Crunchy Perimenopause, part 4: losing weight, looking great (hear me out here)

TW: weight loss, weight gain, dieting, food addiction, exercise & injury, weight loss medication, medical trauma & grief processing.

Disclaimer - this blog is un-monetized, and I have not been paid to feature any of the products I have linked here. I just really like them and actually use them myself.

This whole blogging my life experience thing is making me very introspective, which means I'm making connections as to why x and y happened the way they did...

And I realized over the past couple of days that I managed to lose 50+ lbs over the past year, at 43 years old (remember, we stop producing collagen at 40), and with the exception of a little bit in my inner thighs, I don't have loose skin.

Update: I officially have a crepe-y FUPA! My GI issues keep me bloated enough to mask it, turns out. This doesn't surprise me, though, this is the area I've used for decades to gauge my size fluctuations, as it gave me a slight "apron belly." It's still very minor crepe-ing for the fat that area held, and I absolutely stand by everything I'm saying here.

The whole rotten hip joint thing doesn't make me want to model for an updated picture (though it might happen tonight for Christmas, watch this space), but allow me to paint a picture with words on the progression of my hips...

I have to take it all the way back to puberty, when I was eating the Seventh-Day Adventist diet, which is heavy in unfermented soy, dairy, eggs, and nuts... I happen to be allergic to all of those things. Which caused me some whack-a-doodle puberty hormones that earned me the "spare tire," an estrogenic fat distribution from FUPA to hip to upper buttocks, as well as a 38K cup. From my teen years to my late 30's, my hips were around 52", with a 38" waist. I've always had a very dramatic hourglass shape. Nothing I did touched this. I have been a year-round daily walker, I'd put in miles every day, it never touched my hips.

In 2018, two things happened with my health - I was given the go-ahead to take The Pill continuously to skip my periods, and I added 30 minutes of daily strength training to my regular walks. The extra estrogen and the extra muscle let me lose a lot of the fat, 29" total worth of it, but I never lost my hips. Nearly 100 weighted squats every day does give you a whole lot of muscle bulk, I looked great from the back. But, I still had what everyone called "shelf hips."

All that exercise came to a screeching halt with my first spine surgery in 2021. And I didn't change my diet, because I went from eating to sustain calories to eating to sustain stress and grief... the classic injured athlete's story. And this time, my blood pressure just started getting crazy high, like hypertensive crisis 24/7. Because Meloxicam, the gold standard in anti-inflammatories, can raise your blood pressure, my hypertension lost me my prescription, in October 2023... the worst month of the year for inflammation. It led me to eliminating common inflammatories from my diet, which worked so well it got me an allergist and formal allergy testing for the first time in my life at 41 years old.

I also lost 30lbs very easily on the elimination diet, but when I was told I could add gluten and potatoes back in, the stress and grief eating kicked in again right about the time perimenopause did, and I put the 30lbs right back on, with another 20 for kicks. And for the first time in my life, it was the dreaded abdominal fat. So, I went to my doctor for help. Fun fact, Wegovy isn't just cleared to treat diabetes and obesity, it's also cleared to treat high blood pressure caused by either of those conditions as a comorbidity. Which meant that I got one of the earliest prescriptions in November 2024.

I worked my way up to the maintenance dose. That single dose was what shut my digestive system down completely. I was throwing up food I had eaten 18 hours before. It took about 3 days for it to kick on again, and my large intestine never got there. This was after only losing 5lbs in 3 months.

I noped out real hard after that, so my PCP sent me over to their office's PharmD to discuss other options... and I landed on Contrave. It works on the food addiction aspect - for me, it hands the "I'm hungry" button back to my body and its caloric and nutritional needs, and not my dopamine and it's desires.

Between that halving my meal portions and eliminating my snacking, and not eating the foods I'm allergic to (and taking it easy on the bread and potatoes), I've not just dropped the 50lbs, I've dropped the shelf hips. I have 43" hips right now, and they're still shrinking. When I was strength training, they were around 45" at their smallest. This past January, they were 53".

Yes, I do look like I had a BBL removed 😅😅

Okay, you're all caught up now, let's actually get down to the subject of the post.

You may or may not remember when collagen was "the" skincare ingredient of 2024. The "glass skin" look is achieved with collagen masks, it's in every viral serum and moisturizer, hell, it's even in my Kojic acid soap bar. And you may or may not remember the stats on collagen, about how we start to decrease our natural production around 20, and how we basically stop producing it at all at 40.

As someone who had their first joint operation at 39, this was not a comforting fact.

So, I started putting collagen peptides in my coffee every morning. As well as taking 1000mg of Vitamin C, mostly because the VitronC I take for my iron doesn't quite have enough Vitamin C to prevent the gut issues, but I definitely noticed that the collagen is working a lot more effectively, too. Like, growing my hair at a rate of 2" a month effectively.

And you know I'm hydrated. Water and daily electrolytes play a huge role in my health in general, skin included.

So, every single day of my weight loss, I started my day (still do, of course), by drinking 24 oz of water with a double shot of electrolytes (Benefiber got added in after I got a pelvic floor therapist in the late summer), as I brew my coffee and add 4 teaspoons of collagen peptides powder to it along with my barista-style oat milk. I also take my prescriptions (with my first meal) and supplements (with my second meal) with 24oz of water and a shot of electrolytes, so that's nine cups of water with electrolytes guaranteed every day. I've also added one more glass with Benefiber around 7pm, for my gut health.

I do have some serious stretch marks on my hips, but after 30 years of putting my skin through all of that? I expect scars. I'm covered in scars. Scars and tattoos. Life happens.

But, my 43 year old skin is juicy enough that it's springing right back into shape with this regimen. A surgeon wouldn't have enough of my skin to lift, on my face or anywhere (but my giant tits, and that little bit at the inside of my thighs). Not to be catty, but there are certain celebrities half my age that can't say that...

So, my recommendation to my fellow Over 40 crowd - if you're looking at a significant weight loss, no matter how you do it, make sure you boost your collagen and hydration throughout the process. You will thank me later.

By the way, this round of weight loss has given me the literal proportions of a Barbie doll if she were sized up to human correctly. I am that tall, my legs are that long, and my boobs actually lost all their density but gained a cup size.

Me rn:

lmk if you know the artist, it wasn't listed where I found the image (Pinterest, of course).