The Importance of Dental Care

Last Tuesday I was eating lunch at work.

Thrilling, right?

While eating my chicken, a small piece of bone had gone unnoticed and was not very happy about that, so with a vengeance fit for a bloodthirsty army, it sneak attacked one of my molars, shooting pain into my cheek and up into the rest of my face. Or simply put, I bit into it... Ow. Needless to say me being me, I cried and cried but tried to work through it. About an hour or two later I still could not stop so I asked my boss for the number to our insurance, but she didn't have it so I got the number to HR.

After an hour on the phone with them and the dentist I got the okay to leave early and headed to my emergency appointment. Turns out I had a very very bad cavity that needed a root canal and the molar behind it was indeed cracked. Both need crowns. $1800 plus later, I have had my root canal and crown extension (did I mention it was a really bad cavity?) but I have to have temporary crowns, stitches, an antibiotic, two different pain medications, and a special mouthwash to use for three weeks while I heal before I get the actual crowns.

Now I take good care of my teeth. I brush twice a day, use mouthwash, and occasionally floss. I say I occasionally because my molars are so close together I break glide floss between them. Dentists have suggested braces to fix the spacing. My point is, you can take great care of your teeth but still have to get major dental work done. Cavities and teeth issues not only affect your smile, but it affects your weight and health as well. I work normal business hours which is when the dentist is open, and being a contracted employee, time off is a joke, but I have learned a few things from this:
1. Make the time. As someone who can't, I'm finding that it's better to do whatever you can to get your ass down there than not. Because ow. Having the dentist drill into your jaw so they can put a piece of fake tooth in your mouth so the actual crown has something to sit on... Yeah. Not fun. It freaking hurts even with anesthetic
2. Sometimes it isn't your fault. Genetics can play a big role, as does things like breathing through your mouth. Just do what you can in terms of prevention
3. You will never realize the emotional attachment you have to your teeth until they are reduced to tiny nubs in your mouth
4. Sitting in the dentist's office waiting, they had these nifty screens that were very informative. Bad teeth can lead/attribute to weight gain or loss, heart disease, diabetes, and a number of other medical conditions
5. I really really miss working out. I have to wait to heal before I can go to the gym again. It's been a week and I am so bored and feel so gross. My limited diet as set by the dentist of soft foods is not helping. So many foods I want to eat, like zucchini and carrots, are not soft

So if you don't want your weight loss and weight maintenance, or even your wallet, thrown out of whack, GO TO THE DENTIST!

Food sucks

The foods I eat have a bigger impact on me than I thought.

Obviously they make me fat. I have been reading a lot about how PCOS and the foods I eat affect my body. And maybe this is related to that, but that is not what I am talking about.

This week I wouldn't say I've fallen off the wagon, I still have been going to the gym and playing kickball, I still have been counting calories, but I have been allowing myself more junk this week.

And I hate myself.


I'm not talking about hating myself for allowing myself to do so. I have still stayed relatively close if not under my calorie range- except today. I mean I physically feel terrible. Sick. I feel this genuine sense of self loathing. I feel no hope, I've been short tempered, I feel alone, that nothing and no one loves me. My cat would rather spend her time with my sister. I feel as though I am a bum. I'm unbelievable broke, I'm this failure who can't even afford to get a car, I still haven't finished school, the only men who seem to want me are men old enough to be my grandfather (this is not an exaggeration, a man at work who was that old asked me on a date)...

In other words I am miserably depressed this week. All because of the food I ate. And I'm realizing as delicious as a lot of this food is, it's not worth it. I know that being in your twenties is hard. It's a confusing time globally, I am so lucky for what I do have, I will get out of debt, and maybe it's not in the time frame I want, but I will get a car and I pray my friends will tolerate me in the meantime. Boys my age do want me, I just have to be patient. I am amazed at what a night and day difference it has been from this food.


Never again. The splurges aren't worth the hurt.

But I stick by statement about my cat. She really does prefer my sister

Weigh in 1/15

Welp. My first weigh in since my initial. To be honest few things scare me more than a scale, though I bet most people share these feelings with me. Unlike the lottery, I don't want these numbers to go up. Up means I am doing something wrong.

I've spent the last week tracking calories and trying to stick around the goals my app has set for me.

Current Goals-
For a sedentary lifestyle, working out 1-2 times a week:

-1900 calories a day
- 67 g (or less) of fat
-300 mg of cholesterol
-2500 mg sodium
-3500 mg potassium
-278 g carbs
-23 g fiber
-41 g sugar
With...
55% of daily intake being carbs
30% fat
And 15% protein

Not sure what the daily recommended values are normally, and obviously there is also the daily intake of necessary vitamins, but overall it's fairly easy, or has been, to meet these goals or be really close.

