About diabetes, dieting and a backbone fuelled by fear

Has anyone seen my backbone ?

Less than two weeks ago I heard myself stating - while talking about being overweight- : “I must have lost my backbone somewhere. No idea where it is, so yes please, bring me another pancake and a mojito;-).”

On the left at my skinniest two years ago, during my diabetes-diet. On the right three years before that on my heaviest. There’s a 10 kg difference between the two pictures.

Last week, however, from one second to another, there it was. The prodigal backbone returned!

Out of nowhere? No, there was a trigger. Backbones, motivation and will-power don’t just pop up; they are triggered by something or someone.
Here is my story about diabetes, dieting and a backbone fuelled by fear.

Eat more fries, please.

Let me first go back in time to give you some context:

I’ve been a skinny, little b*tch most of my life. The brilliant advice our house doctor came up with was: “Eat more French fries, whipped cream and real butter.” I think it ruined me for life, since I became a sucker for fries and sweet stuff. I would live solely on those, if I could. And cocktails. And champagne. You can give my veggies to someone else, please. No need for those. Oh, I wish….

My love (and fear) for French fries even made me sketch this, when I was still following my diabetes diet strictly.

Forty years later I had become a jojo with a wardrobe crisis

It didn’t even work, my French Fries Diet, because at 40 years old I weighed only 50 kg and I was still a size S/36. (with a height of 1.70m). Which was fine for me, by the way.

After 40 though, slowly but undeniably, I started gaining weight. First size S/M/38, 54 kg. Then size M, 56 kg. My maximum was XL and 65,5 kg. It fluctuated a lot over the last 15 years, so my closet got stuffed with clothes in all possible sizes.

I hated my body and kept hoping the old days of skinny me would return. Wishing my self-loathing would motivate me enough to start and stick to a diet.

The pictures in this post are all taken over the last five years, showing how much my weight fluctuated in these years.

At 56 years old, I decided I needed to grow up and accept that my days of sizes S/M/36/38 and even 40 were behind me. My backbone had proven absent in regards to fighting the forces of nature aging. I told myself that the rest of my life I would be a size L/42 at the least and that that was okay.

Time to get rid of a lot of my beautiful clothes in the smaller sizes and buy more in my current size. I organized a huge sale for friends, brought other clothes to consignment-stores and threw out the rest.

There, I did it. Big girl!

My name is Anja, and I’m a carb-o-holic

A month later, I was diagnosed with Diabetes-2 and put on a strict diet.

Now I’m a serious Carb-o-holic. I’m as addicted to carbs/sugars as an alcoholic is to booze.

Can you spot the difference in kg’s in the four pictures? I have to say, that I am quite good in camouflaging that difference. Usually my skinny legs give away that end of the spectrum.

To my own surprise I quit carbs on the spot and accepted the tough regime without any debate or hesitation. Cold turkey. I was amazed, that apparently a death threat (what the diagnosis was, in a way) and fear worked, where all my previous attempts to diet had failed hopelessly. Self-repulsion does not do it for me, so it seems.

To make a long story short: a year later I was 12 kg lighter, and back to size S/36… with a closet full of clothes in sizes L and XL. Bummer!

“I’m a carb-o-holic.”

The good part was that I had brought down my sugar from 11.3 to around 5.5. Pretty amazing stuff.

During that year, while I was shrinking, again I made a decision: “This diabetes is not going anywhere and the diet is forever, so I’d better change my wardrobe back to my new size.” So I did.

Moderation made me loose my mojo and become a jojo - again!

I was proud of myself, of what I had achieved. Apparently I DID have a backbone after all;-)!

But everybody else was complaining non-stop. “You are too thin now. You don’t look healthy. You looked better when you weighed more. You are doing it too strict.” It was annoying. As if I did it for fun or had a choice.

When even my doctor, dietician and diabetes-nurse told me that I had reached my goal and that I now could ‘let loose a bit’ and ‘relax my regime’, I gave in. Very tricky for a carb-o-holic! And yes, my fears came true. Loosening up my diet, gradually resulted in going overboard completely. Especially after the doctor told me that I was officially no longer labelled as a diabetic, thanks to my efforts, and was now just a pre-diabetic. Hurray! I did not even know that that was possible.

Unfortunately that made me feel as if I had the green light for carbs.

Within a year after ‘relaxing my regime’ all the lost kgs were back (wardrobe crisis…again) and my latest test results were not good.

Backbone pop-up

Hence the magical reappearance of my backbone. As soon as I read the test results - “Score 9.3 = unacceptable”- it kicked back in. Just like that.

So now I hope that -once again- I will succeed to lower and control my bloodsugar levels with my diet, avoiding medication and health issues.

How to control diabetes -by dieting-without getting too skinny

I’m gonna do a couple of things different this time:

• I aim to walk half an hour each day. I hate sports and exercise, but walking I can do. Sticking to a low-carb diet is one way to improve your bloodsugar level, exercise is another major tool. (A third one is avoiding stress, but that’s difficult for me as a stress-y person.)
• Apparently I’m incapable of moderation in regards to carbs. It looks like I have to abstain. Total abstention of carbs is not only impossible, but it is also not healthy. What worked for me last time, was to literally follow a diet as written down by my dietician. It worked, but I got very skinny. So this time round, I’m gonna ask her to write down a diet with more calories (but low in carbs) and blindly follow that.
• I’m going to forbid friends and family to make comments about my weight, skinny, bla bla bla. It’s hard enough as it is, folks, and constantly nagging about it doesn’t help me.
• I ‘ll have an extra floor built on my house and turn it into one big walk-in closet with sections for sizes S to XL, since history has shown that I’m like a jojo-on-speed. I’m loosing a fortune on clothes with all this jo-jo-ing between sizes and my house-as-is has not enough space to keep all sizes. Hence the extra floor.
  Seriously? Okay, no, this last point is a joke, actually. That would be an expensive solution, wouldn’t it? No, I have to be more space-creative in other, simple ways. I’ll figure it out;-). Tips are welcome, by the way! Oh, and ‘becoming a minimalist’ is NOT an option.

Have you ever wanted/needed to go on a diet? From where do you get your motivation? Are you familiar with the jojo-effect? How do you handle that?