4 Year Surgery Anniversary!!!

Jan 09, 2017

Today is my 4 year surgery anniversary!  4 years ago today, on January 9th, 2013, I was going into surgery to irreversibly cut out 80% of my stomach and try to change my life. 

Has it been easy? No!

Have I been able to maintain my weight loss and keep it off without struggling?  HELLS NO!

Is it worth it to put in the effort and have this tool that I received 4 years ago to assist me in my journey?  Definitely!

I just went back and read the blog I wrote a week before my surgery.  I was so ready to feel better and lose weight.  It’s hard to remember being so big and barely fitting into those (size 24/26) clothes.  I was really excited to get the weight off but I had no idea how wonderful I would feel but also how much energy and effort this would take.   

So… what am I up to today?  I am feeling great but it’s a day to day process.  I am 1 pound above my lowest weight ever after surgery.  2 years ago, I got down to 199 pounds but then I started gaining back weight.  Today, I am 200 pounds.  I never reached my goal weight of 180 lbs and right now I don’t know what my goal weight is and I don’t think I want a “goal weight”.  I am really happy at my current weight and would like to lose another 10 pounds but if I go too low, my body isn’t going to look right.  Losing almost half your body weight takes a toll on your skin and I’d rather be a little overweight than have a ton of hanging skin.  

In total, I gained back about 35 pounds and this summer, I decided that I had ENOUGH.  In August, I started to really dig into my emotional issues and why I continue to eat my feelings and go so overboard that I gain a large amount of weight in a very short time.  I can eat around my tool with potato chips and cookies and grazing on all kinds of snacks.  I feel so healthy when I am at a lower weight and I love the feeling so much so I wanted to understand why I keep stopping the healthy habits and go sedentary and eat really bad food for me.  What is the draw and why do I allow myself to sabotage my progress???

Researching and reading so much information on body acceptance, mindful eating and why diets don’t work really opened my eyes.  I am trying very hard to get out of the “diet” mentality.  I know I have said this before but I am trying hard to seriously change how I eat and how I police my food choices.  Only a very rare few of us in this Weight Loss Surgery community can actually sustain an extreme low carb and low calorie diet for the rest of our lives.  Most of us that became super morbidly obese didn’t get that way just because we didn’t realize that eating a ton of calories, carbs and fast food was making us fat.  We know what causes weight gain and we know how to lose weight but something inside of us compels us to continue to eat more than our bodies need.  Yo-yo dieting has also damaged our bodies and so any time we inevitably fall off the wagon, our metabolisms are so messed up that we gain weight so rapidly and our bodies are begging us to eat to put that weight back on plus more. 

I am actually eating more calories than I have before and losing weight.  I am still cutting out processed carbs for the most part and making substitutes for the foods that make me feel good and healthy.  However, sometimes I feel like eating something that it not technically “healthy” or is not a part of my normal diet… and it’s not the end of the world.  I don’t dread going out with friends when I’m really “on a diet” anymore.  I don’t freak out if I can’t get to the gym 5 times a week.  I survived the holidays and allowed myself to eat things that I wanted but I was able to continue my normal, healthy eating soon after without telling myself I was going to be “off my diet” from Thanksgiving to New Years.  I didn’t start a new drastic diet on January 1^st and I didn’t punish myself for the food I ate that wasn’t low carb.  I enjoyed the food choices I made and continued right on.  Sure, I may have gone up a couple of pounds after those indulgences but so what??? I kept right on moving.  No juice fasts, no crash dieting, no punishing myself with a starvation level amount of calories for the choices I made.  Just moving on.

So that’s been my life for the past few months and I have really been enjoying.  I am running still but I’m training for anything or pushing myself to do a certain amount each time.  I listen to my body and some days, I can run 3 or 4 miles with no problems.  Other days, I run 1 mile and then I walk some.  I don’t stress about it.  I really enjoy the exercise and it’s no longer a punishment.  If I get to the gym and feel like my body can’t do a big cardio session, no worries! I do some yoga or some stretches, maybe a few weights.  It feels good to be in sync with my body and not bound by external rules or strict calorie counting. It’s working for me and it’s the nicest I’ve ever been to myself.  And also, 4 years later, most of the clothes in my closet don’t fit right now again… but that’s because they are all too big! It’s a really good problem to have!!  

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