working with me and on my team. It was also the first time I mentioned to her that I was lactose intolerant. She sent me to see a dietician, which was not a foreign to me after have GD twice, but the poor dietician couldn't tell anything I didn't already know or was doing, she was quite sorry and her only advice was to try and eat even more. Over the next 3 months, my weight slowly dropped and dropped, eventually getting to 43kgs! This was right before we had a family holiday to Thailand to celebrate my sisters marriage, and there was no way known I was going to stop breastfeeding before this trip, boob is just so much easier than bottles when travelling, especially to a third world country. This trip was the point that I started to get really down about my weight, I couldn't even fill out my new bikini top I had only bought 8 weeks prior just for this trip, and I can tell you I have never ever had this type of problem. I hated looking at pictures as I could really see in my face how thin I had gotten. Once home I had decided that after 8 months of feeding it was time to wean. I was actually ok with this decision, I had reached the same point that I had first time round, and I guess I knew it was coming for a while and was ready. The babes had a different idea and was having nothing to do with the weaning idea at all, I tried on and off for a good 2 months, before I gave in and just let her feed, after all she was starting to naturally cut down and my weight had not changed over that period.
All while this was happening with my weight I was also dealing with tummy issues, bloating, pain and lets say not very nice trips to the toilet. These tummy troubles peaked just after christmas last year and once again husbandito pushed me off to the GP. This time she gave my the push I needed to really get serious about weaning, I got tough and within 5 days I had weaned bubba off the boob through the day! Plus all my test that were run came back completely normal, so I am perfectly healthy, and thanks to being a right shortarse I'm not consisted underweight, although quite close to it. So in the end I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and since then I have started a low FODMAP diet, you can read about my journey through this in other posts. In the 6 weeks since I have actually started to very slowly put some weight on. I have no idea how it all works, whether it's the cutting the breast feeding right down or whether it has to do with the new diet and my digestive system now working a bit better but it is working.
Now back to where I was going with this post…. I could not tell you how many times I have had random people, mainly shop assistants or golden oldies say things to me like "You're so thin", "do you eat", or from people I do know "You haven't put on ANY weight have you". I usually try and be light hearted and say something like "well have you seen my huge baby, its hard work keeping her nice and
big", but sometimes I feel like I need to explain to them my whole story, so they stop judging me, and that is not like me at all, I'm not one who usually cares about what people think. Somedays I feel like I have spent so much time and energy defending myself explaining that I do eat, I actually eat quite a lot. But I think what it really comes down to is that I'm not happy with how my body looks or feels for that matter, and that makes peoples thoughtless comments hurt all that more. What I really need right now is to get my body love back, get my head out of caring what others think and say about my shape, I need to start embracing my small booty and wear clothes that fit and aren't loose!
This here is a promise! Love your body, its the only one you've got!!
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