my story. inspiration. inception.

In the Spring of 2003, life took a turn for the difficult. I was playing a Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz in a high school musical and overnight it seemed I gained 20 pounds, I looked like a chipmunk and I had gorgeous white stretch marks to prove it. Where one chocolate chip cookie would have sufficed, I found myself stuffing my face with numerous small homemade cookies (brought in on a daily basis by a friends mother who was cooking for the theater crew) and when I got home from school the frenzy didn't end. Ramen noodles became my afternoon snack addiction, with at least one if not two packages consumed prior to dinner. Before I knew it I was at the tailors having the dress I purchased for my aunts wedding two years earlier being let out up to two sizes for my Junior Prom... I looked like the Feather duster from Beauty & the Beast because they had to add elastic to the top of the dress and put a ruffle in to hide it. What hit home even more so was the fact that my date didn't even dance with me the entire night, in fact I think he only talked to me on the ride there and ride back. How could I blame him though? He probably thought he was going to Junior Prom with the cute, petite girl he remembered from the year prior.

One day while flipping through my Seventeen Magazine, I stumbled across a story about a girl, not unlike myself, who seemed to have all the same symptoms I had. I always knew something was wrong with me more than just common teen problems and an eating disorder which is exactly what my family chalked it up to be. On a daily basis both my brother and father were yelling me, saying I was fat and that I should stop eating. Everything I put in my mouth was a grenade, it only fueled the problems on both the inside and the outside. When I confided in my mother, she thought it was me simply acting like a teenager, being sensitive, moody and crying all the time. I knew even before I read the article that what I was experiencing was completely abnormal. After reading the article I knew I wasn't crazy, I knew the way I felt wasn't just my imagination. After one trip to the ob/gyn diagnosed with a simple blood test, it was confirmed that I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It was frustrating because I presented all the generic symptoms of the disorder to my physician, of course what I hadn't realized is that 1 in 10 women have it and don't even know it. It's in the top 10 of most undiagnosed diseases in the world, second to HIV.

Thanks to a sweetheart talking about hair loss and weight gain in the hallways of my college one day, I was inspired to create a group on Facebook. Not thinking about it for quite sometime, I went back and glanced at it one day and realized it had almost 2,000 women troubled with the same disorder as I did. This inspired me even more to do research and find out as much as I could about it to help them. Today that group that started with just me has grown to almost 6,000 women, thanks in large part to my awesome co-captain Miss Kelli. My original plan was just to find others and learn more about it but over the last two years it's grown into something more. I've been inspired and want to return the favor, but how can inspire when I'm sitting on my butt doing nothing and eating whatever I want... Here, now, I am making this promise to my fellow PCOSers, to the women on my site, I have created this blog to inspire you all. I have so far lost 25 pounds simply by watching what I eat and taking metformin but I am still 20-30lbs overweight. I'm at a breaking point where I either need to get on or accept defeat but for those who know me, you know I don't accept defeat.

The Plan: I am going to keep track of my diet & exercise, post all about it, post about my struggles, what symptomatic nuisance I am dealing with that day and keep you all posted on it. Maybe in some way, with my struggles and hopefully with my triumphant ending to all of this I will inspire you to GET ON instead of giving up. All we do is whine, doctors don't know what to do, so it's in our hands to figure it out. Well here goes nothing...

Day 1:
Weight- 165lbs
Size- 10 to 12
Construction status- planning stages!
Symptoms-Realized I'm most likely Lactose Intolerant, staying away from dairy, starting immediately. Haven't been on Metformin for a couple of months now due to insurance difficulties, etc and after talking to Kelli, realized that my stomach is growing despite my exercise and eating better, coming to the end conclusion that I need to get back on Metformin, STAT!