My app doesn't set exercise goals other than one to two times a week. Last week I went to the gym three days, played kickball, and danced my little heart out at the 2Tone Lizard Kings show.

While weighing myself today at the gym, as it is the official scale I will be checking my weight on, I weighed a grand total of....

Drum roll please....

246.6 lbs, bringing my current weight loss to 3.4 lbs!

I know every week won't be like this, it wouldn't be healthy, but it was so encouraging to see the numbers go down, and that's with allowing myself little cheats.

Weight loss for me has never been easy....

I used to think I was fat. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw this blob of a girl with wide hips, a round face, and calves that must be made of lard. What else could it be, muscle from running in soccer? Surely not. I was reminded constantly by my brother, by my parents of how I needed to lose weight, how pretty I would be if I lost a few pounds. Looking back on it, I wouldn't say that is what started my self image issues, but it was probably the biggest contributor. 


My stepmom used to joke that when I was in elementary school she could always find me in a crowd because the other kids didn't even come up to my shoulders. As a high school freshman, I finally stopped growing. At 5'10, I weighed 180 pounds, which for my big German frame, wasn't actually that bad. The BMI says it's still a bit big, and I had a hint of a stomach, but nothing terrible. I was convinced that I was the fattest girl that ever lived, a whale, a dump truck, and looking at my older sisters who had these tiny frames with long, elegant limbs, I told myself that if I lost weight I could be just like them. I began to wear baggy clothes to hide what I was convinced was my beer gut, or since I had never had a drink of alcohol, root beer.

Yup. So fat...


That began my yo-yo dieting. I was fourteen. For a while I tried Atkins with my sisters and my stepmom. It lasted about two weeks. And the various diets started coming through a revolving door. None stayed for long and another was there just as fast to take its predecessor's place.


When I was fifteen, right before Christmas in 2004, I was on my way to Barnes and Noble to get a friend a secret santa gift when I was hit and run over by a school bus. I thought I was going to die. I blacked out as he came towards me, and I awoke to his front right tire on top of my lower back and legs. I screamed with as much breath as I could muster. I was convinced I was going to die, that he was going to continue to drive. To my relief he stopped, and I carefully rolled myself over. A man, the driver maybe though I never found out, came and held my head as I cried underneath that monster, it's pipes and engine emitting angry heat over my body, as if to say, tempt me. I'll do it again. The paramedics came, stripped my clothes and began to poke me with IVs as they strapped me to a board. I was air evac'ed to the hospital where doctors put me through all manner of tests and machines to make absolutely sure nothing was broken and I wasn't paralyzed. I was in and out of the hospital within seven or eight hours, no bones were broken, though I did end up injuring my shoulder a bit and have scrapes on my knees, legs, and lower back. My weight gain skyrocketed. I had severe depression and several symptoms of what now could be recognized as PTSD. In case you're curious, the diagnosis criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder according to the DSM-IV includes the following symptoms I exhibited:


-The person has experienced...or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself....


-The person's response involved intense fear,helplessness, or horror.


-Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions
-Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event


-Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma


-Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma (I to this day do not remember him hitting me, though I know he did. My memory blacks out as soon I began to see him turn)


-Sense of foreshortened future (though I wanted an eventual college education, family, future, I never saw it. I never expected to live long enough. The universe wanted me dead and I was counting down the days until that happened)


-Difficulty concentrating
-Irritability or outbursts of anger (though I'm sure my parents might fight me on this one, I have always been a very emotional person, but I personally noticed it getting worse after the occurrence) 


And it is considered chronic if duration of symptoms is three months or more


I began to eat more than I ever had and my physical activity lessened. My bed was my new best friend.


In February of 2005, just two months after the event, the church youth group was doing a weekend retreat up north. I was so petrified of the charter buses, just being near them, their enormous tires threatening to mow over me at any second, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I was completely and utterly paralyzed. I had my first panic attack and as I wept, my father yelled, demanded I get on the bus, and "get over it already." Still I couldn't move, and I was determined to stay in that parking lot if it killed me. I would not and could not get on that bus with the other kids. Luckily, I ended up having extremely understanding leaders who were taking a truck up, and offered to have me to ride with them. At that moment though, I knew my  parents were a source of comfort I would never have, and I began to shut them out. I felt they were completely insensitive to what I was going through and I needed to find some other outlet. A cookie wouldn't judge me, it doesn't care whether or not my breathe stops every time I hear a siren, or have nightmares of being hit, it's just there to taste good and fill my belly. It and all its friends.

