Cleopatra_Nik

Send Message

Block

Add Friend

Well...not really. Really the more accurate thing to say is that they've been folded into my overall consciousness and THAT has moved.

I am keeping a blog of my process and thoughts at http://whatdaheckisshethinking.blogspot.com. Check it out! Especially good for those early out wanting to know what struggles we face in the longer term. I am but a baby still in this process but still dedicated to sharing what I experience with others.

I hope you enjoy!

As my two-year “surgiversary” approaches, I am called to think about the changes over the past year particularly. Most of us, I sense, think about pre-op vs. post-op changes but I’d like to spend a little time observing the changes each of my two post-op years has brought.

 

Year 1 – Adjusting and Anticipation

 

Of course when you first have surgery it’s a whole new world. I have since surgery learned that the adjustment for everyone was not quite as jarring as it was for me. I was terribly misinformed about nearly everything. I didn’t know that I was still supposed to eat post-op (I am not being witty here…I was borderline anorexic there in the beginning). I thought the point was to never eat. So I never ate in the beginning and it caused me problems. I didn’t fully accept pre-op how big a crutch food was to me. Sure, I said all the right things in the psych eval but I thought to myself “if I can just take the hunger away, I’ll be fine.” Little did I know hunger takes more than one form and that psychological and physiological changes that would ensue would keep me on my toes! Let’s go through them a bit shall we? See how many YOU can identify with:

 

The “dead man walking” phase – right after surgery. You’re shell-shocked, you are traumatized by the very thought of eating, and could sleep the day away.

The “hello! I got my mojo back!” phase – especially prevalent in women, this is when the body starts burning massive amounts of fat releasing massive amounts of estrogen into the female blood stream. Many post-ops “oops” babies are conceived during these months. And if not then at least there are plenty of happy husbands out there.

 

The “ohcrapI’minastall!” phase – the first major stalls after WLS are panic inducing and traumatic, but then we get over it.

 

The “ohcrapIcaneatmore!” phase – self explanatory…

 

My first year ended on a good note. I’d lost about 140 lbs. and looked forward to zooming into goal…

 

Then came Year 2 – Tough realizations and Begrudged Acceptance

 

Year 2 brought the dreaded “p” word. That’s right…plateau…Thankfully I’d lost a few more pounds by the time this happened but when it did it hit me like a ton of bricks. Firstly, because I weight was plateau’d at a much higher weight than I wanted. Second, because the way my body worked changed AGAIN. No matter what I did the scale did not move. I ate less. Nothing. Ate more. Nothing. Exercised more. Nothing. Ate on plan. Nothing. Ate total crap. Nothing. Which brings me to my next point…

 

In any maturity process there is going to be a rebellion stage and boy did I go through it. I’d test my pouch just to make sure it was still there. Because I could eat a lot. And I could eat a lot of things. Was my surgery still working? My dear friends, if you ever want to know if your surgery is still working, try eating exactly as you would have before surgery (lesser amounts of course but just for a day or a meal revert back to old foods and see what happens…I guarantee something will happen that you don’t like. May not be physical but it will happen…). My rebellion was short lived though. Even the most self-deprecating person gets tired of being sick after a while. Such was the case with me. I got sick of feeling bad and since the scale didn’t move through it all (not up, not down) I satisfactorily proved that yes I did, in fact, have weight loss surgery. It was not just a dream.

 

But the mind games were also not a dream. Once they do more research on us in the future, I predict psychologists will share that many bypass patients suffer severe body dysmorphia at this stage. And it is not static…like a constant sense you are too big. It is fluid. How I look in the mirror—the actual image I see—depends on a lot of factors, a few of them being: what I ate, how much I ate, how much the scale says I weigh, whether I feel like I am doing a good job, etc. The image we see is not the same as what everyone else sees but this becomes more pronounced in year two as your brain struggles to understand how you can fit in a size 6 with piles of skin that look like fat hanging everywhere.

 

Year two also entailed a lot of explanations. To my family, friends, others, explaining that I am supposed to be able to eat more. Yes, I can eat that thanks for checking. No, that doesn’t make me sick anymore. Fun, fun!

 

So as I approach year 3 here is my prediction, I may be wrong…

 

Year 3 – Onward and upward…

 

What do I mean by that? Well, first off certain things that were strange or off-putting to me are now beginning to feel normal. Like the abruptness of meals. I don’t expect them to take very long. I expect to get full very fast. Somehow I am able to move on from there whereas I used to have to chew two sticks of gum to let my brain finish chewing.

 

I find myself less food obsessed (although I will always be a foodie). I used to go to grocery stores just to be in the presence of food. It was comforting to me. Like a swaddling cloth or something. I find now that I do food shop very often (mostly owing to the fact that I buy more fresh food and therefore have to replenish more often) but I don’t need that constant contact. I don’t watch Food Network 24/7 anymore. I don’t post on OH all day long.

