Twenty Pounds

I did something in the final months of 2016 that I haven't ever been able to do (without medical intervention).

I lost twenty pounds.

Did I discover a miracle diet? Maybe. I'm following the Pro Club's Lifestyles 20/20 diet (I bought the book from a second-hand bookseller), and it's a good one. But I don't think that's the whole answer.

I think I'm finally losing weight for two reasons: I've gotten a mouth guard for my sleep apnea, and I've been taking probiotics for ten years.

I should back up a little.

I’m a life-long dieter. At first, diets worked, sort of. And then I'd gain it all back. And more. The problem wasn't willpower or an inability to love myself or any of those things you read about in women's magazines. I took my food diaries to doctors, exercised so energetically that I injured my Achilles tendon, tried taking weight loss drugs. Nothing worked.

And none of the weight loss advice made any sense to me. As a child, I was underweight. My pediatrician patiently explained to my mother, a war refugee, that four-year-olds didn't eat the same quantities as adults. She gave me less food, and I was still a picky eater, but my diet included whole milk, real butter, lots of meat, gravy, and potatoes, and regular desserts. I ate high-fat and high-sugar foods and was the skinniest kid on the block.

When puberty hit, and my body gained the geography of womanhood, angry red stretch marks split across my thighs, my breasts, and my bottom, and  I was sure I was fat. I was taller than most of my friends and wore larger clothes than they did. I had to be fat. I started watching my weight, as they say, drinking diet soda and eating iceberg lettuce with salmon, dressed with straight vinegar. As an adult, eating lots of fresh veggies and yogurt and avoiding fat in all its forms, I ballooned up to well over two-hundred pounds.

Was it pregnancy? I had a hard time losing weight after my first child, despite pushing her stroller mile after mile after mile. I lost some weight nursing the second, but once nursing stopped, the weight returned.

Weight loss drugs worked, but after two years, my doctor declined to continue the prescription, and the weight returned with a vengeance.

I concluded that there must be more to the standard equation of CALORIES IN - EXERCISE = WEIGHT. I didn't know what it was, but I felt certain there was something.

I learned of one possibility a few years ago, when I read a NY Times article about gut bacteria and obesity, with its suggestion that gut bacteria could contribute to excessive weight. Although I was and still am totally willing to swallow a capsule filled with the fecal bacteria of a skinny person, availability is a long way off. I was already taking twice-daily probiotics for my irritable bowel syndrome, and hoped it would be enough to change the chemistry in my stomach. (I tried kombucha and found it disgusting. I adore sauerkraut, but it's hard on my stomach.) As I read more articles on the subject, I realized that I began to gain weight in my twenties, the same decade in which I took antibiotics on several occasions. Could those antibiotics have changed the microbes in my belly sufficiently to have caused thirty years of weight gain?? I don't know for certain, but until I have proof to the contrary, I'm continuing with the probiotics.

The second possibility is a more recent phenomenon. My husband had begun complaining that my snoring kept him awake. During those wakeful hours, he also noticed that I stopped breathing. I greeted this helpful information with ridicule. HE was the one who snored and stopped breathing. He was the one keeping ME awake! At the time, I was serving on the Board of our State PTA and had occasion to share hotel rooms from time to time with other board members. They confirmed my husband's accusations concerns, and encouraged me to have a sleep study done.

So I did.

The study found that I stopped breathing fifteen times each night.

Once I got the mouth guard that promised to help me sleep at night, I sat at my computer to research the connections between sleep apnea and my litany of annoying conditions.  I typed, "sleep apnea and migraine." They are linked. One article even suggested that migraines are simply a side effect of sleep apnea. In any case, if you have migraines, I urge you to ask your doctor about sleep apnea.  Second search: "sleep apnea and depression." Bingo. The CDC says that sleep apnea is associated with depression. Next I checked for a connection with asthma. Yup. Obesity? Of course. And IBS? Yes, there's even a connection with IBS. Could this goofy mouth guard really help me with all those conditions?

So far, I think it has. I need to have another sleep study done, to verify whether the mouth guard keeps me breathing all night, but I am waking up more readily these days and feeling generally much better.

And losing weight. Twenty pounds, in fact.