My Current Health Status

I filled out a questionnaire on the Kaiser website which was helpful in putting my health into proper order concerning my strengths and weaknesses. It gave me an overall lifestyle score of 85 out of 100, which puts me in a pretty good place to start with because most women/girls my age (under the age of 29) score at least 70.

I am very healthy as far as cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc goes and I do not have any specific diseases or major health problems.
My biggest concerns right now are my eating and exercising habits. As you might notice, those two greatly affect my weight and energy levels, which I consider to be my biggest weaknesses.

I weigh approximately 180 pounds and am 5 ft 4 1/2 inches tall. The appropriate weight for someone my age and height should be somewhere between 111 - 149 lbs, and (this is my favorite clause) it should be easy for you to maintain. I like that point because I'm sick of hearing people tell me that I should weigh 120 pounds because, damn it, that's a good way to develop an eating disorder.

I try not to think about health in terms of weight. I like the way that I look now and would like the way that I looked whether I weighed 50 pounds or 500. Would it be nice to wear a smaller pant size? sure, but let's face it, there is always going to be a "smaller" pant size. seriously.
I was in Walmart the other day and there were pants of different sizes, one of which read "size 1, average" and others that read "size 1, petite." The petite, I understand, but if your legs are long enough to be considered average or tall, maybe you should see a doctor because you just might have an eating disorder or another serious illness.

Okay, off of that tangent. I do not get the proper amount of exercise or nutrition. I do get a lot of low-intensity exercise which is just from walking around malls and campus, etc. And I also get a lot of moderate-intensity exercise simply because I work at a library. (yeah, that's right. We don't just sit on our butts all day. ^_^)
But I don't get, well, any high-intensity exercise what-so-ever. Reasons? Too busy, too shy, too tired... pretty much every excuse in the book. My plan/goal is to set up my Dance Dance Revolution games and play them for a half hour every day.

Hopefully, the added more-intense exercise will help boost my metabolism, which is one of my main issues with being unable to lose weight. If my metabolism was working properly, I would have no problem losing weight based on the massive amounts of low/regular intensity exercise that I do.
I believe that the reason that my metabolism is so low (and the reason I gained weight when I did) is because of a period in high school where I did not eat properly. Not so much purposely, but more because I was too busy, too shy, too tired to care or take the time to truly consider proper nutrition.

There were various things going on in my life that I don't think anyone should really have to deal with, but we all inevitably do. Death, crazy friends (one of which had an eating-disorder, which didn't help me understand that I wasn't eating properly), stressful schoolwork and extracurricular activities etc etc etc. I am lucky enough to have a wonderful family and boyfriend who don't monkey around, so I never actually escalated to the point of developing an eating disorder, but my eating habits were as such:
Eat cereal for breakfast if you have time, eat a granola bar for lunch because the school lunch is nutritious but also filled with unnecessary fat and who wants to deal with the hassle of the lunch line anyway? and who has time to pack a proper lunch? oh good, my friend's not eating much lunch either, so I mustn't be crazy, drone on through school and band practice or NHS, etc and get home around five or so, then eat a normal dinner, but then again, that hurts your stomach because now it's going crazy with food finally entering it.

K, so I weighed about 188 pounds at the beginning of high school, went down to about 175 lbs safely and naturally just with the added exercise of marching band, but then jumped down to 150 lbs by the middle of my junior year and couldn't lose anymore because my metabolism shut off and said, "whoa, this idiot doesn't eat as many nutrients as she should, so we better save as much as we can when she does eat."

And right around that time was when I realized that my energy level was almost nothing and that I wasn't eating right. So I started eating those school lunches, and if I forgot money or didn't like the menu, my boyfriend would just give me his packed lunch and eat something else. And I felt soooo much better.
Except that I gained 25 pounds by the end of my senior year because my body was still storing whatever it could get its hands on rather than burning it.

That's actually a trap that a lot of women fall into. They want to lose weight, so they don't eat as much as they should, they lose weight, and then stop losing weight and just get stuck short of their goal.

Anyway, I have since gained a little bit more weight the past two years at college mostly due to not eating as healthy as I could and not exercising to get my metabolism back in shape.

I also developed some strange allergies in high school. I am allergic to most raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I am hoping that I will not discover that I am still allergic to them when they are cooked because I still have a lot of experimenting to do in order to make sure that I am not eating anything that will ruin my digestive system or make my throat close up.

But it is hard for me to talk to doctors about "losing weight" because that is what they always say. "you need to lose weight." not "you need to work on balancing your nutrition and exercise." because they don't care! As my mom says, you're just a number to some of them. They don't know you. They don't know that you don't eat right and exercise. They don't know if you've had trouble eating properly in the past. They just know that you're fat. oh excuse me. "obese."

And then there are so many other people who obsess over losing weight. They tell you to eat less or to exercise a lot. and the reason is always "so that you look good, or so that you can wear a smaller pant size."

Well, the point of this blog is for me to let everyone know that I don't give a damn about any of that. I just want to be healthy. And I want my family to be healthy too. I don't care if I fall into an "average" category, and I don't care if I gain 20 pounds! I don't want a six pack. I don't want to wear a size 5. I just want to exercise 30 minutes a day doing something I love, take my vitamins, and balance out my food groups the best I can.

Okay, hopefully that is my last massive rant, but I decided that would be the best way for me to give a little intro into who I am and what my current health status is.

I'll also be discussing later on my stress levels and how I would like to deal with them, but that will fall under posts just dealing with my life and my job, etc. so... stay tuned.