The wait is killing me!

This is my first post on OH so, Hello Everyone! 

I'm 51 and have been heavy off and on most of my adult life. In 2007 I lost 100 pounds on my own and kept it off for a few years. But then I lost my close friend to cancer and became so depressed. I turned to food (hello my dark friend) and managed to regain 50 pounds in a blink. I know how easy it would be to put on the other 50 and probably more. With my only child nearly grown and divorced for a decade, I don't want to spend rest of my life fat and alone. I decided to have a VSG, but now I'm doubting if I can succeed. 

I'm in the last month of a four-month diet required by my insurance company prior to submitting for surgery approval. Months one and two went well although weight loss was only about 12 pounds. Months three and four have been a horrible. I haven't lost any more weight. I can't stop eating!

My next appointment is supposed to be the time when everything comes together to submit to insurance. Instead I'm feeling like a failure. I'm doubting if i should go forward with the surgery. Maybe I'm just too attached to food for this to work?  It seems like the closer I got to the end of the four months, the more food I crave and consume. 

This four-month wait has really shaken my resolve to have WLS. If I really wanted to succeed at this, wouldn't have I stayed with the prescribed diet and exercise and lost the 25 lbs the doctor asked me to?  I have planned all along to have a gastric sleeve but now I wonder if a DS would not be the better route, with a greater chance of long-term success. I about to throw in the towel. Holy cow, I'm a mess. 

I'm going through this as well.  My thoughts are that the stress of having to do the one thing that we fail at over and over and then on top of it there being such big consequences to what we think will be our failure makes us turn to the one thing that comforts us but that we shouldn't be going near.  I think the system that they have sets us to feel like failures.  

The good news is that you aren't failing.  You have lost 12 lbs and they are quite aware that you are there for help because you cannot maintain long term weight loss.  If you were able to stick to a diet and keep your weight at an ideal level then you wouldn't need the surgery.  Just keep doing what you are doing.  Start each day anew and forgive yourself for the little battles you lose.  Soon enough your surgery date will come and you will have the tools you need to maintain your healthy weight.  Please don't give up...come back often and listen to the words of hundreds of people that have gone through exactly what you are and know that you are not a failure and not alone.

God bless,

Thank you, kikosmom for the encouragement. 

You are so right, food is comfort for us and for me...when I eat I don't think. Nothing quiets the inner voice like food. 

So i see your surgery date is coming up. Did you find it easier or more difficult once the surgery was scheduled? Are you on liquids yet?

Argh, my date was coming up they changed it to December 23rd (I forgot to change my signature).  I'm finding it more and more difficult the idea of surgery is not making it easier but the wait is making it harder.  I've always been a three month dieter...apparently I can do anything for three months lol.  I've been struggling since about July to maintain the loss.  I stay somewhere between 230-240.  When I know I have an appt coming and they will weigh my I try to eat really well to get to the 232 mark so I don't show a gain.  I guess you call that maintenance but I call it ridiculously stressful.  I constantly think they are going to cancel my surgery because of a gain.  

My clinic doesn't put you on a liquid diet pre-op but I am thinking about doing it myself a week before because of my present eating habits.  If they had just done the surgery when I lost the 35lbs I would have been in a great place for it.  Now I'm sure my liver is hard as a rock lol.

Just know that everybody struggles and I agree with finding out why you eat.  I just had an appt with a psychologist and it opened up a can of worms of child hood trauma that I convinced myself didn't bother me.  Turns out it doesn't bother me as long as I block off any emotional feeling about it and build a big wall of food around it.

I really wish you all God's blessings in this road to recovery!

My doctor did not require a 4 month preop diet. I had to show that I had been on weight loss program during the prior 12 months which I could prove through my primary dr. Don't give up. Do the best that you can. Help is close at hand.

Hang in there girlfriend - if it was easy everyone would be doing it!   

Losing weight is easy - conquering the demons that caused you to gain the weight in the first place is the challenge.  Are you getting any psychological help to understand what makes your attachment to food so strong?  

I'm 53, and here's what I discovered about myself.  I've never been married - never even come close.  Listening to society, I thought there must be something really wrong with me, so in my head it was because I was fat.  And wore glasses.  And had crooked teeth.  And my breasts were too large.  So over 30 years I fixed my teeth, had lasik for the eyes, breast reduction surgery, and finally my first surgery to lose weight (lap band 7 1/2 years ago).  I only had one appointment with the surgeon's psychologist, but he was very astute and asked me why I had never married. I never know what to say about that, so didn't give a very good answer.  So he changed the question and asked how I would deal with the extra attention from men when I lost the weight.  I didn't have a good answer then, but boy, oh boy, did his question resonate with me.  

You see, I have a history of self-sabotage when it comes to losing weight.  That layer of fat gave me a perfectly valid excuse for why I was alone.  When I lost the weight (most of it anyway, I'm a work in progress), and the men still didn't flock to me, my first instinct was to start eating again.  You see, if they still weren't interested, then it must be ME, not my body they don't like.  

Now, those are the thoughts that go through my head, but in reality, I'm not married because I never wanted to be.  I never made it a priority.  I let society dictate to me all these years what my life should look like.  My reality is that I have tons of friends, I have traveled all over the world, have an exciting job, make plenty of money, and I am HAPPY.  I could be a size zero and still not attract a man, unless I really, deep down, wanted to.  

So...telling you my story is just a long way around trying to help you be successful in your journey.  Even if you don't seek out a professional, try spending some time alone with your thoughts - go deep, feel the pain, and try to understand why you have hurt yourself over the years.  Once you understand why, it's a matter of practice to become more mindful and recognize when your head is taking you down that road again when you don't want to go.

You CAN do this.  Get outside today and take a walk somewhere pretty.  Then make sure to log it as exercise in your journal!