Once upon a time, I was happy with my weight. I felt and looked fit. Strong. Slender. I wore size 6 jeans which were roomy in the thighs, and secretly gloated when my overweight friends said they envied how much I was able to eat without gaining weight.

Then I hit 35, and all the horrible things I’d heard about mid-30s metabolic changes came true. I went to bed one night weighing 120 and woke up the next morning with my thighs, stomach and ass threatening to burst the seams of my nightie. Ok, maybe it wasn’t overnight, but it sure felt like it. My body betrayed me. I’ve hated it ever since.

In the two ensuing years, I’ve gained and lost (and gained and lost) the same twelve pounds. I’ve tried – and failed at – Pritkin, Atkins, the Zone and their hybrids. I swallowed rivers of green tea after learning that it boosts metabolism. I carried measuring cups in my purse to ensure that my portions at restaurants weren’t over-sized. When that failed, I tried surviving on Slim-Fast shakes and Healthy Choice meals. (Their slogan really should be: “Half the calories and none of the taste.”) Once, I went on a carrot juice diet but had to abandon it when my skin and eyes started turning a curious shade of orange due to the excess beta carotene. Nothing worked.

Well, perhaps I should say nothing worked for long. The instant I told myself I was on a diet, my appetite soared. I’d wake up in the morning and follow my diet plan at breakfast. Within an hour of eating, I’d begin obsessing over my next meal (or lack thereof). At night, I’d dream of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. Once, I actually found myself standing in the shower and wondering whether there were any calories in my fruity-scented body wash, becase damn it smelled good enough to eat.

But never – never – did I think to take up exercise. A couple of years ago, I’d been an avid exerciser but I stopped my workouts when I began blogging. After all, being a Mom means I have limited time to myself, and I preferred comfortably sitting in front of the computer to aching muscles and sweat dripping down my forehead. Who wouldn’t? So when my bathroom scale broke this past spring, I didn’t bother replacing it. I simply told myself that I’d measure my weight by the way my clothes fit (conveniently overlooking the fact that I mostly wear sarongs and wrap skirts and, hence, would remain clueless over my true size).

Then in June, I got hit with a double-whammy health-wise. First, I injured my wrist, which meant that I had to restrict my blogging. Just as I psyched myself up to fill the extra time with some light exercise, I also acquired a frightening gastrointestinal problem which left me weak to the point of shaking. Exercise? Hell, I was worn out just trying to pronounce the word.

At first, I figured it was just a stomach flu of some sort and would clear itself up in a few days. Besides, as any bulimic can attest, diarrhea and vomiting can cause weight loss. At least I wasn’t intentionally inducing them. Then the days turned into weeks, and the weeks became almost two months. By this point, I felt weaker than I ever had in my life. Walking from the bed to the toilet left me panting and exhausted. Brushing my teeth in the morning seemed like a Herculean task. On rare days when I inexplicably experienced a surge of energy, I’d get together with friends or try to clean house: things I’d previously been too exhausted to do. The next day, I paid for those choices, because inevitably I’d be too tired in the morning to do more than move from the bed to the sofa for a nap.

One night, afraid the diarrhea would strike in my sleep, I spent the night on the toilet, my pillow propped against the sink vanity. When Hubby found me and told me to come to bed, I stood up and shrieked at the sight of blood floating in the toilet bowl. It wasn’t “that time of the month,” so there was no obvious cause for the bleeding. At that moment, we both realized just how very wrong something was.

We were at the Emergency Room within the hour. After poking, proding, measuring and sampling, the doctor said that it’s possible but unlikely, due to the severity of my symptoms, that I have irritable bowel syndrome. More likely, he believes, I have ulcerative colitis or another inflammatory bowel disease. Then, just as I felt a surge of relief over what he hadn’t said, he looked Hubby solemnly in the eye and said that, in the worst case scenario, it might be colon or stomach cancer. Either way, he explained, the internist to whom he was referring me would most likely be the first of several doctors I’d be seeing in my near future. On the drive home, I looked at Hubby and realized that I wasn’t the only one feeling nauseous at that moment.