 

And I am starting to like this body that I have. No, it’s not the 160 lb. body that I set out for in the beginning. It’s 187. A solid, muscular 187 that I am proud of. But the point is that I am who I am and I like who I am. So I predict that by the end of this year I’ll be further along the path to self-acceptance.

If you’ve read this far…I have to question the amount of free time you have? Are you working? Working out? Go have fun instead of listening to my rambling! Hope this has given you some insight into…something.

Happy New Year.

Mall walking counts as walking! So how are you walking off those turkey day indulgences?

I have a tendency to abbreviate so that could also be showed as mi/min. If you are working on a treadmill most of the time it'll tell you how long it will take you, at the current speed, to do a mile. If you do interval...well I don't know how you'd figure that out. Perhaps just pay attention to your distance and time elapsed? If there is a better way I am interested in knowing it!

What's your time?
 

Hey everybody! I'm still figuring out how groups work and I want YOU to define how this one will work. So I guess perhaps a good first step is to do a roll-call of some sort. How about: Name, Are you a runner or walker? And anything else you want to share!

My name is Nikki (Cleopatra_Nik), I do both but most often I do interval. Currently I am working on busting through the 10 minute mile where I seem to be stuck and I look forward to learning more about running!

A website challenges you to tell your story in six words. I challenge you to tell your WLS story in six words. Can you do it? Will you try. For inspiration here’s mine:

"I hate food. I love eating."

Try it! You know you wanna!

ETA: that's not exactly true. I've revised:

"Food is immaterial. Eating is bliss."

Are you enjoying all four of your senses?

 

(Pause for head scratching and the inevitable question: What the hell does that have to do with inspiring me???)

 

Let me ask again. Do you enjoy all of your senses?

 

This may seem unrelated to inspiration especially because I am careful not to talk about eating a lot in my inspirations but I think it actually is pretty important. We are given four senses which function like four pieces of a puzzle. When even one piece is missing, the puzzle is incomplete—we cannot enjoy the whole picture, we are always focused on what is missing. So let’s go through the senses and do a little inventory, shall we?

 

Let’s start with the most obvious one for us—taste. Our tastes change after surgery but also our feelings about our “rights to taste” change. There is this pervasive myth that “food is for fuel, not for enjoyment” and that we aren’t meant to enjoy the taste of food. We worry when we enjoy the taste of something too much—is it a trigger? Can I control it? What if I can’t? The problem is that we have spent our whole lives liking certain things a little too much and not liking some things enough.

 

When we pay attention to all our senses, we don’t put such a stress on the sense of taste, I find. But aside from that, it is ok to enjoy the sense of taste. It is ok to have preferential tastes. That does not automatically equal danger. You don’t have to be afraid of taste, but at the same time you should recognize the balance of all senses so that you don’t overdo taste. It is the one sense where if you “overdo” it, you can very easily negate it.

 

Touch. We seem to have a hard time with this one but it is so important. Humans are built to be touched—it’s scientifically proven. We like to touch things and we like to be touched. We enjoy texture—the roughness of a wool sweater versus the softness of mohair, the squishiness of a lump of clay versus the smoothness of a piece of wood, the slickness of a rain coated car versus the stubbliness of a husband’s cheek.

 

My favorite touch sensation is the initial shock of getting into a hot bath. The feeling like I am almost burning but at the same time every muscle in my body is melting down out of its tense clamps and I feel fluid. Recognizing your sense of touch is especially important after surgery, I think, as we learn our new bodies. The scale may present a skewed picture but our bodies tell the tale perfectly. New bones to discover, newly developed muscles to marvel at. Every morning I make a point of patting around my pelvic area just to feel the bones. It pleases me to know that they can be felt so easily.

 

Smell. This one is one, on the other hand, that I find big folks latch onto. I would venture to guess that the obese community in the U.S. is among the largest sectors of people who buy aromatic products—body lotions, essential oils, etc. I hear lots of big folks saying “if I can’t look my best, I can always smell my best!” It is also an open defiance to the myth that fat people smell bad.

 

In life as well as in food the sense of smell is important. If you don’t believe me, try eating your dinner with a clothespin over your nose—I guarantee you won’t enjoy it as much. My point here is that smell and taste work together very closely. So you can get as much enjoyment from the aroma of something as from the taste of it. And you can get enjoyment from smells that are not food based. A flower, a nice cologne, freshly laundered sheets—and those inevitable smells that take you to another place and time.

