My weight loss story this far.

Since some of you won't know me, well, I'm trying to lose weight.
I could type pages about my weight loss struggles, and I'm sure many others could too but I'll probably post little by little as there's so much to go over!

I've always wanted to lose weight and I've done countless diets, it's quite a typical story really. I've lost some, gained more and tried starving myself, grapefruit diets, weight watchers..you name it.
At one stage during high school I managed to lose about thirty pounds and almost get down to goal weight when I started to plateau, this got me frustrated and slowly I started going back to bad choices and the weight slowly crept back on.

Fast forward to early December last year.

I'm a fashion design student, and we were holding our end of year show to display all our work- it was exciting, and nerve wracking but we had all looked forward to it for so long.
Well, the show went extremely well and I had very fond memories about that night.
That was until I saw the photos.
It was one of those moments that many people have experienced, laying your eyes on an image that you thought you actually were going to look decent in and it turns out you really didn't look that flash.
It really affected me. "I'm that big? Really?" I *knew* I was overweight but to see it so starkly was a bit of a wake up call! Sadly, I continued to eat badly until christmas morning, where I found myself sitting on my bed depressed yet again about not finding anything to wear.
Every morning was becoming a bit of a joke, with clothes flung around the room, the empty remains of failed fittings.
So on boxing day I began to change my eating patterns and started to exercise, I even managed to keep up these good habits throughout our vacation! But then fast forward to early february where I was looking forward to seeing my best friend in Auckland, we only get to see each other about once a year as she lives in Australia and so naturally I was very excited!
I arrived in the afternoon and had a great day. I felt good and was just happy to be in her company.
The next morning I woke up at about six in the morning which is very rare for me and I felt extremely ill. I thought it was just what I usually have and this may seem very odd to some people! But sometimes when wake up in the morning I can feel extremely ill.
It may seem quite comedic to some people but it's sometimes referred to as being 'allergic to the morning' where I can have extreme nausea, diarrhea and dizziness unless I sleep in (this is also why I never eat breakfast as it makes me feel alot worse).
So anyway, when I woke up this early I thought it was that and even though I felt terrible I took comfort knowing that it would pass in a few hours.
When the clock hit 10am I thought 'Gee this is carrying on a little longer than usual..' but just tried to relax, but when it was the afternoon and I was still feeling terrible I knew something was wrong.
At first my mind started jumping to all these conclusions.
'Food poisoning probably..no wait! some sort of stomach bug..a virus!' what was odd though was a feeling of extreme pain and pressure all through my upper abdomen but sometimes it seemed to radiate from the upper right.
I went to sleep that night after spending the day on a couch and prayed that it would be gone. "Please Lord, let this thing go away so I can enjoy the little time I can spend with my best friend" The next morning I felt worse..this continued on for another few days before I thought "oh my goodness! it's got to be a gastric bug!" everything seemed to fit into place and I knew that sometimes those can last about ten days.
I was disheartened but happy with my own diagnosis (lol!)and even though I continued to feel awful me and my bestie and her family went to a few great places and had an awesome time.
I felt a bit bitter when the day came to go home and I still felt as awful as ever, but my friend and her family did such an awesome job of looking after me and doing everything they could.
I took the bus back home but it broke down on the way and I got there 3 hours later but then finally I was home! when I got off the bus my Mums face turned to shock.
"Gee you've lost a bit of weight!" that night she still looked concerned and of course I happily agreed to seeing the doctor the next day.
His first diagnosis was 'Cholecystitis' which is rather serious, where usually a gallstone is blocking a bile duct in the gallbladder and you're whole gallbladder can even start to rot inside you if you wait too long to be treated.
I had a fever and all the positive signs of this, even bile turned up in my urine test!but they did some more tests and found it wasn't that.
I was then told maybe it was a passing virus or a gastric bug like I had first thought but when it came to one night where I was so ill that I couldn't sleep, had horrendous pain and kept vomiting all night I was taken to hospital and had more scans that showed up negative and was sent home the next day without an answer.
In short, after being hospitalised twice since then I have found that I have a stomach ulcer. When I was in hospital I was put on morphine quite a bit as the pain was unbearable.
This brings me back to weight loss, since I've been ill my diet has changed quite a bit. But what I should say is it *should have* changed alot more.
Right now there are certain things I can't eat, but I've found I react alot more badly to high fat foods than to sweet things and sadly I've been eating alot of sweet things recently-knowing I won't react to them but thinking I can have my cake and eat it too.
Since this whole sick thing started I've lost about 18 pounds but recently I've started slowly gaining weight back from eating badly so NOW I'm going to nip this thing in the bud and eat healthy, and I'm going to try and make this change for life.
It's going to be difficult and I have alot of other things going on in my life at the moment, like getting behind on class work because there are alot of days I can't make it. I usually feel the most ill in the morning and so I make it to class when I can.
But anyway, here goes. Here's to good health! and congratulations to those who just read all of that. Lol.

Sammy xx