How I Unintentionally Lost 30 Pounds

A few years ago I was the fittest I had ever been, from a visual perspective. A lot of people said so. I looked amazing, more attractive. But how I felt on the inside was very different.

Before that took place, I had been steadily gaining weight over a period of 2 years, but I didn't realize how much. I don’t think I wanted to know. I was in a toxic relationship at the time and we both numbed our issues with unhealthy eating and drinking patterns. Switching our focus from whatever fight we were having to the easy pleasure of food and alcohol gave us a way to evade our problems.

Then, one fun day in Disney World, I was required to step on a scale in order to be harnessed properly for a zip lining experience. My excitement for the adventure quickly dropped into shock at the number that appeared. I weighed more than I ever had in my life. I brushed it off to enjoy the rest of the day, but that moment stuck with me long after. I could no longer be ignorant about how my eating habits were affecting my body. When I returned from the vacation, I decided I needed to start actively working on losing weight. I didn’t want to associate myself with the number I saw on the scale, and I was sick of the emotional and physical pain I endured from overeating. I had been stuffing down negative emotions with comfort food, and it had taken a toll. As someone who has always valued health, it suddenly dawned on me how far I had strayed from truly embodying that value. I was desperate for fast results due to how jarred I was. I didn't want to be the person I'd become anymore, not for a moment. I probably should have slowed down, taken a breath, been realistic and patient. But that's just not my style. I tend to dive in headfirst. Full speed ahead. For better or for worse.

In casual conversation at work, I told my coworker my goal to lose weight quickly. He suggested intermittent fasting so that my body could burn more fat in ketosis. "Wild animals do it, why shouldn't we?" He said. I loved that concept, eating food like it wasn't accessible at any moment, like an animal that has to earn and wait for their food. It seemed natural, and I’d heard of a lot of yogis and people in the wellness community trying it.

My coworker said he lost 40 pounds after a year by eating only one meal every day in the late evening. He recommended I try the 16 hour fasting window though, eating only the within a confined 8 hour window, which was less extreme than the 23 hour daily fast he did. I wasn't looking to lose 40 pounds, just 15 or so. But I was ready to drop weight like the stocks in '08.

My coworker had suggested only eating from 12 to 8 pm so that I could eat my biggest meal after work. It sounded reasonable enough, but it ended up being hard to stay in that window. I liked to exercise and shower first after I got home from work, around 5:30 pm. Then, I still had to make dinner. A counselor's salary did not allow me to buy much takeout. I had to cook. I am a cooking perfectionist, a foodie. I can't help it, I take pride in my meals. I often ate past 8 pm, setting back the time I was allowed to eat again the next day. As a result, sometimes I wouldn’t start eating until as late as 3 or 4 pm depending on what time I finished dinner the prior night. This created a strange and unhealthy cycle for me, where I was frequently still eating my last meal close to midnight. I could tell my body didn't like being loaded with food later in the day and night, but I was determined to keep at it until I saw results. It worked for someone else, why wouldn't it work for me?

It never did. Not only did I not lose any weight, it led to horrible bloating. In retrospect, this was probably because I was always eating the heaviest meals at night, when my metabolism was at its lowest. My digestive system was sitting idle, shutting down, only to suddenly be overtaxed. Breakfast was my favorite meal of the day and the easiest for me to digest, but I was skipping it, starting work on an empty stomach. I told my coworker I wasn't losing any weight and he suggested eating less. He claimed he only ate so much at night because it was the only meal he had in the day (he filled up on coffee instead). But even after I lowered the food quantity, my body still had trouble digesting it and I didn't lose any significant weight.

It was painful! Not to mention disheartening. I put so much effort into losing weight to no avail. So, I looked up resolutions for my bloating issues. I assumed an inability to digest properly must be the reason intermittent fasting/weight loss wasn’t working for me. I didn’t trust doctors at the time because some had over prescribed me heavy drugs. Instead, I found a Registered Dietician (RD), whom I thought would blend scientific tests with holistic eating habits. Unfortunately, my insurance considered it homeopathic care, and didn’t cover it. But I was sure it was worth the money for an "all natural" treatment with someone who could solve my dietary problems.

