Yes, Yes, Yes

I am celebrating the small victory today of knowing I am on the right track by taking vitamin D3. I've been taking the maximum safe recommended dosage each day, 10,000iu, and could tell the difference immediately.

I was beginning to see the symptoms of menometrorhaggia returning this cycle for the first time in over a year, and it was very frustrating to me. For those who don't know what menometrogghia is it is a combination of menorhaggia and metrorrahgia. Menhoraggia is defined as irregularly long and heavy menstrual periods followed by long intervals between menstrual periods. Metrorrahgia is defined as bleeding or spotting between menstrual periods. So, the easy way of saying it is that my period lasted for 19 days this cycle.

I know why it lasted this long too, I've gotten sloppy and lazy about keeping up with my progesterone cream regimen. I wasn't doing it for as long as I should have been and I had cut down the dosage because I was trying to make it last since we couldn't afford to buy more cream before I was going to run out. I should've known the previous cycle because it lasted for 9 days and it had been at the most 7 days with the last 2 days being spotting once I began the cream regimen.

So, why am I celebrating. Before I started progesterone cream or went to the RE, my periods could last up to 2 months or more and I'd have maybe 3 months between them. By using the vitamin D3 and restoring my body to a healthy level of D3, I am taking charge of my hormonal issues. Many of the things I tried in the past failed, not because they don't work, but because the hormone levels have to be better balanced than mine have been. I know for a fact that my hormone levels are very out of whack.

Another thing I am doing to try to repair my hormonal issues is I began Weight Watchers. I'm not actually going to the meetings or doing it online, I have all the information from when I went last year, so I'm just tracking my points and weighing in once a week. I am also going to start following the suggestions I found in a great blog called Naturally Knocked Up.

This website is a great resource for women who want to get pregnant naturally without dealing with the side effects of fertility drugs. They even have an article on there about how to regulate basal body temperature, which I'm definitely going to try once we start trying again. We have about 3 months until we start trying again and I am really working on getting healthy for when that happens.

I'm not giving myself a weight loss goal by that time, but I'm hoping for about 10% of my starting body weight. I've been told this should be much easier now that I'm getting adequate amounts of vitamin D3 in each day, so I'm hoping the weight will drop much easier than it was before. My hormones have been out of whack for so long that I could not lose more than a few pounds before my body began fighting me and I'd yo-yo back and forth. I did WW for 4 months last time before I had to quit and because my hormone issues weren't taken care of, I lost less than 5% of my body weight during that time.

Before you lecture me that weight loss requires exercise as well as diet, I can exercise until my lungs all but pop out of my mouth, and I did daily for months without results. Before you tell me that I must not have been honest about my diet, I am brutally honest about my diet because I don't believe in doing things half-way. With my hormones the way they were I could eat grilled chicken salad with olive oil dressing for every meal and still not lose weight. I could starve myself and still not lose weight because my hormones were working against me.

So, yes, I'm celebrating a small victory but one that should have a huge impact on my life for the rest of my life. So, before you go to a doctor and complain that you've done everything you can do and still aren't losing weight, add either 20 minutes in the sun per day (without sunblock) or add between 2000 and 10,000iu of vitamin D3 to your vitamin regimen per day. In a British study it found that only 7% of obese or overweight people had adequate amounts of vitamin D3 in their system, so that means more than likely if you're even the tiniest bit overweight you could fall in that range and be deficient just like I was.

Oh, and one more thing, vitamin D3 is actually a hormone regulator and a hormone itself, so you can't build up your levels then stop taking it like you can with some other vitamins because your D3 levels fluctuate daily depending on how much you take in. So, if you're D3 deficient then you will need to keep up with your intake for life.