Til it Wasn’t Healthy

I’ve always loved healthy things to an unhealthy level. 

Don’t you dare tell me what’s possible with my body.

At first, I believed that everyone else was always right. I believed I knew nothing about how to take care of myself. I brought every minor ache and pain to the attention of my parents as a kid. My mom was a nurse, and I trusted her to tell me what was wrong and to make me feel better. Later, I trusted only in recorded workouts or classes to learn how to exercise. Magazines and food programs were my main source of diet and health advice.But when I finally left home for college, I found that I didn’t like the input of others so much; it was always negative. I started thinking to myself, “I can do better than what you think.”

You’ll gain the “Freshman 15” in college. So I didn’t. I lost 15 pounds in that first year. 

When I became a teacher, they told me that weight gain was inevitable. Stress eating and birthday cupcakes would be a daily occurrence. “You’ll have a fat stomach like the rest of us,” my coworkers told me. So I lost another 5 pounds. 

I got married. “Ah! Happily married weight will come! You’ll finally get comfortable with each other and get chubby together.” I refused. I dropped another 10 pounds. 

After a few years being married, people started to nudge me to have kids with yet more advice about how I’d finally gain the weight (that they so clearly had wanted me to find) when I faced pregnancy. But something was wrong. My periods had stopped. It was then that I started to second guess my confidence I found in college. I turned back to my mom. I turned back to magazines. Everyone said I must be pregnant, but when I thought back to it, I hadn’t had a period in over a year. So I went back to the doctor:

“You’ll never be able to have kids.”

That’s what they said. And I almost believed them. I’m so glad that I thought to myself one last time, “No, don’t you dare tell me what’s possible with my body.” 

Since, I’ve had my fertility recovered for over two years and I’m happy to be helping other women who fought the odds to continue fighting for what they’re body can do.