#bc it’s so seldomly brought up as a possibility unless you’re struggling with infertility

[clingylilhoneybee]

Hey yall, I just wanted to pop in here and try to utilize my platform to bring awareness to a few things while I talk about taking a break on posting personal content of my body.

TLDR: I’m taking a break on posting new content for a currently undetermined amount of time due to a recent diagnosis of PCOS and my body adjusting as i have started to begin treatment

If you’ve been around a while, y’all know that I went through a restrictive eating disorder as a teenager and struggled to recover in an environment where I was seen as “starting to get bigger” at the time of buying a size 4 dress for a school dress. That period of recovery then coincided with starting college, leaving that family environment and a number of other things that led to me gaining a significant amount of weight, but ultimately translated to me being at a healthy weight for myself.

However, despite multiple lifestyle changes (in directions that would logically lead to more or less weight gain), I continued to gain in the realm of 10-15 pounds a year during every year of adulthood, in a way that I described as “making total sense until it didn’t”. This went on at the same time as my periods being out of whack, which I originally attributed to birth control, and chronic fatigue that I could always find an excuse for, especially as someone who was a student in higher education until these last two years.

It wasn’t until about a year ago that I became aware that a notable amount of women in my family had PCOS, and that nearly all the bigger women in my family were not just “lazy and can’t stick to a diet” like I was led to believe my whole life. Thus started the journey of the last few months for me.

After stopping hormonal birth control and ruling that out as an explanation for my symptoms about 2 years ago, I’ve been working with my doctor and recently settled on a PCOS diagnosis. During my bloodwork, I was found to have significant insulin resistance, which is likely responsible for my body gaining such a notable about of weight. Because of this diagnosis and the bloodwork, I was started on medication to manage my symptoms, which also has the side effect of weight loss. During the last 2ish months, I’ve seen a total change in my symptoms. Regular periods, massive increase in energy levels, and also a notable weight change.

As someone who has spent years working through body neutrality and separating weight from moral value, it’s been fuckin hard. I’ve had to work through emotions of my weight gain being the result of illness, and the grief of fatphobia in my family being a direct cause of me not being diagnosed earlier. It’s so hard to reconcile that my weight loss is good, not because I’m smaller but because it’s treating a symptom of a chronic condition I didn’t even knew I had. There’s also many PCOS spaces that emphasize the moral value of weight loss and spend a lot of time shitting on their bodies before treatment, and tend to focus solely on how their treatment has changed their size, and not much else. On top of that, there’s some level of guilt in being on one of the “skinny meds” (and possibly being on the oh so popular glp-1 meds in the near future) feeling like a betrayal to the body positivity movement I’ve found community in, and a “cheating” method of weight loss to the broader society who treats weight loss as a discipline based skill. Add on the comments from SO many people about my body changing and it’s been hard to work through all the emotions and settle into a point where I’m comfortable with my body.

This has also led to me being even stronger in my boundaries around my size being fetishized. While I was always uncomfortable as someone in recovery, and as someone who never wants my attractiveness linked to my size, it’s also been so frustrating and emotional to see a body that has come from neglect and unnecessary struggle being fetishized for the physical manifestation of that struggle.

So overall I’ve only posted 2 new posts since I’ve started this medication, with only one actually showing a significant amount of my body (any others have been old, reposted content). I’ve always promised myself to never post what I am uncomfortable with, just to keep up popularity and get positive attention so I fully expect this trend to keep up as I become more comfortable with the way that my body is changing. I know that’s what many of you follow me for, and I figured I’d give an explanation that includes bringing awareness to a chronically under-diagnosed condition and giving a place for me to talk through the struggles in my journey so far

I hope yall stick around while this blog is primarily reblogs for the foreseeable future, but if not please take this as your awareness post for PCOS, which, even with a massive lack of information in the medical community leading to crazy amounts of under-diagnosis, is estimated to affect as many as 1 in 5 people with ovaries