Packing on lbs! Help!

I am a recovering drug user and I have gained about 20lbs this summer.  I am 5'5' and usually about 130lbs, plummeted to 120lbs, and at this point in my recovery (about 2 months in), I am a whooping 144lbs and gaining more everyday.  I have never had problems with weight until now, and I really don't know what to do.  I exercise everyday and eat about 1500 calories.  I am considering taking diet pills to curb my appetite in the same way that cocaine has done for me in the past.  I am growing desperate, and my self-esteem is suffering.  I am excited about going home, going back to college, and being healthy but how am I supposed to reintroduce myself to the world when I can't even look at myself in the mirror?  Does anybody have similar stories?  I'm feeling very alone right now, and very frustrated.  Everybody says this is normal, but I have never been this big.

Diet pills are drugs too.  And they don't offer long term solutions.  In some cases, they may even really harm your body as well.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but could you maybe not be eating enough?  I usually eat 1500 calories a day and I don't exercise all that much.  (I'm 5'3 and ~130 pounds).

Congrats on the two months and best of luck to you.

Hi there--first, congrats on the two month mark. That's a big accomplishment! Agree with previous poster on NOT going for those diet pills.

I'm an alcoholic with  27 years clean--and a recovering FOOD addict now. I also have family members who got clean with one substance and replaced it with another ( like you, my hubby was addicted to coke, ten years clean now but also replacing the coke with food).

Eat right, set a goal to get to the BMI and weight that's healthy ( lots of tools here for that!)--and please, please consider this: many active coke addicts are notoriously underweight--while having a skewed body image that everything's right where it ought to be.

When the cloud lifts and your head's clear, you look in the mirror and shriek-- but this likely is what healthy set-point weight looks like.

You made a decision two months ago to look at the world with clear eyes; please, next time you look in the mirror, don't beat yourself up for being ten pounds heavier; look yourself in the eyes and congratulate yourself on that brand-new you inside.

If you're "in the rooms" ( NA, hopefully?) you may also want to consider steering yourself to an OA meeting. They're really not just for overeaters; anyone with body image issues can listen to someone else's story and go from there.

 

Hope this helps???

your body will balance it self back out, it has been in a chemical induced starvation mode for awhile. let it catch up, don't be down on yourself for the weight gain, be proud for the more important issue of being clean YEAH!!!!!!!!!! for you . it is super hard. i am a former drug user ( clean now for 11 yrs.) and a former smoker( smoke free now a year and a half) each time i put on weight. but after my body gets over the shock it starts to drop... proud of you take one day at a time and pat yourself on the back

Hi there, finleyan! Congrats on getting clean - it is a HARD thing to do.

I, too, have suffered the same problem as you. Cocaine maintained my 85 lb (yikes) figure for several years. After I stopped doing coke, I gained 20 lbs just from eating food and sleeping again. Several years later, age and additional income (eating out all the time, not living on student rations) handed me another 15 lbs. While 120 lbs might not seem like a lot to some ppl, it was still a 35 POUND WEIGHT GAIN to me. Where did it all come from? Why was there so much of me???

All I can say is that it takes time for your body to get used to metabolizing on its own again, and that after a long period of amphetamine use, we have no idea what eating normal might mean. Just keep on eating healthy and exercising, your metabolism WILL get stable, but it will take a while. Best of luck, babe.

Thank you for your story.  I was worried if I posted a blog of this nature, I would get some negative responses but everybody, mostly you, has made me look at it from a different angle.  Its hard to go from being the tiny one to discovering rolls...I have been using food to cope with cravings and sometimes even boredom.  I can recall when the right mixture of chemicals caused me not to eat for a strait week.  No wonder my body is holding on to everything it can...