I figured I may as well give everyone my whole background story. So here it is, the good, the bad, & the ugly:

I was actually underweight as a little kid, up until the time I started school. Even in kindergarten, I was one of the smallest in my grade. I think a large part of that was that I was always sick with strep throat or tonsillitis, and that made it hard for me to swallow, and to keep down what I had swallowed.

The summer after kindergarten, I had my tonsils removed, & my weight has continued to rise since then. Sometimes I wonder if I hadn’t had them removed, if I would still be skinny?

Anyways, I reached my ultimate highest weight at around the 4th-6th grade, at 188 lbs. I know, disgusting right? Anyways, my mother really couldn’t figure out why I was so heavy, because I’d always eaten relatively healthy, and I was a fairly active child.

She took me to my pediatrician, and after two years of testing, I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) the summer before starting the seventh grade.

PCOS is basically a hormonal disorder that causes the female body to produce more male hormones (ex. testosterone) than normal. It also causes many reproductive problems, weight gain, a more difficult time losing weight, and an increased risk of breast&ovarian cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. PCOS also causes cysts to form in or on the ovaries, which can sometimes be quite painful. 

PCOS does cause your menstrual cycle to be quite out of whack, and that is something that has always bothered me. The struggle to lose weight however, is the problem with this disease that is second to none. And pain-wise, I’ve been quite fortunate with this disease. I’ve been hospitalized only once for a cyst that was causing me a lot of pain (my doctor originally thought it was appendicitis) I was also diagnosed with anemia at the time, another common side-problem of PCOS. The only constant pain that I have with PCOS (other then the weight, obviously, *groan*) is a pain in my lower back that is fairly regular, but manageable.

I go to see an endocrinologist (hormone doctor) every year, and   am currently on two different pills to control my PCOS, metformin, and aviane.

 Shortly after my diagnosis, my mother started encouraging (er, forcing) me to lose weight. Being 11 at the time, I honestly didn’t care too much. 

Looking back though, my mother is what started me on my weight loss journey, and I could not be more grateful, for all the days she made me go for a walk with her, for all the salads she made me eat, and for all the tough love she gave me surrounding my weight.

Sometime between Grade 7 and 8, I developed an obsession with how I looked, and not in a positive way. For some reason or other, I had stopped losing weight, and it scared the hell out of me, thinking that I would be stuck at that size forever. I started throwing up after meals, the ones that I didn’t skip. It didn’t work though, and by the middle of the eighth grade I had stopped.

In March of 2011 though, I just stopped eating, period. I lost about ten pounds, and that was when the pains in my side that I mentioned above started. My mother , who didn’t know I had stopped eating, thought it was appendicitis, and brought me to the hospital. I was hooked up to I.V. fluids overnight, and I almost went insane. I felt like every drop of fluid dripping into me was causing me to gain weight.

I resumed eating for a while, and I was soon back to my previous weight of around 180. Then, this summer, I went back to not eating, while I was in another province babysitting for my aunt. No one ever noticed, but I had lost another 16 pounds by the time I came home in August.

I had also been cutting my legs and intentionally bruising myself for months by this point. 

Now, I eat normally, (but healthy) and I am trying to deal with my disease and lose weight normally, without the starving myself.

I like to look back at those points in my life, and promise myself that I’ll never be there again. I’ve recently lost a close friend, who was one of the only people who knew about my eating disorder, and for a while I found it a hard thing to deal with, because my very best friend, who had also known, had moved halfway across the country around the same time.

Now, however, I still have the best friend who moved, and two new best friends, as well as other close friends, who I know would never let me sink that low again. They mean more to me than I could ever tell them, and some days I think their the only things that keep me from doing those harmful things to myself. 

I try to take things one day at a time. I know that not every day is going to be a good day, and not every time I step on the scale, is the number going to be significantly lower. But slowly my UGW is getting closer, and with the support of my friends and my family, I really believe that I’m going to get there.