Welcome Back... to me!

My brother Kevin and his girlfriend Briawna. My mom is in the background.

My mom and Sam together in Utah.

My sister Kim, her husband Michael, and their son Sebastian.

Grandpa Lee with Alex and Sam.

Hi there. It's not cool to start a blog then never write in it, eh? I'm back now. I actually was out of town for a good part of that absence. Brian had to one on one of his three-week Singapore trips for work so we took a two-week vacation to Utah to see my family. No, they're not LDS, everyone always asks me that. It's just me. And no, I'm not from Utah. Interesting, isn't it? No, we're from Arizona. My mom, brother, and one sister moved there after I grew up and was married. My father and my other sister still live in Arizona. Above is a picture of my boys getting a ride in their grandpa's semi truck tracker.

I'll give you a few pics here, but for all of them, you'll have to wait for Brian to upload them all to our picture website. Brian's still getting over the jet lag, which takes at least a good week when you're on the opposite side of the world. His days and nights were completely reversed, so, naturally, that takes a while to switch back. He's taking us all with him too, it's like a whole family of people that don't respect when the sun rises or goes down. We're working on it, it'll switch back in a week. Thank goodness it's summer break from school right now.

About two months ago, I began a new chapter in my search for complete health, as archived at this link: www.blueginger.org/search.html. I've been in a 3 year search to find out why my weight fluctuates so extremely and rapidly, what the causes are. After three years, I determined that dietary and exercise changes do not affect my size by even one pound. Most don't believe me, but I ate VERY well, and exercised VERY long and hard. Between Spring and Summer of 2003, I began running and power walking a lot. I was doing 21 miles a week, while pushing a double stroller. And I gained lots of weight. I didn't change my diet at all. I gained 40 pounds in 3 months. I thought about it for about 6 months, then, scared to death of gaining more weight, I figured it had to be the running. Since I also gained a lot of weight when I ran at age 18. I know it doesn't make sense. But I did the best I could with what I had: experiences that didn't add up.

Brian and I realized two months ago that the change was more likely caused by the fact that in that three month time Sam stopped breastfeeding. I am a hormonally funny person. I have never, never ovulated on my own, without some chemical or medicine aiding in the process. It took Clomid and a miscarriage to change my chemistry enough to get pregnant with Alex. Then, while still breastfeeding Alex (i.e. still having excess progesterone in my body from the pregnancy and breastfeeding) I got pregnant with Sam. We intentionally tried to not get pregnant for Sam's first two or three years, because two boys, and one being Sam, was a lot of work. I don't regret this, it is the right decision. Anyway, we realized the weight gain was due to the chemical change after I stopped breastfeeding. My wonderful levels of progesterone were gone. :-( Brian and I realized that no dietary and exercise improvements would do any good until I fixed the hormones. I began seeing a bio-identical hormone replacement doctor, who is giving my human-identical lab created progesterone, adrenal hormone, and thyroid hormone. It will take several months to completely normalize the hormones. But I'm highly relieved that I've done all I can do.

Then, on the morning of the day Brian was leaving for Singapore, June 2nd, I was pondering these things, still wondering what I could do to help the process, and what the patterns were, and I realized, through inspiration from above, that no weight fluctuation in my life has ever been caused by diet or exercise. This was very important to know, because I had determined that various patterns of diet helped or hurt my size, so I needed to know if that was true or if it was more like Superstition, because the changes to diet and size just happened to occur simultaneously. Some of my size changes, well, most of them, I had been able to attribute to hormone changes: age 13, hitting puberty and gaining 20 pounds; age 17 being in love with Matt, losing weight; age 18, breaking up with Matt, gaining like 20 pounds; age 19, ---mysterious weight loss---, supposed to be attributed to the joy of going to college back in Arizona and being out of BYU, but not sure; age 20, being in love with Brian, engaged, weight loss; age 21, took birth control pills, instantaneous loss of weight, which also just as quickly came back on after cessasation of pills age 22(this was the big clue that hormone supplementation was vital to reaching my ideal weight); age 24, took clomid to get pregnant, pregnancy with Adia was hormonally incorrect, gained 15 pounds in two months, miscarried. Never lost weight, got pregnant with Al two months later, just gained weight from there, was given supplemental progesterone to hold the pregnancy. After pregnancy, while breastfeeding, lost 40 pounds in two months, kept it off. Was still breastfeeding and therefore at same size when got pregnant with Sam, age 27. Maintained size until Spring/Summer age 29 when I stopped breastfeeding anyone for the first time since Al was born. Ever since then I've spent every waking moment trying to figure it out. I know it's not me. I'm not lazy, I don't eat badly, this is not how my actions show that I should look. I was still afraid to exercise much for fear that it caused the recent and most extreme weight gain.

The point of this entire back history, is to tell you that the morning of June 2nd, I realized that the final weight change was indeed hormonal. The age 19 most wonderful weight drop was indeed hormonal. I had forgotten that the whole 6 months I was living in Utah to go to BYU, age 18, from late June to late December 1992, I was taking prescribed (higher) levels of progesterone cyclically. After six months of that, upon returning to Arizona between semesters, the change began to hit, and I lost a lot of weight by the time March came around. That then made it so that every single weight change was created by hormone changes and not by my actions regarding diet and exercise. The Spirit confirmed that this was true. In fact, I had a blessing later that day from Brian, since he was about to get on a plane, and the blessing confirmed it was true as well. Amazing!!!!! A person tries to be healthy for 30 years, and it was all in vain!

Anyway, I'm already on the supplemental hormones, so, that morning I realized it was then safe for me to begin exercising as I wished. I've always been a walker/hiker/jogger, so I look forward to it again. I didn't start that week, with Brian gone, I just took the week off, then in Utah there wasn't much opportunity. Then, I came home and slept and rested for 3 days, so, Tuesday, yesterday, I began again. Using the treadmill in my room, I think this time I'll do a mile a day. In all previous tries, I would do 3 miles 2-3 times a week. But this time I want to do less more often, like 1 mile 5 days a week. I'm also still playing tennis with Brian two nights a week. It may not help my weight and size, it probably won't, in fact, until the hormones kick in in the next 6-9 months, but at least I'll feel stronger and more energetic, and more like me. :-)

Just wanted to share that with you. :-)

Also, and old friend sent me an article the other day about how people with Asperger's Syndrome don't want to be healed. I wanted to let you know that it's true. I realized about a month ago, that if I were to run into Jesus walking the streets as he did when he lived here, and if I were like that woman who was able to reach up and touch his robe and be healed, that I would only (though wholeheartedly) ask to be healed of my hormonal imbalances, I would not ask for him to take the autism away. It's part of me, I like it. I would ask him to leave it. :-)

I'm thinking of adding the contents of the book I'm writing to my website. I'm sure you'll find out soon enough if I decide to go ahead with that.

In Utah, I was exposed to cable tv. We haven't had cable tv in the 6 years since we moved into this house. There were many good reasons for that, but I think they might be gone now. I would love, especially in the summer break, to show my kids the things my mom was learning on the history and discovery channels. And with a DVR, which didn't use to be an option, we can watch just what we want to, not having to filter through whatever's on. So, we're getting full cable next week, should be fun. Not that we'll watch tv more, just that when we do watch, it'll be better things to watch. :-)

Have fun. I'll catch up with you later.

Brooke