Being Skinny hasnt fixed my life.
I don't think I expect my life to be perfect - but I have found that it is physically easier. You probably have the same result - you can comfortably ride that motorcycle and sit in a chair at a job you love. The surgery helps the physical and gives you one less thing to worry about on the emotional/mental side. Now to address the emotional/mental side. Something trigger this mood? Been in this mood a long time? What are the happy things you do in life? If your mood is continuous, you should find some counseling. It helps. If it is something that was just triggered - what can you do to minimize the issue - what do you have control over? Recognize that and recognize what you can't control and try to let that go. That's my best advice.
HW 357 SW 341
Well...
No, I don't want to join your pity party but I think it takes incredible strength to come here and admit that WLS didn't fix your life.
That's why I am always preaching about the head stuff. People feel such ELATION when the scale goes down. And it is great. And I always feel like a hater when I press folks about whether or not they can and will love themselves AFTER the scale stops moving.
Then I get called a grumpy old vet. But the way I figure is this. I have contentment. Even in the midst of drama I've found a measure of peace with myself and my life. I have regained but I actually LIKE my body. I like my lifestyle. Hell, I even like healthy food now.
So it doesn't profit me any to ask you all questions that make you miserable for a quick moment but to try and get you to the place I've found. Cuz I'm doing just fine.
For your sake, I hope you do ask yourself those tough questions, go through the (hopefully) short-term misery of working through those issues and come out the other side with some peace. I will pray that for you.
But the only way to get started is to get started. So what's your first step?
No, I don't want to join your pity party but I think it takes incredible strength to come here and admit that WLS didn't fix your life.
That's why I am always preaching about the head stuff. People feel such ELATION when the scale goes down. And it is great. And I always feel like a hater when I press folks about whether or not they can and will love themselves AFTER the scale stops moving.
Then I get called a grumpy old vet. But the way I figure is this. I have contentment. Even in the midst of drama I've found a measure of peace with myself and my life. I have regained but I actually LIKE my body. I like my lifestyle. Hell, I even like healthy food now.
So it doesn't profit me any to ask you all questions that make you miserable for a quick moment but to try and get you to the place I've found. Cuz I'm doing just fine.
For your sake, I hope you do ask yourself those tough questions, go through the (hopefully) short-term misery of working through those issues and come out the other side with some peace. I will pray that for you.
But the only way to get started is to get started. So what's your first step?
You grumpy old vet, you... 
That is why I get so concerned with the incredible focus on the numbers here. The numbers on the scale or clothing tags do NOT automatically make people healthy OR happy, and when that is the sole focus people often struggle emotionally once the compliments and weight loss stop. Sometimes they define themselves even more in terms of the numbers once they are thinner than they did when they were MO/SMO... and no matter whether someone is 450 pounds or 102 pounds, we are NOT defined by our body size/shape!
Lora
That is why I get so concerned with the incredible focus on the numbers here. The numbers on the scale or clothing tags do NOT automatically make people healthy OR happy, and when that is the sole focus people often struggle emotionally once the compliments and weight loss stop. Sometimes they define themselves even more in terms of the numbers once they are thinner than they did when they were MO/SMO... and no matter whether someone is 450 pounds or 102 pounds, we are NOT defined by our body size/shape!
Lora
14 years out; 190 pounds lost, 165 pound loss maintained
You don't drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there.
So true.
I saw a good illustration of why I refuse to focus on the numbers. I have a post-op FB friend who is clearly too damn small in the first place but she apparently bounced 15 lbs. (I'd like to know where because she literally looks maybe a size 2, maybe). She is OBSESSED with getting this 15 lbs. back off.
Lora, I honestly think I"ve hit that "I finally see it" point in my journey. No I'm not small but these days when Iook in the mirror I see a vastly smallER person than was there before. In my first few years I couldn't see it. It's sort of like magic. But being able to see my progress in front of me has changed my mind set a lot.
But aside from that I have spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get to know who I am. I didn't know before surgery and that's really what I'd hoped to get out of this (although I couldn't have articulated that before surgery). I have a good handle on the things I like, don't like, what I want out of life. I have even been blessed to etch out a little life's mission (I really do think I was destined to start Bariatric Foodie and that's my "If I could do it for a living I totally would" sort of deal).
