Hi,  

I’m Bianca, 27 yo, overweight and trying to lose it. My whole life I’ve been listening comments about my weight, all the kinds. I’ve heard how my face is pretty, but my body is not; or that a guy didn’t want to assume our relationship because I was too fat; how I was that fat funny girl that everybody likes but nobody fucks. 

At some point of my life I just stopped listening to these things because it really doesn’t matter now. I think I’m strong and mature enough to ignore it. Especially because no matter what you say about your weight, people are going to assume you are too lazy to do something about it. 

But what is that, that I try to explain to people when they ask how did I gain so much weight?  This text might be long, but people still seem to bother about it, so I’ll say how a regular girl got overweight and struggles with that, the answer for the why's.

Ps: I believe that everybody deserves to live and feel comfortable the way it feels better, I decided to lose it, nothing against who embraces the opposite.   

   

When did it start? 

This was the question I heard from a doctor when I was around 21 - she was a endocrinologist, a doctor specialist in hormones and its disorders – she wanted to know when it started to have an idea of what kind of patient I was and what kind of life I had that affected my body that much. My answer was: when mom died. 

She was my age when she died, I was only 6 yo, but my dad felt the need to give me and my brother anything to makes us happier, and that included food. I remember my dad buying us liters and liters of soda, chips, fast food. He was super healthy and in shape, but food made us happy, so why not? By age 10 I was a quite chubby child, my food habits never changed after that, but by age 14 I grew up so tall that I was for the first time thin. I remember gaining some weight few years later, but nothing major.

I’m so Excited, I Just Can’t Hide it 

I am born and raised in Brazil, and in Brazil we have this idea of perfect and sexy body, especially for women, so generally talking, we don’t worth anything if we are not sexy. Then, by age 17 I went to my first endocrinologist doctor, Dr N. We did some tests to check my health and everything was fine. She gave me a meal plan, quite simple and easy to follow. I’m 1.70 cm (about 5’7ft), I was around 74kg (163 pounds) and I managed to lose around 8kg, and that was enough, I was happy, I was feeling normal like any regular girl. 

For two years I didn’t gain much, some extra kilos, but whatever. It didn’t affect me during that time, if you would have asked me if I could lose something, I’ll probably answer 3 or 4kg, and honestly this is nothing.

Oh, Shit! 

When I was 21 life was pretty great, I was doing an internship as copywriter, I had a nice relationship with my - at that time - boyfriend, I was in my third year of Social Communication graduation, enjoying family and friends all the time, looking nice in pictures, going to gigs. That was just too great to complain about and I was so thankful for that. But in March of 2010 I noticed something weird was going on: I was drinking water… way too much. And I was that kind of person who never drinks water. I didn’t use to feel thirsty, and when I would, I’d just drink soda or juice, anything with taste. So drinking water or anything that would kill my thirst started to get so strong day by day, and I also began to go to the toilet more ofter.  I thought something was going wrong with me, so one day I went to a drugstore and asked for a diabetes blood test, the one you take and shows you glucose level in few minutes. 

It was all fine, but the thirst was just getting worse and worse, so I went to a doctor and he simply said: I have no clue what a strong thirst can be, try to avoid salt. And I did try saltless food for days, for weeks, but I was getting not only thirsty, but also weak, mentally confused and gaining weight. Because of the thirst I began to drink around 7, 8 liters of liquid a day, this can sound impossible, but it's hell possible. 

Few months later I decided going to the same doctor my mom went before her death. That doctor knew about her more than I, so maybe I was suffering from something similar. After months and lots of exams we found out I had hypothyroidism: a condition in which the body doesn't produce enough thyroid hormone, and this hormone is the fuel your body needs to run, it's the metabolism hormone. And guess what? It makes you gain weight! That was so great to know, because I could treat, but also shit, because it wasn't the reason of my thirst. The doctor simply said it was psychological. I didn't buy of course, why the hell my body would sabotage me this bad? 

Well, my family started believing that, but I wanted to go to one more doctor. By that time I had suffered with that unbelievable thirst for almost one year, days and days waking up every thirty minutes to go to the toilet and drinking now around 14, 15 liters of liquid a day. I went from 75kg to 100kg in less than one year, my metabolism was improving, but I couldn’t lose anything. My meals were resumed in lemon juice, soda and water, I didn't feel any hunger, there wasn't space for that, just drinks.

I could drink one of this in less than two minutes.

It's Now or Never 

I picked a doctor online, one my insurance would cover, she had great reviews online. I went to the appointment with my aunt because I was so sick I couldn't process questions sometimes. I was depressive and thinking about suicide. I didn't want to die, I wanted the pain and suffering to go away, and not finding a solution and reason for my unknown disease was slowly killing me, not because of my look, but I couldn't sleep and function properly, my relationship was affected - too fat for him - my social life was affected, my grades were affected, my body was stressed and about to crash.

We met the doctor, she looked at me with judgmental eyes and asked me why I was there. I said the reasons, she wrote something down and went straight to my weight and made the question from the beginning: when did it started? Well, I answered and she gave me a fucking hard speech about how I was destroying myself with bad habits. She made me promise that in the day after I'd go to a gym and start to work out. Besides that, she said I would have to spend eight hours without drinking water and measure my pee, because it could be a disease, but she wanted to confirm before, because she taught my cause was just psychological.  AGAIN! Again I heard it was just my mind sabotaging me. So I accepted it! Ok, it's my mind sabotaging me, let's give it last shot, I accepted. I went home crying like a baby, because something I didn't accept was spending 8 hours without water. 