 

Sight. Ah sight…we rely on this all day every day (for those of us who have sight), however we rarely use this sense to the fullness of its abilities. After a while life tends to be the wallpaper against which we live our lives. When was the last time you marveled at the sunset and really contemplated the colors of it? Or the last time you picked a wild flower because you thought it was unique. When is the last time you examined the grain in a fine piece of wood (there’s a picture in there, you know…) or inspected your toes and fingers. Too often life’s wonders slip by our vision. Take time to really see the world around you—what it is made of and what makes it beautiful. And look at yourself. Really look at yourself. The more you look the more you will see who you really are instead of who you used to be.

 

I’ve given enough assignments for this inspiration, so that is all! Have a great week.

Edited to add:

 

My good friend Megan pointed out to me that I missed a sense! Perhaps because it is the one I struggle with the most—hearing. I have had bad hearing for a long time and often cannot hear things at certain decibel levels. But what a gift sound is! I love music. I love to sing (my children don’t like it when I sing but that’s a whole other blog post). I love the quiet of the early morning and in Baltimore it is not spring until the first car drives slow down the street with the bass thumping. I especially love the sound of my babies sleeping. So my apologies for the omission! Go out and make beautiful noises!

 

 

 

We talk about epiphanies all the time but have you ever really had one? It’s an exciting experience to say the least. I claim to have epiphanies often but really they are not—in those instances usually I’m merely recognizing things I could not or would not recognize before, but that I have always known.

 

Well this morning I had an epiphany.

I was walking to work. It is a brisk fall day today in Baltimore and I am just getting over a nasty battle with germs. I wore a dress, some thick tights, and a jacket that is a few sizes too large but still manages to look cute on me. I was rocking my super-chic leather booties (trust me…this is going somewhere) and I had all my accessories and jewelry perfectly put together so that I looked like a hip, boho chic mama! As I walked past rows of houses on my way to work, seeing my reflection in the glass of people’s storm doors, it hit me: “I am EXACTLY who I always wanted to be!”

 

And I stopped and I thought about that. Because it’s not just about fashion my friends. Although fashion is very important to me, it is more about the mindset. I was walking tall, with a confident stride, looking cute, knowing I looked cute, smiling to people as they passed by, NOT avoiding my reflection but relishing in it…and finding myself extremely satisfied with what I saw (and, better yet, unable to wield one piece of meaningful criticism at myself).

 

THIS is who I wanted to be!!!!

 

But that brought on a second wave of thought (as epiphanies usually do and rightfully should). See, there’s a difference between being and doing. Anyone who is a parent knows that. Most anyone capable of coupling with someone can BE a parent. DOING the parenting is another thing altogether. So although in many ways I am being the person I want to be, am I doing the things that person wants to do?

 

I’m not so sure.

 

To grasp that I guess I’d have to look back to my conception of how this chick is supposed to be living. I always fancied myself a curvy, hip, boho chick who is confident, who loves to dance, listens to jazz music, knows the taste of a good glass of wine, knows the company of fine mine (fine character…get your minds out of the gutter!), is well traveled, and has something to say to the world and something to say for her life.

 

Using this definition…I got some work to do! But I don’t take that as a statement of success or failure—I take it as a challenge! Now that I can see myself in that role, it’s time to play it! Lights, camera, action! This is what I’ve been waiting for…so what am I waiting for???

 

So what does this all have to do with you? Well, very often we get caught up in one or the other—being or doing. Being skinny. Doing what we want to do. These things aren’t mutually exclusive but they are related. There are some things you quite simply would not have done as a morbidly obese person that you said you’d consider as a simply overweight person or a “normal” sized person. Are you doing them? If not, what are you waiting for? If you have a list somewhere, blow off the dust and get to it!

 

 

DO YOU!

Fall is upon us. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m going to do some riff on the Beatles song about there being a season for everything…turn, turn, turn…

 

No. Not today at least.

 

As I was driving home from the Obesity Help conference in Rye Brook, NY this weekend I was admiring the fall leaves. It was all so beautiful. Layers and layers and layers of leaves in burnt orange, brown, sage green, even purple.

 

As I glowered at this spectacle of nature I began to think of how disharmonious we humans are with nature. It seems we do all we can to extract ourselves from the natural rhythm of nature.

 

Let nature be an example. All winter long trees are bare. The branches, long upstaged by the beauty of its leaves and flowers in spring, summer and fall, are the center of attention. Unhindered by their loads, they stand erect, tall, proud. As the weather warms, however, they acquiesce, and allow themselves to be impregnated by buds which burst forth into those leaves and flowers, whose appearance is what usually captures our human attention. We don’t pay enough credence to the tenacity of bare trees—they are strong and beautiful.