So yeah...the numbers are nice, but getting right with yourself is better. Hell, I can live the rest of my life in this 200 lb. (formerly 330 lb) body so long as I am right with myself!
I saw a good illustration of why I refuse to focus on the numbers. I have a post-op FB friend who is clearly too damn small in the first place but she apparently bounced 15 lbs. (I'd like to know where because she literally looks maybe a size 2, maybe). She is OBSESSED with getting this 15 lbs. back off.
Lora, I honestly think I"ve hit that "I finally see it" point in my journey. No I'm not small but these days when Iook in the mirror I see a vastly smallER person than was there before. In my first few years I couldn't see it. It's sort of like magic. But being able to see my progress in front of me has changed my mind set a lot.
But aside from that I have spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get to know who I am. I didn't know before surgery and that's really what I'd hoped to get out of this (although I couldn't have articulated that before surgery). I have a good handle on the things I like, don't like, what I want out of life. I have even been blessed to etch out a little life's mission (I really do think I was destined to start Bariatric Foodie and that's my "If I could do it for a living I totally would" sort of deal).
So yeah...the numbers are nice, but getting right with yourself is better. Hell, I can live the rest of my life in this 200 lb. (formerly 330 lb) body so long as I am right with myself!
RNY Gastric Bypass 1-8-08 350/327/200 (HW/SW/CW). I spend most of my time playing with my food over at Bariatric Foodie - check me out!
I am slowly silencing that internal voice that periodically whines "but I wanted to be size 8!", but I still really struggle with the size of my thighs (my boobs are still enormous, but at least I can reframe that as being "hot", but definitely NOT so with my thighs). They are really the only place on my body where there is any amount of fat to be lost, and when I position my leg so that I can see exactly how much of my thigh is muscle (most of it) and how much is extra skin and residual fat, it makes me feel a little better... until the next time I see myself standing in a full length mirror. After my necrotic TT experience (and looking at my savings account balance), PS is out of the question, so I have to find a way to not allow my thighs and my size 10/12 clothes to diminish my accomplishment and SUCCESS.
As I get farther out from my surgery and see how many people struggle with regain after 2 or 3 years, I have been focusing on re-defining "success":
1) The only number I really care about (that occasional whiny voice notwithstanding) is my body fat % because that is the only one that gives any kind of true reflection of an overall healthy body composition.. and my 25% body fat is considered "optimum" for a soon-to-be 50-year-old woman.
2) Anyone can lose weight after WLS; the challenge and true success is in keeping the weight off. As I come up on my 5-yr surgiversary and am maintaining at around 7 pounds above my lowest weight, I am more proud of keeping off 180 of the 187 pounds than I am of having lost the 187 pounds in the first place. the surgery did most of the latter, but *I* am doing the former.
3) Subduing the food demons. No, I have not conquered them (and some people might only say they are a "success" if they have, but I don't think it is realistic to extinguish them permanently) but I am mindful of them and have strategies in place to fight them when they appear. I win far more of the battles than I lose, and when I lose one I do not become discouraged and surrender the next skirmish without a fight! Success...
Lora
As I get farther out from my surgery and see how many people struggle with regain after 2 or 3 years, I have been focusing on re-defining "success":
1) The only number I really care about (that occasional whiny voice notwithstanding) is my body fat % because that is the only one that gives any kind of true reflection of an overall healthy body composition.. and my 25% body fat is considered "optimum" for a soon-to-be 50-year-old woman.
2) Anyone can lose weight after WLS; the challenge and true success is in keeping the weight off. As I come up on my 5-yr surgiversary and am maintaining at around 7 pounds above my lowest weight, I am more proud of keeping off 180 of the 187 pounds than I am of having lost the 187 pounds in the first place. the surgery did most of the latter, but *I* am doing the former.
3) Subduing the food demons. No, I have not conquered them (and some people might only say they are a "success" if they have, but I don't think it is realistic to extinguish them permanently) but I am mindful of them and have strategies in place to fight them when they appear. I win far more of the battles than I lose, and when I lose one I do not become discouraged and surrender the next skirmish without a fight! Success...
