Are you my guru?

by

I have a big ole raging girlcrush on Wendy.  Her writing voice, her snarkasm, the fact she’s fellow tribemember, that she totally believes, as I do, WE are the experts of our own bodies.

Lottsa lottsa girlcrushLOVEage.

Please to enjoy.

When was promoting my book “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life” a few years ago, I was very proud of my fat. It had taken me years to get to a place where I felt good about my body: a fat body, but a healthy body.

I exercised, ate nutritious food, and turned off the nonstop, nasty inner monologue telling me that I was a bad person because I wasn’t thin enough. I weighed around 220 and felt stable and strong. The problem was that not all my fat was fat fat. Some of it was sick fat.

You see, a couple months before the book came out, I became extremely sick with a rare vascular autoimmune disease called Wegener’s granulomatosis.

I was put daily oral chemotherapy and huge doses of steroids to reduce inflammation in my blood vessels that was cutting off blood supply to my organs.

The irony was that the internal inflammation may have been relieved, but externally I was blowing up like a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. On steroids, you retain fluids and your body swells in places where you usually don’t carry fat cells (giving you a hump on the back of your neck, a swollen middle body, and the charmingly titled “moon face.”).

I was clocking in at around 260 pounds. Plus, my hair was falling out, my skin was shredding…not a good time to be promoting a book.  Still, I went on TV and did interviews and smiled and said, “Yes, I think I’m beautiful!” even though the “beautiful” had a giant mental asterisks next to it.

I didn’t want anyone to know I was sick. The message was you could be overweight and healthy. Problem was I wasn’t healthy (even though the weight was not the issue), and forty extra pounds over the overweight was due to drugs.

With help from doctors and healers, I finally got the Wegener’s under control. My hair started growing back in. I had enough energy to start a little bit of exercise.

Five minutes on a treadmill at 2.0 mph was a very, very good day.

The weight started coming off. And off. And off. The forty pounds of marshmallow fluff disappears in less than a couple months. But the pounds keep going. My eyes turned yellow and I was sick to my stomach. I was getting compliments up the hizzy but FREAKING OUT because I was pretty sure I had liver cancer and now I was dying.

After a series of medical screw-ups I was finally diagnosed with hepatitis C, which we believe I contracted from a medical procedure. I couldn’t treat the hep because of the autoimmune issues, but luckily everything seems to have stabilized.

The Wegener’s is in remission.

I’m down to about 180 pounds. Exercising, eating right, taking my vitamins, doing my meditation and bodywork, living what I consider to be a well-balanced life excludes maximum stress and includes occasional ice cream sundaes.

I wrote a new book, “Are You My Guru? How Medicine, Mediation & Madonna Saved My Life.”

(MizFit note: Wendy’s new book, Are You My Guru?, goes on sale tomorrow. Ive read it. I loved it.)

The only problem is that when I tell people my first book was called “The Fat Girls Guide to Life,” sometimes they look at me quizzically and ask, “Why?”

It’s not like I’m a bone, people. I’m still wearing a size 14/16 on bottom and a size 18 on top.

I may look like a Liz Lemon-style supermodel in Cleveland, but I’m regular old fat in L.A. and New York.   My BMI is just one point off from “obesity.

” I’m still fat; I’m just less fat.

Mostly, I’m grateful that my fat is fat fat again, and not sick fat.

Still, I don’t feel right in this smaller body.

I know it’s easier on my joints to carry less weight. I know that cardiovascularly my body has an easier time at 180 than 220. But just as I did at 220, and attempted and failed to do at 260, I am trying to make peace and find love for my body at 180.

I thank my organs for working so hard to keep me strong under an onslaught of toxic medication, a liver virus, and an autoimmune system charged up to fight for no reason.

The body is different but the lesson is the same: I determine what’s beautiful about me. I decide what number I’m comfortable with (or not) on the scale. I find values other than my weight to determine whether or not I’m healthy. I find strength not just in how much I can lift, but in how much I can handle.

In my new book I searched for a guru to help fix myself when I was broken.

Now I know that in some ways, I am my own guru.

I’m the one with the answers.

Now I’ll just keep doing my best to ask the right questions.

POSTS BY EMAIL

Never miss a post. Enter your email to get my latest posts delivered to your inbox.

Comments

  1. Oh man, my mother was diagnosed with Wegener’s a year and a half ago. By the time the doctors finally started listening to her (rather than saying she just had a sinus infection and a burst blood vessel in her eye) she was seriously ill. At first they thought it was lung cancer, then they finally clicked. They didn’t put her on Prednisone for the first few months, just the chemo. She’s only little (around 5ft 1), but she got down to around 42kg – seriously, scarily skinny. After the steroids she did put weight on, but she had so much to gain to get back to a healthy weight it wasn’t as much of an issue. Now she’s officially in remission and off everything, sitting on around 60kg and complaining that she’s fat. We just think she looks great and are happy she’s well!