I had to count on my family for the test because it was so hard, every time I'd grab a glass of water someone would take it from me and I was reacting like a drug addicted. Lots of cry and yell. That was so hard! The day before my dad asked me for a favor, to check something for him online, but I didn't remember of course. At the time, my body was so intoxicated that I could stare at you, listen, but not comprehending a word you would say. 

At that stressing day, he came home and asked me about the favor, and I just said I couldn't remember what was that. He yelled at me calling me stupid and lots of other things, that made me crash. It was too much for my mind to handle, I just remember running to the street like if I was trying to escape my life condition. Later I got home and went to under my bed, hiding from life. I don’t know what I did that, but felt appropriate. 

My whole family was there by then trying to convince me to go to a hospital. My aunt was always supportive so I went with her to a hospital and at that moment a doctor immediately hospitalized me. She already knew what I had and she was a cardiologist. At the hospital they said I could ask for one neurologist (Dr. A) and also a endocrinologist, and one of the options for an endocrinologist, was my first one back then when I was 17, Dr. N. At the hospital I could just cry, hide my face under a pillow and roll over the bed. I could feel the anxiety running on my skin, it was so painful.

The Big Day 

In my first day at the hospital, Dr A explained me I had to go through two tests, one MRE which I would have to fast for 4 hours, no food, no water. So I woke up ready for the test, and I waited for the 4 hours, but still going to pee, as if I had drank the whole morning. Later I was told in the next day I would have to fast again, but for 8 hours, and the meanwhile measuring my pee and taking blood test. Yes, the same test the good-review-doctor said I should do at home. And I'm sorry for the doctors out there, but you don't ask such test for a patient do at home without support. Do you wanna know why? 

Going through 4 hours was shit, I can guarantee, but going through 8 hours was the most horrible hours of my life. If this is how a person starving in a desert dies, this might be one of the worse deaths ever. I felt the most horrible panic and pain I could imagine, it hurted so much, like my body was being sucked by a grinder. I thought I was having a heart attack all the time, I couldn’t breathe, I screamed in my room like if I was being tortured, I saw my aunt and dad cry, because it was too much to handle. In my room there was about 6 nurses trying to hold me, at some point they tied my arms in my bed because I could stay still. In the last two hours there was no tears anymore, although I was crying, the nurses had some empathy and asked the doctor if it wasn't enough, but no, it wasn't, so she gave me Dimenidrinato, a common medication used for nausea, but it also makes you sleepy. It helped me in my last hours, so I just remember being waken up for my pee measure and blood test. In total I measured my pee 8 times and had my blood taken 8 times too. 

After this diabolic but great test, which I call Loki - bad but needed – they gave a medicine called Desmopressin, it was a nasal spray. I had to use it, drink some water and wait. I measure myself at the end of the test, and in total I lost 3kg that day, pure water. I peed around 5 liters of water without drinking a single drop of water. The funny thing is that after the water and medication, I wasn't thirsty for the first time in months. It was the best feeling ever.    

The Relief 

In the next day I got the results, which happened to be Diabetes Insipidus. My neurologist said my hypothalamus - located in the brain - is a little bit swollen. Hypothalamus is one of the guys responsible for reproducing your body hormones, those ones will make your body work properly. My wasn't producing two of them, Thyroids, that one earlier I called fuel, the metabolism one and  Vasopressin, the guy who controls the water in your body, responsible to make you hydrated. Why this happened? I don't know, might be a fever, might be the fact I hit my head months earlier, or nothing, simply a surprise of my brain.

Back to my Diabete Insipidus: it's not a regular diabetes, it's a fake one. To be a bit more clear, if you are in a place with access of water, like in a bar drinking for hours, your body will pause Vasopressin of going to your kidneys, so you are going to pee a lot, because it's not nice having excess of liquid in your body; but if you are at home in a really hot day, doing your garden, it will send a lot of vasopressin to your kidneys, because you need to keep hydrated and safe.  In my body, this doesn't happen, because I don't have this hormone anymore, so basically every water I have is going away. That's why I spent almost one year thirsty as fuck and going to pee all the time. My problem was not peeing too much because I was thirsty, but drinking to much because I was nonstop peeing. 

The water intoxication and lack of sleep helped me develop depression, anxiety, panic attack and of course 30kg. Fortunately this experience also brought me a lot of understanding about my body and health, and six years later I can say I overcame these psychological problems after a lot of therapy and medication. Today at age 27, my meds are artificial hormones that make my body works just like before the brain problem. I have any kind of restriction and I can live my life normally.

 I sometimes feel I was one of Dr. House patients, or the Dr. N was my hero. Believing myself was also very important, just like my family support.   

What I also learned is that not everyone is going to comprehend your struggles and real reasons, most are going to ignore them and keep wondering why you are so careless. What I can say is that after all of this, minding what people say won't help you being happy, believing and knowing yourself makes you happy.

Why don’t you lose some weight? 

Basically, I’ve been trying to since ever, not to look nice  and hot, but because I want to be like I was six years ago. I managed to lose 20kg three years ago in the healthiest way possible, and kept in shape for one year. A breakup, a stressing new job, and then moving abroad helped me gain all these weight back, and here I am, trying more than ever get back to my weight before my disease.

I know six years have passed and my body condition is different, but I know I am able to do whatever I want.

For those who keep asking me that, life is not only about looking nice and being in shape, I had to go through hell to learn that. Losing weight is my choice, but being healthy is my desire and I want it to happen more than anything.

In other words, mind your own business.   

Thank you for reading, 

B