I have chronic fat disease called lipedema

I have lipedema. Lipedema is a disease of inflamed fat cells and an abnormal fat distribution in the legs, buttocks and sometimes also in the arms. It can cause pain and others problems like easy bruising. I happen to have all of the above. The Cause of lipedema is not clear. It’s a condition that mostly affects women. Doctors think it has a relation with female hormones but this has to be researched.

As a teenager I noticed I looked different than my friends. I felt insecure and got bullied for the shaking of my behind when I would run in P.E (physical education) class. I started to get more of a pear shape. I would compare myself to others and started feeling like a failure. Doctors and family members would tell me to lose weight and I started to wear baggy clothes to try and hide it all.

I started my fitness journey around 2016. I lost some weight but for some reason (that I now know of) my legs, buttocks and upper arms were bigger. The shape of my body became more of a defined pear shape with my upper body being significantly smaller than my lower body. I started to develop a disturbed eating pattern. Eating 1200 kcal a day, exercising twice a day 7 times a week doing mostly cardio. This was a very unhealthy lifestyle and far from balanced. 2017 I started to incorporate resistance training and eating more. I changed my goals to gaining muscle mass and slowly losing fat mass. Progress isn’t a linear thing but consistency makes the change.

Late 2021 I started at sports dietician Myrthe Rebattu (https://www.myrtherebattu.nl/) to make a plan to slowly cut weight because the goal was to work towards a lower weight class in weightlifting. Myrthe was the first one to tell me that there is a possibility that I would have lipedema and advisedj me I should get that checked out. I got it checked out and yes, lipedema!

Then there was the big question, is it treatable? Short answer: NO. Wearing compression garments, exercise and medical liposuction could ease the pain. Hormonal changes can make the lipedema worse. That’s why I am going to give compression garments a try. I will keep up the good work in the gym and wont get liposuction anytime soon. Would it get worse in the future and would it influence my quality of life I might consider it.

So yeah, I have lipedema and it is not treatable. I started getting more confident and accepting of my body when I started training more. Now that I have this diagnosis it’s just a

puzzle piece to the bigger picture and something that helps me accept my body even more than I already did.