    Funnily enough, a few years ago I also became very ill and lost a lot of weight. I felt awful but was very tanned, and everyone thought I looked great. The tan and weightloss and general inability to stay upright were eventually explained by a diagnosis of Addison’s Disease (another autoimmune disorder – I hit the genetic lottery). Once I got put on Hydrocortisone I too put a lot of weight on. Eventually I got the steroids down to a better level and discovered running. I’m now probably the healthiest I’ve been, and as a side effect I also lost that steroid weight. However a year ago I had surgery and got put on another medication known for weight gain. I can’t win!

    Our perceptions of what is healthy are, I have learned, very distorted. I’ve learned that as long as I am doing the best I can by myself then I should be satisfied. My happiness is ultimately more important.

  2. Good on you for finding yourself through all of this. So many times, no matter what weight people are at, they lost who they are. Finding your spirit, validation, energy from things other than the scale…are SO MUCH BETTER than any weight.

  4. I loved this post and will check out her book.
    (See? You are now my reading adviser as well as fitness LOL)
    What she said made me think of what you always say too.

    We are the experts of our own bodies.

    I’ve finally come to realize that as well.

  7. What an amazing story! Your stuggle and success makes you beautiful!

    I understand what you’re saying about not feeling like yourself at your current (lower) weight. I’m at my lowest adult weight right now (which is still overweight) but I can see the bones in my hands now. I reached and turned on the lights early one morning and saw my hand and…well…it just didn’t look like MY hand. My body is changing and I know it’s better for me…but it is VERY strange to not know what I look like under this fat suit.

    Thanks for sharing your journey!

  8. I found this in her words interesting, “Mostly, I’m grateful that my fat is fat fat again, and not sick fat.”

    I’m not sure what point on the scale one can say they are no longer sick fat, but the that word ‘sick’is really hitting a cord with me right now. I guess because I have felt sick for years and just not card why. And the why was all that sick fat I allowed to hang all over me. I’m done being sick and look forward to the day I too can say that I’m grateful that my fat is fat fat again, and not sick fat.

    Happy Labor Day !

  9. I am still on the slow journey of learning to trust I am my own bodily expert.

    Until then I need some gurus 😉
    I am careful to select ones I can trust until I trust myself.

  11. What an amazing story & learned things I have never heard about before! Great respect for you! It shows “it is all relative to the situation”. Thank you for sharing & thx to Carla for bringing you here…

  13. This has me thinking as I was talking gurus with friends yesterday (not so much guru but role model).

    Is this inherently bad I wonder?

    MizFit is my role model but I know I will never be her (she’s her and I am me :)).

    Now I am rethinking and wondering if you and Miz would tell me to be my own role model.

    • yes, ma’am I totally would. For me it’s as I yammer about all the time. I readread magazines and books and blogs and websites and learn as much as I can through continuing education and doctors but, in the end, I know I am the EXPERT on ME.

      xo xo

  14. I was told that I have spondyloarthritis. I also have Vitiligo. I was on Prednisone for the better part of a year for the rash and inflammatory arthritis and fatigue. I’d like to blame the gaining back of all the weight I had lost previous (70 pounds) to the onset of the disease, but if I’m being honest, I can’t.

    I’m not the person I used to be. I can’t do what I used to do, but I’ve come to accept that and learn to work around it. Unfortunately, I have been struggling with a love/hate relationship (more hate) I’ve had all my life with the person in the mirror.

    This post was an inspiration and very enlightening. Thank you for posting it.

  18. What I like most about you, is that you thank your body for being strong and getting well, instead of being mad at it for being sick. As I enter into middle age and menopause, I’m trying to do the same thing, and remembering to tell my size 14 body “good job for being strong, good job for running, good job for waking up!” I can’t wait to read your book.

  19. I’m feeling more and more like the fat I carry now is fat fat, and less sick fat…and the reason I’m still wanting to lose, is so that I can run more without hurting my joints.

  20. Very inspiring. I especially related to your trying to make peace and find love for your body at a lower weight (that is still “over’ by some standards.) Already clicked over and ordered your first book!

  21. I hope you’re having a great Labor Day Miz!!

    You rock as a connector and for bringing us all together to meet new people.

  24. Thanks for sharing the continuing story, Wendy! I loved your first book, “The Fat Girl’s Guide,” and I’m betting that “Are You My Guru?” will be an excellent read, too.

    I really like your distinction between “sick fat” and “fat fat”; there’s a powerful difference, although sometimes if a condition comes on gradually (like in my case with type 2 diabetes), it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the “sick fat” from the “fat fat.”

    And a resounding “yes!” to the lessons learned and about needing to be your own guru. It’s sometimes difficult when the things you know to be true for yourself differ so much from the conventional wisdom.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This