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Not much new to report. I spent the last ~week sick with a cold, which was demoralizing from an exercise standpoint. Been eating a little too much but overall I'm feeling relatively sane on that front. Been a little better about getting my protein and vitamins and holy crap is that ever important. Seriously, if I do NOTHING else right, ever, then I have to stay on top of my vitamins. 

Unfortunately I'm missing this month's support group because I misread the date on the website and ended up double-booked. But I'm committed to making it in February. I can feel how important it's going to be to go to those meetings. I need to be around bariatric folks who Get It.

So aside from missing support group and being sick and having been a doofus about taking vitamins...thing are pretty okay. 

Up to 166 pounds. I'm feeling feelings about that. 

I meant to blog about this when it actually happened, but I got lazy and kind of sad and "meh" and never got around to it. At my last appointment with the ARNP, she suggested I do something called a "barre class." Apparently this is a thing? Like, a trendy fitness thing? I hadn't heard of it but I Googled and found a local studio offering a free introductory technique class, which I took a couple Sundays ago. OMFG it almost killed me dead; I ached and walked funny, no lie, for five days afterward. And I was by far the least adept person there. But it was fun. And horrible. And slightly fun. Anyway, I bought myself a "punch card" (ten classes I can take whenever) and now that my big November commitments have died down I fully intend to go back. Honestly, I've been so sedentary for so long at this point I'm a little scared to take a real barre class (since the intro-to-technique workshop that almost destroyed me was slowed down compared to what they do in a normal class). I may need to reintroduce myself to the good ol' treadmill and get slightly less out of shape before I start redeeming my punch card.

Tonight I had a session with my therapist. It was good even though I went into it sulky and morose about how rotten I've been all month. (Eating all the bad things, doing none of the good things.) But it was good, and I'm grateful for my counselor. And then I did a thing I should've done a long time ago: I went to a support group meeting-thing. My timing is a little weird since tonight's was their last for the year, and was more of a social/dinner than a structured meeting, but it was a nice way to meet people and get to know them, and I look forward to attending these meetings regularly. I think it's important to be around other folks who "get it" and are willing to talk to me about SoBe Lifewater Zero and how we're cold all the time and sleep apnea and other bariatric stuff. I've written this before, but it's worth remembering: being a bariatric patient isn't the only thing about me, or even the most interesting thing about me, but it is a thing about me and when I forget that or distance myself from it I get complacent. So I gotta start going to support group, seriously.

Only other thing on my mind is the hideous structural racism destroying our country. My heart's with the demonstrators in NYC and elsewhere, and I'm meditating on what I can do as a big dumb out-of-touch white person to actually help (as opposed to inserting myself into spaces that aren't for me, talking over voices that need to be heard way more than mine does, etc.) Doing a lot of thinking and reading and a little donating (less than I'd like) and...then what? Looking for the then-what.

Well, in the spirit that "confession is good for the soul" I guess I'll note that I ate four or five cupcakes this afternoon. (I know.) (I know.) 

Maybe recording that here will help me not do anything stupid tomorrow.

So it turns out it's been just over a year since I saw the ARNP at my surgeon's office. Yikes. I have another appointment scheduled for next month because the ARNP would like to keep a closer eye on me for a little while. I knew I'd regained some weight, and now I know how much. (I'm at ~163.) She asked how I felt about that and I told her I'd like to lose between five and ten pounds. She agreed that was a reasonable thing to do, although she assured me I'm healthy at this weight. Really, I just want to get and stay on the other side of 160. 

We talked a lot about my struggles and stumbles over the last year, and I'm really feeling much more optimistic than I was a couple months ago. I asked for "some 101 stuff" relating to food (what to eat, what to avoid) and got copies of the printouts I'd received pre-op. Back to basics, you know? Also, I've committed to attending my first support group meeting next month, and I'm excited about that. She also stressed that I need to up my exercise, which I knew, but it's good to hear it from an authority figure to drive home that, yes, strolling-on-the-treadmill is great and all (and when I was at my heaviest was about all I could do) but I can and should do more now. She recommended barre classes or something similar, so I'll look into it. (I'm more of a class-taker than a watch-workout-videos-and-follow-along-at-home person.) Oh, and I finally got around to asking for a referral to a general practitioner, as my physician retired this spring and I'm overdue for basic wellness stuff. Feels good to be taking some steps toward getting back in control of my health—I even got a flu shot on my way home. 

