My Progress After a Long, Restful Break, Irregular Periods, and the Fat Trap

  Happy New Year to you all! I know, I know, I have not written anything in a while. I started a new job this past year opening up a brand new school and believe me it has been a lot of work and quite demanding. Now I am back and totally committed to writing about low-carb, paleo, book reviews and anything related to diet and health. So the good news and the not so good news. As of this morning, I weigh 215.2 pounds.  I am still up 5 pounds  from my lowest weight of 210 pounds, but I am now where near the 272 pounds I weighed over close to 10 years ago. Even with the extreme stress that I have gone through at work and the insanity of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, I can honestly say that eating low-carb/paleo keeps the weight off. Now, the not so good news. I am having a period that is lasting over 2 weeks! I am very worried and scared. For most of my life I have had fibroid tumors that never bothered me much. My periods came like clockwork. Now I am beginning to fear the worst. I am terrified of doctors because  they can give misleading information and my biggest concern is that they will want me to have a hysterectomy. I do not want to get one. I know at this stage of my life I will not have children and do not want any ( I am 41 and will be 42 in April) but my mother had a hysterectomy when she was 33 years old and she was never the same personality wise. I feel that doctors recommend hysterectomy too quickly when there could be other alternatives. My sixth sense is telling me that my body is changing and I am going through perimenopause.If you have had any experience with strange, irregular periods, please let me know. I would like to know how other women have dealt with this issue. I read this really good article from The New York Times Magazine titled The Fat Trap. It gives a good scientific reason why it is difficult to lose weight and keep it off. As a person who has struggled with weight their entire life, I agreed with a lot with what the author says. When I try to “cut back” on the amount of food that I am eating, I will do well for a while, but there are chemicals in my brain that say “eat, eat, eat.” Then I get the terrible growling pains and then I binge. This happened last week when I was coming home from work. It is 6:30 in the evening, I am driving down I-40 through traffic and I was ravenous and so under stress that I got off the exit in Morrisville bought junk food to “calm me down.” I compare my behavior to people who stop at the convenience store at the end of the day and pick up a six-pack or a bottle of wine. After I ate the junk food I was so relaxed and happy and peaceful. But then I questioned myself: Why did you do this, Michelle? This is totally against what you teach and write about. But at that present time, for me to be relaxed and happy I needed to calm down, just like people who get the bottle of wine and the six-pack after a hard day at work. And guess what: I do not drink alcohol. I never really did. So I figured that it was more than will power at play here. There was something going on in my brain. I was trying to relax and feel good and I was doing it through junk food instead of alcohol. That is when I began to read about serotonin. Serotonin is the feel good chemical that is released in your brain when you drink alcohol, take opiate drugs and when you eat carbohydrates. BINGO! I had my answer. So when I was trying release stress, feel happy, calm or relaxed, I would go get chips, candy, ice cream. Then, the question I had is what could increase my serotonin levels naturally so I will not have to turn to these carbohydrates to relax me and therefore sabotage my diet? That is when I found 5-HTP.  I have been taking it for a week and it works. No more binges and no desire to eat foods that are not good for me.