 

And the leaves. They appear in the spring—sturdily attached to their anchor, brightly colored, waxy, and soon they bear fruit. They are the jewel of the tree and they live in the spotlight for months and months…until the weather turns cool. Then, with nary a protest, they let go, allowing themselves to become unattached to the tree, falling to the ground, withering and, eventually, dying. They don’t complain. They don’t whine. And even in their death they are beautiful. So instead of focusing on the end of their life, leaves exemplify the beauty of the life cycle, a wonder we hardly notice as we grumble and rake them into piles and stuff them into black plastic bags.

 

We humans, however, we are very different. We seek to control our own cycles. We want to decide how often and when we menstruate (instead of being harmonious with moon cycles as nature seems to want us to be). We seek to control our appetites, our aging process, our hair color, our skin color, our eye color, our scents, our skin textures.

 

Some of this is for the good of man, no doubt, but I wonder how much of it. As humans we are animals, a species of animal, that is built in perfect harmony with nature. I wonder to myself what might become of us if we give ourselves over to the natural rhythms that are programmed within us. They are our default settings—our metabolism, our reproductive cycles, our aging cycles, our pigmentation, our hunger, our thirst.

 

This week I want to get more in touch with my natural rhythm. I often cloud it in what I feel I should think, feel and like. Instead I want to study what I am wont to do, instead of what I WANT to do. If you don’t know what that means…I challenge you this week to find out and then message me your thoughts.

 

Have a great week.

At varying levels, my identity during the past two years has been inextricably tied to being a weight loss surgery patient. First I was a person trying to gain approval—proving that I was (and always have been) overweight, in need of help, able to handle the rigorous demands of surgery. Then I was a new post-op, feeling lost like an alien in a foreign country as I struggled to come to grips with the realities of those post-surgery demands. As I moved further from my surgery, I was a woman on a mission—determined to make it to goal.

 

Whether I “made it” to goal or not is debatable—but here I sit 155 lbs. lighter but, more importantly, a significantly different person than I was before. And for a while I felt out of sorts, like I was stuck somewhere between the person I was and the person I am now. I didn’t feel like the “old” me, but I’d not yet embraced, or introduced, the “new” me.

First, a word on the person I was before. It is through examining this woman that I most clearly see who I am now. Let’s be clear, though. Not all of the changes are wonderful and awe inspiring, but some are. The Nikki of old wasn’t very engaged with anyone around her. There was this bubble that insulated her—protecting her both from things that might hurt her and from the feelings of love and concern that many, many people felt for her. The old Nikki had little empathy. She barely cried when her grandfather died after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease. She couldn’t stand to be touched at all—not hugs, not kisses, not affectionate pats on the shoulder—nothing. The old Nikki wanted but did not work toward wants. She was stunted by challenges—so afraid of failure that she was afraid to move in any direction—backward or forward for that matter. To be terribly cliché, the old Nikki always, always, ALWAYS, saw the glass half empty.

 

But what about the new Nikki? I notice now that I seem to be a more involved parent. Bliss to me is lying in bed with my 7 year-old and listening to her stammer through her reading at night, delighting in how much better she is that night than she was the night before. More than that, I talk to people now. There is a difference between simply conversing with someone and talking to them. I am a part of the conversation, not just the other side. And I feel now. I think that is a natural byproduct of being unable to placate emotions with food. The first few times I had to do it—to feel—I won’t lie, I wanted to shoot myself (I am not exaggerating here—thank goodness my therapist takes impromptu phone calls). I worry for people and I let them worry for me. I recognize my smallness in the world (not meaning I am small minded or incapable but that I, too, am fragile and in need of gentle care and that that’s ok).

 

The me I am now loves affection. I make a point of hugging and kissing my daughters many times a day. I hug my mom, my brother, anybody who I think needs a hug! I no longer clam up. And the new me looks at challenges as…well…challenges. And I love them. There is something about that feeling of “can I really do this?” and then getting into the process and thinking “I don’t know if I can do this.” And then achieving it and saying “I did this!” that is deeply satisfying to me. I no longer drag my heels on progress. I try to weigh decisions carefully but when the decision is made, it is made and I own it—along with the result.

 

And my glass is overflowing.

 

So this is it—this is me. Whether my physical form ever changes again or not, this is who I identify myself to be. I am claiming this new self and moving forward with her values and interests in hand.

 

This week I empower you to examine the changes in yourself since surgery. Look beyond the physical. What do you feel/do now that you did not/would not before? What are some significant hurdles you’ve overcome? How has that affected you? Have any of your values changed? How? It’s important to acknowledge these things and it’s especially important to introduce the emerging you to your friends and loved ones, or else they will continue to relate to you as they always did—as the person they’ve know all your life up to this point. So let them see who you really are now and accept all the love and praise and blessings that go along with.

 

Have a great week.