Unrealistic; Beauty in the eye of the beholder

I love a good story. It doesn’t matter if it’s from a book, coming from a person, or from the internet, I enjoy stories. Think about it. You can learn a lot from stories. You can learn about the person by how they are telling the story and what detail they give, and you can learn from the story. I’m going to tell you one of my stories. Maybe you’ll understand a little more about me.

You need to have a little bit of a background or else some of the story will come out of nowhere: Like I said in my first blog, I come from a blended family. We went through a pretty traumatic and devastating time in 2006 when I started my freshmen year of high school. I was 14 years old at the time, I was in a weights class for softball. I felt a little chunky, so I started losing weight the end of my freshmen year to feel better about myself and get in shape for softball. With everything going on in my life, I started using food and weight loss as something I could control since everything else in my family had crumbled in one point in time. I lost weight, people noticed, and I got obsessive about working out and food (part of my personality), but not enough for people outside my family to notice.

I went off to college at ASU. I majored in kinesiology and minored in psychology, worked on a thesis project while in Barrett the Honors College. My junior year of college, I started running and racing in 10Ks, ran a half marathon, but I started not feeling myself my senior year. I went to an endocrinologist because my family has a history of autoimmune diseases (type 1 diabetes, thyroid issues). While I was figuring out my thyroid, I applied to physical therapy school and got in my first time applying. I graduated May 2014 and hopped on a plane to Miami, FL 5 days after graduating to start PT school at the University of Miami. Leaving Arizona, my family thought I had the endocrinology issues under control despite a doctor I was seeing being completely wrong about my TSH levels. If you can’t tell already, I’m a type A personality and my enneagram (for all of you who follow) 1, 2, and 7 (the reformer, the helper, the enthusiast). I put stress on myself, a bit of a perfectionists, I like to be busy, I care too much, I’m generous, I’m a people pleaser, and my good is never good enough. I can always do better in school, be a better person, and work harder. This is important because it comes into play later.

I moved 1,200 miles away from my parents for grad school with girls I didn’t know. This was my first time living out of state in an area I had only visited once. Summer semester of grad school started late May 2014. By the end of the summer, I had gained 50 lbs (and continued to gain. I would gain a total of 100 lbs in 6 months), had not changed my workout routine, and it was getting hard to focus at school and stay awake. I would come home from Friday anatomy lab, sleep 12 hours, get up to study for 6 hours and then sleep another 12 hours. I did very little socializing during that time because all I could manage was studying and sleeping. I still miraculously earned good grades but it was hard, so hard. Information wasn’t making sense in lecture, I was in a fog, I was tired all the time, and my muscles started to hurt so bad it felt like they were being ripped off of the bone whenever I would bike to class.

I knew something was severely wrong, so I talked to a few professors in my program and they got me into a few good endocrinologists in the Miami area. Every single doctor said the same thing, “Your TSH levels are within range. I don’t know where these symptoms are coming from but try eating less and working out more to lose the weight”. I was devastated. School was getting hard, I couldn’t run anymore because I was so tired and my body ached. On top of that, all the doctors thought my problem was overeating when I was the queen of self-control. Getting out of bed was a battle and no one was taking a 22-year-old girl living far away from home seriously.

I talked to my mom every day in grad school and would clue her in to a little bit about what was going on but I was getting depressed from the massive weight gain and the every day struggle. I didn’t want her to worry but I finally told her how bad it was getting. I will never forget this conversation. It was one of the most vulnerable conversations I have ever had in the lowest of my lows. I was facing west, watching the sun set over Pinecrest, FL telling my mom that if we didn’t figure this out during winter break (2015) that they (mom and dad) needed to fly to Miami and pack me up and take me home. I got to the point that I was willing to give up the education I worked so hard for in order to figure out what was going on with my body.

