What starving looks like.

I get it, really I do, when people say, "you don't look like your starving to me." You see, that's the cruelest joke of all. I know you've all seen the images of the starving kids in Africa with their bellies distended. Starvation goes so much deeper than being tiny. I was tiny for a while. But your body goes into a mode where your metabolism halts, and it holds on to everything down to the smallest lifesaver. It continues to cannibalize your bones and muscles and turns them into fuel and fat. That is why starvation diets never really work. Well, in my case, being on complete IV nutrition after years of starvation and dehydration was a recipie for extreme weight gain. The doctors didn't care about my weight because they were focused on my blood work and if I had extra weight on me it would be beneficial in the event that the TPN shut down my liver which it was prone to do. So your body processes all the fats and sugars pumped directly into your heart differently. My body already held on to everything but this was much more. So I got larger than my top pregnancy weight and I didn't even get to enjoy what was making me fat. I spent a good 6 months after my healing simply regaining energy to do simple things. Though I have lost 35 pounds I have a long way to go. I tell you all of this to say, don't judge someone by the way they may look. Medication and illness can do strange things to the body.