Weight Tracker

This is a very discouraging and private page, but I’ve decided to publish my horrific weight loss history in the hopes that one day I can see results and progress and remember how far I’ve come.   Hopefully once I go to Seattle, things will look up and change.  But for now, I am miserable and discouraged. I’m ready for this to be over.

September 1998

Beginning of senior year of high school.  My “normal” non-sick weight of 140 pounds.  I’m a hottie in my junior prom pictures.  I think I’m fat because I have a butt and have to wear a size 12.  If I ever see that woman again, I will suffocate her with self-appreciation and love.  I can’t believe I ever thought she was fat.

May 1999

Graduation from high school.  My first bout with Cushing’s, though I had no idea at the time.  My parents’ divorce and typical high school stresses were blamed as I ballooned up to 215 pounds.  I burned all of my graduation photos and most of my senior prom photos.

February 2000 – January 2003

Take a year off of college in 2000 and work my butt off.  Literally.  I lose forty plus pounds and am a solid 170.  Still “overweight” but now more curvy, rather than fat.

May 2004

College graduation.  My second bout with Cushing’s began in winter 2003, and I quickly gained weight.   I went from my “regular” weight to 199, where I teetered, until finally going “over the edge” and gaining 10 more pounds.  By college graduation, I weighed in at 210.

November 2004 – July 2007

An illness helps me lose weight after my move to Los Angeles (one of the only good things about that move), and I lose thirty plus pounds.  I’m now hanging out around 180.  Not happy, but glad to be back under 200.  Still “fat” by medical standards, but again, glad to not be over 200 pounds.  This will become my new “normal” weight, regardless of weight loss efforts for the next few years as my weight fluctuates.  I am never able to go under 180, no matter what diet I try.

 July 2007 – July 2008

My third bout with Cushing’s begins.  A nasty break-up is blamed for the first ten pounds, but after efforts with Weight Watchers and South Beach Diet fail, coupled with other increasingly odd symptoms, I start to suspect something else.  I balloon from my standard 180 to 220 in a year’s time, even though I’m hiking, kickboxing, dieting and doing everything in my power to curb the weight gain.  My primary care physican dismisses my concerns and tells me to “eat less and exercise more.”  I still haven’t forgiven him.

September 2008

When my Cushing’s is discovered at Vanderbilt, I am a hefty 215 and depressed.  I feel like a beached whale and I am miserable.

December 2008-January 2009

My first pituitary surgery at Vanderbilt.   On surgery day, I weigh 215 pounds.  I am discharged from the hospital with a hefty dose of dexamethasone to “replace” the steroids I am supposedly losing from the pituitary tumor removal.  The first week, I gain 16 pounds and clock in at 231, my heaviest weight ever.  I am taken off of dexamethasone because I have “too much steroid.”

February 2009 - September 2009

Weight loss finally begins once steroid withdrawal happens.  I have complications from steroid deficiency, but I am able to lose 25 pounds post-surgery.  I am enthused, but never get below 205.  No matter what I do, my weight loss stalls there and I never see the below-200 results I’d fantasized about prior to surgery.

September 2009 – present day (last updated June 2011)

My Cushing’s symptoms begin to reappear.  Weight loss stops, hair growth begins, migraines begin, as do period problems.  Weight gain begins happening in spring 2011, and I rapidly pack on 6 pounds in two weeks, even though I am following the Weight Watchers Points Plus plan.  I have now gained back 17 of the 25 pounds I lost after my first pituitary surgery.