The RD’s website advertised a wide variety of scientific tests she could administer. Yet, after only a verbal evaluation, she told me I met criteria for SIBO. SIBO, she explained, was bacteria overgrowth in my small intestine. I was a little disturbed at the diagnosis, but mostly relieved. I felt seen and heard, unlike with traditional doctors who too often treated me like a confused little girl. She listened to my problems and made me feel valid. I trusted her. I had gone to her mainly for guidance on relieving my bloating, but left with a new serious diagnosis that required immediate attention! SIBO was a clear point of blame, something to pin all my problems on. I was ready for the remedy.

The solution, though, turned out to be more extensive than I had anticipated. My RD told me to buy lots of (expensive) all natural (non FDA approved) pills and to restrict my eating to 7 hours apart. 7 hours! I was going from one version of intermittent fasting to another. I was also instructed to strictly follow the FODMAPS diet to kill the bacteria in my gut and eliminate any problem foods. There were three rigorous phases I was supposed to go through, all expensive and restrictive. I was concerned about going back to only two meals a day, and worried about the cost, but I wanted to trust that it was a temporary discomfort for a permanent fix. So I agreed to follow her guidelines.

Things did not go well. I was swallowing more pills than food, starting from as soon as I woke up and ending right before bed. And, as instructed, I was only allowed to eat every 7 hours, on a strict diet. This made it impossible to fit in enough food for the day. So, I under-ate. I frequently experienced horrible stomach aches as well as dizziness. Strange supplements on an empty stomach? Bad combo. I couldn't go out to eat without being "that girl" that had a million restrictions. The less variety of foods I ate, the less my body got used to digesting the foods the FODMAPS diet temporarily eliminated. So then, ironically, I did become sensitive/averse to all those foods. My body was not happy with this protocal.

All this coincided with the start of the pandemic, so it was fairly easy to be private about everything going on with me. I was considered an essential worker though, so I was still expected to go in to work. To help get through the loneliness, my friend sometimes joined me for distanced outdoor meals. One day, I divulged to her about the strange rules and expectations of my nutrition regimen. I was in an easier phase at the time but was about to be starting a much more restrictive one.

My friend grew very concerned. As someone who was a politics major and a discerning thinker, she was usually clued in to societal scams faster than I was. She asked me a lot of questions. "What did the dietician tell you you had? What are you taking?"

I told her about the SIBO diagnosis and that most of the supplements were probiotics and bacteria killers that could be found at Whole Foods. Now, my friend is an avid Whole Foods lover, but she was less than impressed here.

She warned me that she'd heard stories about SIBO being a trend that was still very poorly understood yet being over- diagnosed, with possibly harmful effects from treatments by practitioners that didn’t have full medical knowledge. She showed me articles of people tricked by it, who paid lots of money and didn't improve.

Somewhere in my gut (maybe next to all that excessive bacteria) I knew she was right. But I wasn't ready to accept it. I so wanted this weird nutrition regimen to be the solution. I was already too invested in SIBO being the problem. It wrapped up all my difficulties into one contained box and gave me a clear plan of action. I didn't want to throw in the towel before I gave it a full try. So I thanked my friend for her advice and told her I would keep it in mind if things didn't work out after a couple more months (and hundreds more dollars spent).

Fast forward two months. I was lying on my back on the hardwood floor in my sister's condo, after eating a smoothie bowl (after nothing else all day). Something didn't sit well and the pain was excruciating. It felt like a metal band was ratcheting tighter and tighter around my intestines. I was moaning. My sister saw me, and freaked out. She was at a loss for what to do. She didn't know if it was dire enough to take me to the hospital. This wasn't the first time she witnessed an extreme reaction from my body in those past months, but this sight broke a fuse for her. She told me the worry I caused from having so many unpredictable physical reactions made it harder to live with me.