My labs looked good, overall. Cholesterol and blood sugar and that stuff was fine. My vitamin A and vitamin D were low so I'll take more of those, and my calcium (which used to be high) dipped back down to "kinda low" so I'm ordering some Bariatric Advantage chewable calcium. Yum yum, I guess. And I need to drink more water. (I knew this. But it's really true. No idea how I went from best-ever most-hydrated awesome water-drinker to "can barely manage ~60 ounces a day, but it's uncool.) 

So...I have some work to do, but things aren't dire, and going back felt good. Kind of glad I'm doing this as the great, gingerbread-scented maw of the Holiday Season creaks open. Need weapons in my arsenal if I'm to survive, etc. Hoping that having an appointment scheduled for just-under-a-month from now will help keep me honest and accountable. Really excited about support group; I've felt that was a missing piece of my puzzle for a while.  

Hm. Barre class, you say. I have a barre studio site open in another tab. Maybe this will be a thing. Maybe I'll find something else. But I do need to find A Thing.

Hey, check me out: I finally (FINALLY) made an appointment to see the ARNP! (This is basically to make up for an appointment I missed in...January.) I went and got my blood drawn, did a 24-hour urine collection (always a glamorous good time), and then went back for another blood draw because my surgeon's office wanted me to get checked for copper levels for some reason. No idea why: too much? Too little? I guess I'll find out when I go in for my actual appointment...in November. First appointment I could get on a day I was actually available is in early November. So that's probably not ideal but whatever, at least I picked up the phone and called. 

Still seeing the counselor and feeling in a lot of ways pretty sane, but to be honest I'm still struggling with behaviors that aren't helping my health. (Eating too much, eating the wrong things. Eating vast quantities of the wrong things.) It's frustrating because I feel like I should be OK, that I have a reasonable understanding of why I feel compelled to eat so much, and so many things that aren't good for me, and if I understand and want to stop—why am I not stopping? I don't know. I have my really bad days and my not-so-bad days and my pretty-okay days, and I'm just trying to move further away from really bad, closer to pretty-okay. I miss being a Good Patient and want to get back there. I'm happy with my counselor. She's very kind as well as smart and insightful, and is a bariatric patient herself so she knows where her patients are coming from. I think the next big step I need to take is making time for support group meetings. I've never been, and that is a mistake. 

Positives: I've actually been getting some exercise semi-consistently? I hate that I dropped that habit around the time I stopped going to my followup appointments. But I'm making it happen again, more evenings than not. If nothing else I gotta get my exercise back to where it needs to be. And my water consumption. I don't drink enough water. That used to be easy; when did it get difficult? (Probably this time last year when I started overeating, actually. Makes it tough to get all the water you're supposed to drink when you're eating too much.)

blah blah

blah

I am super tired and cranky and it shows in the poor quality of this blog post. 

Well. It's been a few months. A few tumultuous months. I've been seeing a counselor, intermittently doing better with some of my Eating Issues, sometimes exercising enough, sometimes drinking enough water, and generally feeling more-or-less better than I probably deserve to considering how casual I've been about sticking to my plan. But here's something kind of dumb and embarrassing to admit: in January, I was scheduled for a routine followup visit with the ARNP. I'd gotten my labs done (even the twenty-four-hour urine!) and had an appointment and everything. But then I got sick, maybe with the flu, and missed a bunch of work and and everything was horrible and I canceled my appointment.

And never rescheduled it. 

I had the best of intentions. (Really!) But by the time I was feeling better, our big annual fundraiser was rapidly approaching and I had basically zero time. Kept telling myself I'd reschedule as soon as the auction was over.

But then there was the aftermath of the auction.

And then there was our Executive Director's unplanned departure.

And then there was x, y, and z.

And now it's almost August.

