The Why's of It

Jan 30, 2012

I weighed 262 in November.  At 5'5, that's about 120 pounds more than I "should" weigh, although I haven't weighed less than 160 since jr. high school.  The number wasn't a shock.  I'd grown out of my size 18 and 20's in the prior year, and I had to buy a lot of new clothes.  Shopping for clothes wasn't fun.  Nothing looked or felt right on me.  

I've been happiest at a size 14W or 16W....  and wondered what it might be like to shop in the regular size department.  For a glorious summer a few years ago, I fit into 16's, but I got hungry and fell off my diet.  (There were a lot of other reasons for falling off my diet... lyme disease and endometriosis amongst them, but isn't there always?)

When I talked about dieting, my husband would say, "What will make this diet different?"  He would tell me that "I'm just going to outsmart myself right out of the next diet."   In the winter of 2009, I spoke with a dietician at yet another doctor's office and realized that he's right.   I will outsmart the next diet.  I was arguing with the nutritionist about how many eggs it's safe to eat in a week.  It's not that I have a burning desire to eat eggs;  it's that this meeting was evidence that I knew more about nutrition than any doctor or dietician who would ever advise me.  That's not to say that I know more about the science of nutrition.  God forbid that I understand molecules and stuff!  But I did know that eggs are off the naughty list for those of us who are fortunate enough to not have a tendency towards high cholesterol.  I was wondering whether I'd hear the old saw about sodium next.

It really doesn't matter if I was right or wrong at that moment.  I just knew that I couldn't survive another diet filled with greens and low fat yogurt.  If you have to take away my granola, at least give me eggs!  After all, I knew I was already giving up cake, donuts, chocolate, vanilla malts, french toast with maple syrup, and that really amazing bread they serve with spinach dip.  

I'd tried and failed at Diet Center, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Sugar Busters!, Atkins, the nutritionist-recommended diet with supplements that cost $100 a week, the liquid diet (with shakes and supplements that cost $125 a week), and the most recent attempt---diet pills that resulted in gall bladder surgery.

Sound familiar?

But here's the thing.  I love myself.  I have always loved myself.  Even as I failed at diets, I never failed at self-love (well... except for those deep dark moments when you can't help but give in to the monsters inside you, but those were few and far between).  And it was my self-love that brought me here.

In 2004, my father died.   I had a really complicated relationship with him.  He had a really complicated relationship with food.  One day when I was in seventh grade, my mother made her famous homemade cake donuts.  She put them in the cookie jar, and she and I went shopping for school clothes.  When we got home, the cookie jar was only a third full.  Dad had eaten over a dozen donuts.  Dad denied he'd done it, but this was no whodunnit.  It was him... whether he'd eaten them consciously, I don't know.  But it was him.

A few years later, he was diagnosed with diabetes.  For a few years, he made an effort to keep his weight down, but like me, Dad was great at dieting, but not so great at maintaining.  And less great at dieting if something got in his way.

I don't know how much Dad weighed when he went to the hospital for the last time.  He'd been scheduled for a mitral valve replacement.  It was fairly routine surgery, but in all likelihood, he'd be on the bypass machine for quite some time.  I drove him the morning of the surgery through the woods of northern Wisconsin.  It was dark, and there were deer everywhere.  He was on lookout while I drove.  Mom and my husband slept in the back seat.

I stayed with him until they took him in to be prepped for the surgery.  I said goodbye and see ya later.  About 10 hours later, he was out of surgery, and we went home.  That night, he had a stroke.  In the coming days, it looked like he might make it through the worst of it with few problems.  A few days later, I was visiting him, and he mentioned that his doctor wanted him to have weight loss surgery next.  I told him I thought that was a great idea, and we left.

Two days later, he stroked out again.  This time, they couldn't do anything for him.   We made the three hour drive up to the hospital and took him off life support.  A few days' later, we drove up again.  He hadn't recovered, and we knew he wouldn't last much longer.  While we were in his hospice room, the nurse mentioned she wanted to turn him, but the heavy lift team wouldn't be available for at least an hour or more.

That got my attention.  They needed a team.  That was when I knew that weight was not just a health risk.  It was something that robs you of dignity.  Not that I hadn't experienced my fair share of weight related discrimination in my time... oh man... did I have stories!  But I could handle that.  What I couldn't handle was the idea that some day, they might need a team to turn me over on my deathbed.

So, that's what led me here.  To the decision to make one final attempt to lose the weight.   This time, I'm going to change biology.   Hopefully, I'll change the levels of ghrelin enough to reach the right weight for me, change my stomach capacity enough to make it possible to maintain the weight loss, and maintain the necessary changes in my diet long enough that cake, donuts, chocolate, vanilla malts, french toast with maple syrup, and that amazing bread they serve with spinach dip won't take over my life again.

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