Lora
14 years out; 190 pounds lost, 165 pound loss maintained
You don't drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there.
I speak from the heart here...Lora, you are one of my WLS heroes!
I look to you for the REAL experience. Not the sunshine and rainbows, but the day-to-day grind. The sunshine & rainbows was never comforting to me. It made me feel like a failure because I wasn't maniacally happy all the time.
The truth is I HATED extreme restriction. I HATED not knowing where I fit into the body spectrum. HATED when I was obsessed with the scale. I feel very liberated now!
Like you I don't think I'll ever completely vanquish my food demons but I have learned to tell them to sit down and shut the hell up. Every once in a while (when they've been watching "Maury" all day) they fight back and win the battle but the war rages on...
I look to you for the REAL experience. Not the sunshine and rainbows, but the day-to-day grind. The sunshine & rainbows was never comforting to me. It made me feel like a failure because I wasn't maniacally happy all the time.
The truth is I HATED extreme restriction. I HATED not knowing where I fit into the body spectrum. HATED when I was obsessed with the scale. I feel very liberated now!
Like you I don't think I'll ever completely vanquish my food demons but I have learned to tell them to sit down and shut the hell up. Every once in a while (when they've been watching "Maury" all day) they fight back and win the battle but the war rages on...
RNY Gastric Bypass 1-8-08 350/327/200 (HW/SW/CW). I spend most of my time playing with my food over at Bariatric Foodie - check me out!
I'm still worried about my recent regain. I dont' really look in th mirror and see taht I'm anything but a normal person. I don't think the mirror screams back "fat" but a lot of my angst from when I was a teenager is bothering me right now. When I would buy new clothes, and then a month or two later, they'd be tight. etc.
If I knew I wasn't "climbing the scale" and on the path to total regain, if I knew for SURE (and nobody ever can) that I wasn't in a pattern of regain, I would probably relax and not stress over being where I am right now. But I keep fearing that I'm on my way back up. I keep trying to focus on the bigger piccture. I KNOW that 185 pounds lost is absolutely optimum, and I'm flipping out over being 5 to 10 over that. But I worry that if I go an buy a new warddrobe for this size 12 and NOT size 10 body... what if those clothes start to get tight. Frankly it's the tight 10's that flip me out more than the number on the brooding box on the floor. But the clothes don't lie, the weight is there, and that bothers me.
I've tried to talk with hubby about it, but he just doesn't know what I'm upset about. My decision to start swimming every morning with him once summer school is out was a hard decision (though I likely will find the doing -- day after day -- to be a lot harder than the deciding) and it was only because of this extra five or ten pounds that I decided it in the first place. But now hubby wants to take ten of the thirty or so days I have set out to try to tone up a few muscles and spend four of those ten on teh road, and another six eating fattening food cookedd by my delightful mother in law.
I want to DO.... and this is the closest I've come to actually trying to reallly exercise in more than 10 years.
If I knew I wasn't "climbing the scale" and on the path to total regain, if I knew for SURE (and nobody ever can) that I wasn't in a pattern of regain, I would probably relax and not stress over being where I am right now. But I keep fearing that I'm on my way back up. I keep trying to focus on the bigger piccture. I KNOW that 185 pounds lost is absolutely optimum, and I'm flipping out over being 5 to 10 over that. But I worry that if I go an buy a new warddrobe for this size 12 and NOT size 10 body... what if those clothes start to get tight. Frankly it's the tight 10's that flip me out more than the number on the brooding box on the floor. But the clothes don't lie, the weight is there, and that bothers me.
I've tried to talk with hubby about it, but he just doesn't know what I'm upset about. My decision to start swimming every morning with him once summer school is out was a hard decision (though I likely will find the doing -- day after day -- to be a lot harder than the deciding) and it was only because of this extra five or ten pounds that I decided it in the first place. But now hubby wants to take ten of the thirty or so days I have set out to try to tone up a few muscles and spend four of those ten on teh road, and another six eating fattening food cookedd by my delightful mother in law.
I want to DO.... and this is the closest I've come to actually trying to reallly exercise in more than 10 years.
~Lady Lithia~ 200 lbs lost!
March 9, 2011 - Coccygectomy!
I chased my dreams, and my dreams, they caught me!
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