Obesity- A lifelong struggle

If you don't know me then one of the things you should know about me it that I have been obese my entire life. Like so many in the "Pepsi Generation", I was from a dysfunctional family, and my negative childhood experiences shaped my emotional patterns to self medicating through food. It was my friend, often my only friend. It was my comfort and how I loved myself when I felt unloved. My childhood obesity was an outward expression of inward turmoil, anxiety, and depression. I was relentlessly teased and abuse at school as well as a home for my obesity and found myself friendless.

As I matured into a teenager and I began make friends by being a clown and I often allowed people to abuse me because of my loneliness and desperation. The hormonal changes of puberty itself are always a tumultuous times our lives, but for me (as an obese child) my hormonal imbalance seemed severe. I would go long periods of time not menstruating at all and sometimes (months at a tim)e I would hemorrhage. This would leave me anemic. I also experienced severe depression/anxiety related to my hormonal cycles. I lived in poverty and was uninsured so I suffered in silence and would simply withdrawal from others in secrecy and binge. Many of my relationships where broken when my hormonally charged emotions would spiral out of control, knowing this I knew it was best to remove myself temporarily from people, this became a pattern in my life. I read books and studied psychology to learn to control my emotions in order to save myself from the pain of these repeated broken relationships.

Over the years (whenever I was insured) I'd try medications, and those would help, but they would cause my blood pressure to skyrocket, and the side effects were often that of weight gain. Between my auto-immune disease (that's another article I'll leave for another time) and hormonal struggles, I ballooned to over 300 lbs.

After my husband and I were married it again became an issue. Thankfully I became insured though my husband and when I saw issues in my marriage (Again), I began to use a bible study I found at www.settingcaptivesfree.com. It teaches orderly eating for glorifying Christ in all things, and that obesity is caused by gluttony and gluttony is sin. I pondered the verse in scripture that states "If your hand causes you to sin cut it off and if your eye causes you to sin gouge it out." It was shortly after I finished my first 60 day study I was diagnosed with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, brought on by my morbid-obesity. I realized I was indeed "reaping what I had sown". I wanted to be obedient to The Lord and stop sinning, and I was finally ready to admit that I could not on my own strength without dealing with my hormonal imbalance once and for all. (and as fate would have it) I ended up with an OBGYN who specialized in surgery. She offered me the options of endometrial oblation surgery or a complete hysterectomy. I decided to undergo the oblation surgery in 2010 and I am happy to report that I now have very light menstruation and a much closer to average Premenstrual Syndrome. Being able to better control my emotions has lead to being able to control my eating and that combined to my study of Godly obedience in eating has resulted in a weight loss of over 100 lbs.

(to be continue)