Before and Almost After

            I was in the Annual St. Isaac Women's Guild Fashion Show today.

People have been commenting lately about how much weight I have lost, and they want to know what I am doing to be losing it.



   

Truth be known, I had gone off the Effexor I was on for 10+ years.  This medicine not only made me gain 100+ pounds, but sent my thyroid into a tizzy, made my good cholesterol plummet, blood pressure to increase, along with a gammot of other side effects.  After 3 years of being on the medicine I refused to gain any more weight.  I tweaked my eating habits (hard to give up some of the foods you love!), started to exercise more, and over the next 5 years worked up to a very regimented exercise routine of 5-6 days a week about an hour each day.  Still being on the Effexor, I would muster a weight loss of 5-10 pounds a year.  How frustrating.  Then I had to get serious about really monitoring my eating habits.  Even so, still only managed about 5-10 pounds a year.



        Vacation 2006.  This was not the heaviest I was, but close enough.



          This was taken at Michael's Dreamer and Doer Award in 2007. 



                              This picture was taken December 2008.

Now, fast forward to December 2011 when I was completely weaned off the medicine.  I have lost 55 pounds in a year and a half.  Nothing has changed as far as the tweaked eating habits and exercise routine.  The only difference is I am no longer on Effexor!  The panic attacks have returned, although not as frequent or severe, and I have scoured the internet finding many helpful websites to redirect my internal dialogue/thought process to snap out of them. 

I have found a gynecologist who found I had way too much Estrogen, and hardly any Progesterone which is being corrected, along with a genetic test that found I was lacking an enzyme that allows for proper metabolizing of B6.  We're working on that also.  As a matter of fact, she found so many different deficiencies within my system, that she is addressing them all, and little by little, day by day, I am feeling almost as good as I did on the Effexor without all the side effects.



Now, I only have about 20 more pounds to go to my goal weight!
For that I am grateful. :)