So I feel pretty loathsome for letting that go for so long. And the longer it went, the harder it was to pick up the phone and make an appointment. But I just did! Just now! Sort of. I requested the orders for lab work, and once I have those and know when I can get my labs done, I'll call back and get my actual appointment scheduled. And in the meantime I've got to reign in my behavior.

I need to drink water. Take my protein shake. Take my vitamins. Exercise. NOT EAT THINGS I SHOULDN'T EAT. (Especially that last one.) (Counseling helps with this. Sometimes I still get the better of myself. By "sometimes" I mean "distressingly often.")

Anyway, I have no idea what I weigh right now. I can tell I've gained a fair amount. I'd estimate I'm hovering around 160+, which isn't the worst, but sure as hell isn't where I want to be. 

Part of the problem, I think, is I feel like I let go of my identity as a "good patient." Not to say that "PERSON WHO HAD WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY" is the most important thing about me, but it is a thing, and it isn't something I can afford to forget again. No matter how busy life gets, no matter how badly I want to go undercover as a normal person. 

(Seriously, self. You barely have a stomach. You don't get to be normal. Not in that way.)

Just gotta take care of stuff that needs taking care of, you know? Anyway. I'm back. 

Nothing much to report. Just downloaded and printed the intake paperwork for my first appointment with the counselor. That's on the fifteenth. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also scared. Two things scare me:

1. I will talk myself out of being honest with her

2. I will be honest with her and she'll, I don't know, force me to give up stuff I like that's hurting me? Ugh. 

Since my last post I've had my okay days and my really-really-not-okay days. I'm pretty sure I'm regaining already, which is amazing and depressing. Really need to get in line. Just got to take it minute by minute, I suppose. That'll be something to practice tomorrow: making it one minute to the next. Whee. 

So I haven’t been blogging, because I’ve been too busy having feelings.

Mainly feelings about food. And may I just say? Fuck having feelings about food. I am so over this.

I don’t know what happened, really. After surgery and well into the “eating months” (once I was cleared to eat solids) I felt sane in a way I hadn’t in a long, long time. I enjoyed food, I sometimes thought about what I’d like to eat, but I wasn’t mourning. I could (and did) bake a couple batches of luscious cupcakes to take to parties and I wasn’t very much bothered by them. I slipped up and ate sweets maybe twice, felt kind of ill both times, but for the most part I was busy congratulating myself for how overwhelmingly normal I’d become. This must be what normal people always feel like, I thought. How they feel without having most of their stomach removed. Food is good, food is there, food is good to eat when you need it for nourishment. La la la.

That normalcy didn’t last.

The return of the crazies coincided (and I suspect may have been heralded by) my return to the world of grown-up-people-who-have-jobs. About two and a half months ago I started an amazing but very soul-consuming job with a nonprofit. At first I felt pretty good, patting myself on the back for breezily ignoring all the homemade baked goods and pizza and candy my coworkers like to share. (Because they’re monsters in human form.)

If I was going to look back and identify Where Everything Went Wrong, well, I probably couldn’t. I’m realizing the problems I’m struggling with now have been with me for a long time, even if I never recognized them. But there is one incident that stands out in my mind because while it wasn’t the first slip-up or mistake I’d made in my post-surgery life, it was the first time that a slip-up or mistake set off Giant Crazy Failure Klaxons in my head and served as an excuse for further destructive behavior—rather than as a sobering reminder to get back on track.

One of my coworkers is a talented baker, and generous with her skills. She brings in cupcakes for peoples’ birthdays, and cupcakes are usually pretty easy for me to ignore. They weren’t one of my “things” pre-surgery (though I would eat and eat them if given the chance, cupcakes weren’t lust objects in and of themselves. I didn’t seek them out.) But one day she brought in homemade Nutella brownies and I got hit by a few big, bad waves of anxiety and began to perseverate on the brownies.

It was a familiar pattern. I got stressed out and anxious about something work-related, knew there were brownies nearby that I needed to resist, and got into this awful loop that produced the shittiest logic of all time: “If I just give in and eat a damn brownie, I’ll be able to stop thinking about brownies and actually get some work done.” I used to talk myself into eating all sorts of shit that way, back in the pre-surgery days.

