First picture, I’m standing at 128 lbs and feeling excellent. I hadn’t been lifting consistency but my nutrition was pretty solid.

Second picture, I’m down 11 lbs… Most of which was probably muscle but that’s just an assumption.

This loss was not on purpose. Not even a little bit! It followed a month long battle with a cold, then influenza mixed with a bunch a stress that ended me up in a pretty ugly bout with my hypoglycemia. I haven’t had an episode that bad in over a year. It took days to recover. I could barely move, let alone stand. It took everything I had to drink water or 3 bites of oatmeal. It was terrible.

I felt lifeless. I was scared. I remember waking up my boyfriend telling him it was worse than I thought and I was scared to go to the hospital. We decided I’d get strict and try to fight it, even if that meant him reminding me to drink pedialyte every hour because it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Do you know what being in that kind of physical state does to your mental state? It makes you think you’re the worst person in the world. It convinces you that you’re a burden on those who love you. It convinces you that it’s all your fault and if you weren’t such a terrible person then you wouldn’t have let your body get to this state in the first place. It makes you feel ashamed for something you truly can’t control. you find yourself apologizing for asking for help even though you really need it.

(Side note, I just have to say how freaking grateful I am that this isn’t something I’m having to go through regularly anymore because years ago, it was too common of an occurrence.)

It’s an emotional shit-show. And your sugar is so low and all over the place that you can’t operate normal even if you try.

More than any of those feelings I listed above, I was pissed. I was pissed because I worked so hard to build a body of strength. It took me 2 years to build 18 lbs of muscle… and 4 days to lose 11 of it.

Talk about discouraging, right?!

Right!

Did I have a pity party for myself? Absolutely. But it only lasted for a day. Then I quickly went back to what I know. I went back to the facts I know about my body and everything I’ve learned over the past 3 years of learning how to be my healthiest self.

And I started. Ensure and breakfast sandwiches were on the menu because they were the only things that didn’t make me want to throw up at that point. So it was a good place to start.

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m back to feeling good again. I’m no longer in a constant state of nausea and weakness all the time. It hits me occasionally now but I’d say maybe twice a week at most, which took me YEARS to accomplish when I first started all of this so that’s a massive win.

And I’m back in the gym lifting. Not where I was, but honestly not far from it. Now the second picture was this week, I’ve gained 5 lbs back and even though I feel a lot skinnier and am not happy about it, I’d say I’m still holding a lot of muscle and I’m pretty fucking proud of that.

Lesson here; we all have set backs. But it’s what you do when the setback happens that truly matters most.