Apple or Pear Shape?

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Body shape and weight is a big thing in my family. Well I suppose it takes the form of small not big, my aunt has anorexia and has had it for as long as I can remember and my mother always hangs around the underweight mark as she must be in control of what she eats. I am the big one, well I know I am not “big”, just the biggest in my family unless you count our very fat cats. I am not overweight and my bmi has always been in the healthy mark but I could do with loosing a few pounds, well slightly more than a few pounds.

When things started getting really difficult I practically stopped moving and spent a lot of time resting in bed, I lost a lot of weight, well it was enough for people to ask me of I had lost some weight. I tried three different antidepressants and although I feared putting on weight as it is reported so frequently my weight stayed the same but I still had the hollow cheek look. I was never hungry and just ate when food was put in front of me, it was a formality and not something I wanted to do. Then I ended up in hospital, the combination of awful food and wanting to remain in control of something meant I severly restricted my food intake and would argue with nurses most days about meals. I remember coming home on leave and just flopping into bed and not moving, eating or talking before going back to the ward. Patients on the ward always want to know what exciting thing you have done on leave and what new things you have brought in with you, I shrugged my shoulders went into my room and cried because I had wasted my leave. I took very little leave after this. When I was discharged olanzapine and mirtazapine were added to the cocktail of medication and I started to pile on the pounds. Trips into town in my PJs to buy sausage rolls and packets of crisps, journeys downstairs to raid the fridge, phone calls to various people begging them to deliver certain types of foods.

My friends would giggle as I would tell them of waking up at stupid o’clock and tucking into a piece of cold lasagne and a bar of chocolate. And would look slightly shocked if they were ever invited into my bedroom to meet the carpet covered in takeaway wrappers. I am surprised that I did not get colonies of mice like Chouette has.

Then after three months of weight freefall (wait that sounds like weight was dropping off me, it was doing the opposite) I climbed onto the scales and got such a shock I had put on almost two stone. I thought about what I had been eating and it was exactly as crazymedsdescribed it, “You will literally eat sugar straight out of the bag to satisfy your cravings for sweets and carbohydrates,” and that was me in one.  Then came the exercise and the food watching. This is where I am now, I have lost one stone and have one more to go. I have never had to diet before, in act I have been the type to need to eat a little more when I was young. My knowledge on how to loose weight is very sketchy, exercise more and eat less but apart from that I am just making it up as I go along. I believe that this side of mental illness is under reported and I know many people struggle with loosing too much weight or putting on too much yet there is so little information about.

 Last line…

Any good low calorie yummy food out there? I mean the filling type. I am starting to get very bored of soup and fruit and endless glasses of water. Answers on a postcard or in the usual form.

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Tags: bipolar, depression, diet, fat, Health, hospital, manic depression, medication, mental health, weight loss