I was eventually put on antidepressants as a "fix" that didn't do much of anything except add to my weight. The shrink they took me to tried to focus on other abuses that had happened to me when I was younger, but never truly focused on what was right there. The stress and anxiety of being a middle child, of being number five of ten, and the insecurities of the middle child "syndrome." She never wanted to focus on the teasing I suffered through or get to the root of anything but those abuses, and frankly it made me uncomfortable. I eventually stopped seeing her and my parents pulled me off the drugs cold turkey, which if you know anything about antidepressants, is not a good idea. In fact, it can be fairly dangerous.


Between the yo-yo dieting, anti-depressants, increasing lack of social interaction, depression, anxiety, failing grades, teenage hormones, and teasing, by the time I reached senior year I had gained a staggering 45 pounds. I was miserable. I had gone from a size 10-12 (I have hips remember) to a size 16-18. Nothing I did, no diet, no attempt at self control worked.


In June 2007 I moved to Flagstaff. No longer did siblings tease me about my weight, I wasn't judged for my fear of school buses (I gradually got better with charter and city, but school to this day frighten me), I walked and biked to work and around town. I had a sister/roommate who was respectful of me and my space, would laugh with me, watch What Not to Wear with me when we would come home from class for lunch. She expected me to better myself but was never pushy and the amazing thing was, I wanted to. I wanted to be someone she could be proud of, I still do. Her opinion of me mattered more than anyone else's, and despite working at IHOP sometimes seven days in a row, eating there almost daily, I lost weight. From June to December I lost a good 20-30 pounds. 

The one thing my sister couldn't do was replace my friends. I hadn't made many in Flagstaff and the ones I did make were.... interesting to put it politely. So I packed my things and moved back to Gilbert.


And I gained weight.


When I was 21, I was officially diagnosed with PCOS, though my family physician had always suspected it. My gyno didn't tell me much other than, hey, you have cysts on your ovaries, good luck with that. It explained my periods, which would and can get so bad I get cold sweats, puke, and sometimes become so weak I can barely pick up my head. I just took her word for what it was and like that I just said okay and continued on.

That is until my oldest sister became pregnant in 2011 and broke the news that she too had PCOS. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and I began to look into what exactly PCOS is and what it does to your body. I came to find it's not as simple as cysts, which are actually just a side effect of the disorder. It's an endocrine disorder, and without careful monitoring, gives you more of a chance of developing diabetes and heart disease than most people, even if you are doing everything you should. It can cause infertility, and it causes cravings for carbs and sugars higher than that of a normal person because your body has such a hard time digesting them. It also can make it extremely hard to lose weight. Of all the material I have read on the subject, if a patient or their testimonial is mentioned, without fail there will be a woman who has done everything she can, diet, exercise, and still cannot shed the pounds. Doctors will nods their heads and say "Sure you are, whatever you say. But seriously, diet and exercise" because it is so misunderstood and they don't take the time to research and educate themselves on just how bad this is.


Now it's 2013, and I weigh a whopping 250 pounds. My cravings for breads specifically, and sugars, are constant. Drinking tea helps me a bit, but only temporarily. I understand the cravings now. I understand what I have to do. With the purchase of my very first smart phone I've added a food journal app and I've been diligent about adding entries daily. I haven't started my lifestyle change cold turkey- I know better. I allow myself small indulgences, but I try not to get carried away. I've begun working out more, I've met with a personal trainer who wants to help me. Call me a sucker, but the compassion she has for me, how genuine she is, I feel it's more than just wanting another sale, she really means to help me in any way she can. Kickball now consumes my Thursday nights.


My motivation, what keeps me on track, what makes this time different, is health. It's wanting to look in the mirror and know that my beauty is something I am always proud of, not just when I have a cute outfit on. It's wanting to climb Kilimanjaro with my best friend. It's wanting to climb the stairs to my apartment and not feel winded if I happen to go to fast. It's wanting to be able to keep up with my future kids, should I be lucky enough to have them. It's having the physical strength to punch a guy out should he ever try to take advantage of me again, instead of laying there in fear.

My motivation is me. Being skinny isn't important, if I wanted that I just wouldn't eat. What is important is not developing diabetes, not developing heart disease in my twenties (which is the biggest killer of women- bigger than even breast cancer), so I have started this blog to help motivate me, to motivate others, to let them know no matter what happened in your past, it doesn't have to be your future. I know this will be a struggle, this will be something I will struggle with the rest of my life, I'm not just going to lose the weight and have it be over. While I am overwhelmed and frankly a bit scared by the thought, I'm also okay with it. My metabolism isn't the fastest but I will work to improve it, make the best of it, and not let it hold me back.

~Kate