Bloaty spider woman

Weight and thyroid. The two go together like.....something that doesn't go together. Egg and rhubarb. Finally I have a diseases that means I can, in all honesty, blame my weight on my glands. Because we all know hypothyroidism makes you fat.

Except, freakishly, I seem to be an exception. I am 5ft3. Before this charming illness, i was always around 9 and an half stone. About right, a bit fleshy but in good places. A size ten. Sometimes i'd lose half a stone and be a size eight, but i've always been big boobed and so i've always looked better with a bum to balance it. I ate what I wanted, drank a lot and stayed about the same. then I started the up down phase of Hashimoto's, where i'd plunge in weight to about 8 stone, then go up to ten in a matter of months. Finally, whilst pregnant, i put on near 5 stone and was left being 11 stone after labour. I sat there until I was diagnosed and put on thyroxine. Since then, it's been a steady decline in weight, despite eating for England (i'm still breastfeeding at ten months. I love the 500 extra calories a day.) Now i'm 9 stone 4.

Or 9 stone 10. Or 9 stone 1. Or 9 stone 7. Bugger, i don't know. i can vary in weight by 7 lbs in a single day. How can this be? Answer: hypothyroidism is shite. Retaining water is de rigeur. Gassy bloating is the order of the day. Constipation (and i'm talking pounds of poo backed up) is a fact of life.

My body is odd. I have the thinnest arms and legs i have ever had, yet my middle is bloated and weird, so I look like one of those horrid spider harvestman thingies. I ripple as you poke me somedays. I won't mention my boobs, as working objects they are fine but objects of beauty they are not, but I guess that's childbearing (and oh yes, Miss Jovanich, your charming comments about surgery after breastfeeding realy cheered up every woman who can't afford it, ta). I don't know what to do to reduce this problem. (the bloating, not the boobs, i'm stuck with them). I don't drink tea or coffee, I don't smoke, I don't do too much bread, although i have to do some. Every mum of a young baby will know, unless you eat toast you just don't get lunch some days. I drink water, I eat fibre. Short of subsisuting entirely on bran I couldn't eat much more roughage.

I thought i'd be happy once I got to my normal weight. I just wasn't expecting to do it with a weird looking body.