Winter break 2015 was horrible. My parents watched me barely leave the couch, turn down Christmas parties, and sleep more than I have ever slept. I think it broke my mom’s heart. We found a naturopathic doctor in Gilbert, Arizona that my aunt had gone to. He listened, had me fill out this massive questionnaire on all my symptoms and said he could help. I had to take a bunch of tests but a few weeks later he figured out what was going on. My cortisol was too high and it was shutting down my body and my thyroid. Cortisol is a stress hormone, so my body was in a constant flight or fight mode. My body started to store fat because of the wear and tear I had put it through in high school and college; two-a-day work outs in a caloric deficit. Plus, I was stressing about grades, work, and class. Insurance doesn’t reimburse for this cortisol test so that was the reason why no one in Miami had caught it. I also learned I had Hashimoto’s. My body had attacked my thyroid and that is why I kept feeling worse and worse, my TSH levels were always yo-yoing. My TSH level was never consistent but since it was within a certain limit, the endocrinologists I had consulted with never thought it was an issue.

I got on a plane back to Miami after Christmas 2015. I still felt crappy but I felt better emotionally. I had plan from the doctor I saw in Gilbert, I had hope I was going to get better, and someone finally listened to me. I graduated from PT school in May 2017 feeling more myself and healing. In 2018, a new doctor I started going to discovered my thyroid doesn’t break down T4 (a thyroid hormone) into T3 (another thyroid hormone). My body doesn’t respond to Synthroid or Levothyroxine which are the major drugs you get prescribed when you have hypothyroidism. I was switched to Nature Thyroid and then Armour thyroid which has helped me immensely.

This is what I learned about what I went through during that time.

1. You need a community wherever you live. You need people that truly care about you. I had people along the way who saved me, helped me, and made sure I was going to get better. Sarah Rose, who will forever be my best friend, went with me to I don’t know how many appointments and made sure I got out of my room on the weekend. Her friendship was unwavering and still is to this day. I also had a small group from the church I was attending praying for me and making sure I was fed and loved.
2. Sometimes you got to let things go. The little things in life, are most of the time not worth stressing over. I had run my body into the ground from all the stress I was carrying. All that stress was over things I couldn’t control.
3. I will never have control over anything and that is okay. I learned to be flexible, to ride with the highs and lows. If you think you have control of your life, you most certainly do not. Life is not for you to control anyway. There are seasons to life, nothing will remain constant. Guess what, it’s going to be okay when life gets messy and you’ll get through it!
4.  It’s good to be vulnerable. I had a very dysfunctional set of ideals. I had to always be fine for my mom because she went through some trauma years ago. I thought I had to put on the front of “I overcame, I’m successful, I’m not damaged, look how well you parented me, and look at all that I achieved despite my circumstances”. My mom never put that on me, I did. It’s more than okay to be “broken”. Being vulnerable in my weakness helped me find strength and courage in a source that will never fail me.
5. There is something to say about the power and healing of prayer. Prayer goes a long way. I prayed so much during that year of my life and continue to. Prayer changed my heart. God did a lot of work on my heart, mind, and spirit during that time. I cried a lot too, which was needed. I mourned too. I mourned what thought I used to be and what I used to be able to do during that time of my life. I am now more thankful and more grateful for my body, my abilities. I don’t take myself for granted anymore.
6.  I AM MORE THAN MY WEIGHT. I will say it again. My worth is not how my body looks. I’d like to think I was above that in college since I wasn’t shallow or judgmental towards others. I truly loved my friends and was kind to everyone. Yet, I was so mean and judgmental when it came to myself. I was BRUTAL. My self-talk was harsh. I had to live up to this idea of what I thought I needed to look like, which destroyed me. Friends, I destroyed myself literally from the inside out because I believed beauty was 120 lbs or less. God created me beautifully in his image and I tried to make myself into my own vision of pretty. I learned my lesson, my worth is not based on my looks, my weight, my height, my hair length. My worth is in being a child of God and becoming who he divinely created me to be.

      Maybe your struggle and battle isn’t like mine. Maybe your struggle is confidence, maybe it’s fear or self-doubt or selfishness or pride or anxiety or depression. Maybe you believe the lies that someone once told you about who you are. Before you go and put your self down or talk to yourself negatively, I hope you remember how much the world needs you. You were created to be uniquely you. And you my friend, are beautiful, intelligent, and worthy of love.

Shalom,

Rachelle