It took a week to get an appointment with the internist, a week of more distressing GI issues and more worrying. My symptoms grew steadily worse, to the point where I was afraid to go anywhere for fear I wouldn’t make it to a restroom in time. I had nightmares about losing control of my bowels in public (which happened… twice) or vomiting on strangers. I’d eat breakfast with the kids and by mid-morning would have to camp out in the bathroom with one end on the toilet and the aimed toward the sink. After dinner, while everyone else enjoyed their dessert, I’d turn up the TV in my bedroom so they could enjoy themselves without hearing the sounds of my retching.

At least with all the vomiting and diarrhea surely I was losing weight, right?

As I said, my body betrayed me. By the time I finally got an appointment with the internist and stood on his scale, I’d gained another nine pounds. I now had 21 pounds to lose. Twenty-one. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Naturally, the doctor was more concerned with fixing my GI problem than anything else. Two months of sometimes bloody diarrhea and almost daily vomiting had left me anemic. He poked a needle in my vein and drew blood until I was certain I’d wither up and crumble to dust. The needle was kind compared to the other instruments with which I’ve since been prodded in locations best left unmentioned.

Then he handed me a plastic jar marked with a Biohazard warning and told me to return it to his lab in containing a stool sample. As I tucked it in my handbag, my mother’s warnings to wear clean underwear when leaving the house in case I was in an accident seemed laughable. What would an ambulance crew think if they had to fish around in my purse for identification and found a container of runny, bloody poop instead? “Well, at least her underwear is clean,” I could just picture an EMT saying as he held up the jar of my poop. “Now we know why.”

On my way out of his office, the doctor casually mentioned that I should try some life-style changes to see if they helped. “Be sure to eat plenty of vegetables and salads, maybe take some Metamucil,” he said. “Exercise might help, too, in case this is stress-related.”

Stress? Me?? I’m a housewife living in Hawai’i. I have nothing to be stressed about – aside from freaking out over my health. What the hell, I figured. With my health on the line, I was willing to try it. But where would I find the time?

Luckily, the Venomous Hubby had grown as tired of my GI problems as I have. Sure, he’d been silent about my weight gain (after all, I did go from a B-cup to a generous C), and seemed to understand I wouldn’t have time for regular workouts until next year when our son starts school. But with my health problems, we both had to accept that, for me, finding time to exercise was no longer a matter of vanity or getting a break from the cleaning and kids. Now, my life might depend on it.

So last month, I stopped eating my 4-year-old’s leftovers for lunch and put a moratorium on the meat-and-potatoes dinners the Venomous Hubby previously demanded. I began serving a good-sized salad with vinagrette for lunch and another for dinner, with meat (lean, and usually white) being more of a side-dish than a main course. I don’t buy crackers or chips; I buy fruit instead. Even my beloved morning kona coffee gave way to decaf… most of the time, at least. In the first week, I lost two pounds and I hadn’t even begun exercising.

On July 28, I dusted off my exercise tapes and began doing 35 minutes of aerobics three days a week. After a few days, I added in weight training, and a few days after that I started doing yoga as well. Today – the 21st day of working out – I’m averaging 90 minutes a day, six days a week, divided between aerobics and weights in the morning and yoga at night. I bought a bathroom scale and, for the first time in my life, I smile when I weigh myself in the morning. I’ve lost a total of 7 pounds with twelve more to go. And I feel great.

Even better, my symptoms have lessened. I wish I could say they’d disappeared, but at least they’re no longer debilitating. Most meals stay down these days, even if I still can’t travel too far from a restroom. I have to religiously take vitamins and, due to continued blood in my stool, “that time of the month” is guaranteed to send my iron-levels plunging. Despite the progress, my colonoscopy is still scheduled for next month and I have to admit that I’m dreading it.

Not surprisingly, my attitude toward dieting and exercise has changed. Once, I balked at food rules and looked at exercise as a form of punishment (“Forgive me, Tony Horton, for I have sinned. I ate chocolate cake, for which I have atoned with 100 Superman crunches.”) Now, I see they’re a form of salvation. They may not have cured my symptoms, but they’ve certainly made it clear that my body had not betrayed me. I had betrayed it.

As for those other twelve pounds? Well, they didn’t get there overnight… even if it seemed that way at the time. They’re on their way out. I can feel it. And knowing that I have control over them, that I can do something about my weight, makes it so much easier to accept the other things about my body that I can’t control right now.

Meanwhile, I have a new toy that I need to go play with. I just wish it came with a more cushioned seat. My ass is already in enough pain, if you know what I mean.