Overly dramatic sigh - what is wrong with me?
Here’s some key things that are hitting me as I’m about to hit my three year surgiversary a week from Saturday.
1) I am so used to being on a diet, for all but eight years of entire life, that it is almost impossible to stop feeling like there was something I am supposed to be beating myself up about. I remind myself daily, that I’m not doing that any more but it’s a nagging feeling that never quite disappears. Perhaps it was an addiction that I will fight forever.
2) I, too, suffer the “funhouse mirror” of seeing fat that isn’t there, or exaggerating what is still there. I’m lighter than I’ve been in 20 years but, to me, I look like I did when I had surgery.
3) Between the time I had my surgery, and now, I lost 170 pounds, began traveling around the country for the first time in over 30 years, moved from the state I’d lived in for the first 42 years of my life, went from being single (with a cat) to living with my husband and his three sons (teenagers all, now, and one of them is a daily troublemaker), had to deal with my father’s passing from across the country, I had one of the worst weddings you could imagine… and through it all, I didn’t gain. I not only didn’t gain, I often dipped below my steady weight and was wearing sizes I’d only dreamt of wearing for most of my adult life. Therapy has been difficult to get right because of this extremely specialized emotional ****tail. It’s hard enough to get a physician to understand the whole of why we became obese, much less a therapist who has never been through severe weight issues. Add to that, living in a state where “blended families” are not the “social norm” and they have NO IDEA how to handle someone like me.
4) Because of that horrible wedding (love my husband, happy to be married, but it was just… ugh), we had horrible bills to go with it and I had to go back to office work in order to pay the teeniest bit I make into paying them down and chip into the minivan we “had” to get because the boys had gotten too tall for either of our cars. Sitting all day is what led me to Gastric Bypass. Sitting all day has gotten me 25 pounds back and there’s no way out of 8 hour days and 2 more in the car, in the foreseeable future (though I am studying to be a chef – as I want to do personal chef work for people with specialized diets, right now, that means 8 more hours sitting in classrooms). I’m not eating more. Not grabbing candies or doing weird snacking. I’m not over eating. My portions are still quite small. I’ve even tried to reduce food intake and calories to no positive result and nearly went back to my post-surgical diet to see if that’d jump start me. Nope. I’m not moving. When I don’t move, I don’t lose and my body fat and the amount I can get done outside of work is too little to make an impact. As a result, I’ve been devastatingly depressed.
5) Hanging fat bib and loose skin. That this is “cosmetic” is one of the biggest farces imaginable. This isn’t just about my looks. I get horrible rashes (it’s humid and hot here, most of the time), I can’t run (which I am ACHING to do) because the heavy tugging on my lower is too painful. I still feel like a failure when I see this stuff on my body, still feel like a failure because I can’t lose it, still feel like a failure because this keeps me from being what I know in my heart I truly am and would be without it.
6) I still get immense joy from ending a meal, having not plowed down unfathomable amounts of food, feeling full and satisfied. I still find myself in shock at how much I used to eat… how much I HAD to eat in order to graze the concept of “satisfied.” I still marvel at how I can make a meal I used to make just for myself, and feed three teenage boys and a grown man and still have leftovers.
There are highs and lows to all of this. I wish we had better tools and support from the medical / mental health communities. But if you’re feeling the same, you’re not alone.