I cried myself to sleep that night, heartbroken. For the first time in my life, I felt suicidal. What made life worth living anymore? I wondered. I never knew when food was going to catalyze into immense stomach pain for me. I already had to deal with severe restlessness on a daily basis. Adding horrible stomach pain to the mix felt like adding salt to the wound. Now I knew my medical issues negatively impacted other people as well. Luckily, my sister and I went on a long walk the next day where we talked about everything we had previously been shoving under the rug. The air was cleared between me and my sister but did not get resolved between me and my body. I had become scared of food.

I lost a lot of weight. I dropped from 135 pounds to 105. After the first 10 pounds shed I wasn't trying to get any skinnier. But, like clockwork, every week I was losing more pounds. And with the loss in weight came a loss in mental capacity-it became harder and harder to function at work. I had to fight to keep my eyes open sometimes! I could barely eat but was still exercising regularly due to having extreme physical restlessness (in the form of Restless Leg Syndrome). Thus, I was draining more energy but not refueling it properly. When the weather grew colder, I felt like the wind chill passed directly through my skin to my bones. I was always shivering because I no longer had an insulating layer of body fat.

Without that body fat though, I received more compliments on my body than ever before! Here's the kicker though. I was extremely malnourished. At my yearly physical, I had blood tests done and was so dangerously low on important minerals and sodium that my PCP required me to immediately start coming in weekly for direct vitamin injections. She relayed that I needed to up my sodium levels significantly and rapidly to avoid deadly Hyponatremia.

I had been drinking tons of fluids every day. Yogi professionals and wellness websites that I followed encouraged the community to drink a lot of water and tea, the more the better. So I did. I upped it even more to compensate for the lack of food. According to my doctor, all the liquids drowned out (essential) sodium. I was shocked. It was the first time I'd ever heard of consequences from drinking water or herbal tea!

She told me to drink significantly less water, and hydrate with electrolytes or coconut water/vegetable stock. Coconut water is expensive, so I traded my water bottle for individually portioned vegetable broth cartons. Luckily, my sodium levels improved enough in those first following weeks that I didn't need to be retained in the hospital. But it was enough to knock the sense in me I needed to be a little more discerning of homeopathic suggestions.

I terminated my treatment with the dietician shortly after, and got on a waiting list for a well-acclaimed MGH gastroenterologist that my PCP recommended. I waited almost a year to have this appointment just for him to tell me it wasn't my body that was the problem. It was my mind. A colonoscopy and other tests he administered all came back negative. He inferred, however, that my body was receiving food like a brick wall rather than a soft pillow due to incorrect signals from the brain. This was why small amounts of food could disturb me so much. He suggested Cognitive Behavior Therapy to correct my dysmorphia and prescribed me Duloxetine, an Antidepressant that also can correct nerve functioning.

I fought the conclusion at first (it had to be a physical problem not a mental one) and didn’t end up going to therapy (despite or maybe because I was a therapist at the time), but it led me to start introducing more and more food back into my life in small increments. It was the opposite of intermittent fasting and the FODMAPS diet. I ate lots of small amounts of food throughout the day, the more variety the better. Eventually, I gained more weight back, and maintained a healthy BMI. I wasn't overeating, I wasn't undereating. I was just living life. I got my strength back, and my sense of self.

Is there a part of me that wants to look the way I did before, when I was receiving all those compliments? Absolutely. But at what cost? I'd rather be thicker, happier and healthier than follow restricting diets, too scared to gain a single pound. And when I say healthier, I don't mean the wellness definition. I mean the medical one.

Now, I eat breakfast every day. If I skip anything, it's the late night eating. But of course, I indulge when I want to because that's living. Balance, freedom, flexibility. When good food comes my way, I am not afraid to eat it, or look like a girl who seriously enjoys food. Because I do, unapologetically.

I'm a mindful eater now, not a naive follower of societal trends. And when my body is telling me something is wrong, I listen.

I hope my experience can help others learn to do the same, and not get sucked onto bandwagons or misled by shiny solutions. All that glitters is not gold. And good health cannot be judged at a glance. It is not one size fits all. I know this now. And I am still learning. I invite you to learn with me.

Then

Now