So I ate a brownie. And felt, oh my god, so sick.

So ate another and felt REALLY sick. ENTIRELY PREDICTABLY, eating the brownies did not allow me to stop thinking about brownies, and the subsequent nausea and headache and general miseries hardly helped me get any work done. I vaguely recall confessing everything to my husband, vowing not to be weak anymore, vowing to get back on track.

And then I drove to Fred Meyer and bought a giant cookie and ate it in the car.

Things have been bad like that ever since. I’ve purchased and consumed whole boxes of cookies. (In short periods of time! I don’t mean I bought a box and ate the cookies over the course of a week. I’m talking about an hour or two, tops.) I’ve baked and eaten many things that might have been okay-ish in moderation, but I did not eat them in moderation. I’m terrified that I’ll rebuild a tolerance for sugar, and the cravings will just get worse.

The fun part is I don’t seem to be able to stop myself. Most of the time. Sometimes I can white-knuckle through it, especially if I can text my husband and get some support from him. But honestly, my current “strategy” (such as it is) reminds me of methadone treatment: bake something with Xyla, so at least there’s no added sugar. (Or not VERY much—maybe I’ll add some dark chocolate chips or something reckless like that.) Knowing I have “acceptable” baked goods at home helps me white-knuckle it through the parade of sweets at work, or out in the world. On a couple occasions I was only able to steer myself away from the cookie aisle at Fred Meyer by promising myself a slice of Xyla-sweetened cake once I got home.

This is not ideal.

Especially since the quantities of “acceptable” baked goods I’m eating are, well, high. High quantities of baked goods. Even if they’re Low Carb! and Gluten Free! they’re not GOOD for me. They’re taking up valuable sleeve real estate better devoted to protein, or maybe the occasional vegetable. But they’ve saved me from gorging on much, much worse things. I guess. I have complicated feelings about my “less bad” baked goods.

Anyway, this has already gotten even longer than intended. But I have a lot to say. I’ve been looking back over my adult life and realizing that I often ate in ways that hurt me. I hate to use these words because I know they have actual clinical definitions and I don’t want to appropriate the language of eating disorders but based on what I’ve read on the internet I’d say I have a history of binging, of gorging. I could write a whole ‘nother post about why those behaviors never rose to the level of consciously concerning me, at least not in and of themselves. In fact, I probably will write that entry but lord, I need to wrap this up so that’ll wait till another day.

So I eat—compulsively?—in ways that hurt me and, now that I’ve had the surgery, I’m actually having to confront my Weird Eating Behaviors and Constant Thinking and Feeling About Food in ways I was always able to avoid before. Before, I was maybe dimly aware that I didn’t “eat well” but always folded my binging or gorging or compulsive eating into the compartment labeled “I have an anxiety disorder and do lots of fucked up stuff sometimes.”

But no, there’s food-specific weirdness in my brain and my soul and all I ever think about now is food. I mean that literally. I am never not thinking about food. And it was always like this, except that before my obesity reached crisis levels I just gave in every time, so I was always eating, and wasn’t having to confront the fact that I was always thinking about food. (Does that make sense? No? I’m not sure how to articulate this realization.)

God, I could go on. (And very likely will!) (Later!) But I finally forced myself to bring it up with my surgeon’s ARNP and she gave me a referral to a counselor experienced with weight/bariatric/eating issues. If I haven’t heard from this counselor by Wednesday I’m supposed to give her a call to schedule an appointment. I’m terrified.

And in the course of writing this 1,100+-word screed I’ve gotten up at least twice to secretly eat more cookies.

Shit’s fucked up, but steps are being taken. 

...but only a brief one. I have lots to write about and all of it deserves more thought than I have time for at the moment. 

I've been struggling lately. But this afternoon I had a follow-up appointment with the ARNP at my surgeon's office and I got a referral to a counselor experienced with bariatric issues. I really, really need that. Which surprises me; up until a month and a half or maybe eight weeks ago, I'd felt remarkably sane. Anyway, like I said: I'll write more about this later. 

For now, I'm taking a moment to be pleased that my recent lab work looks good. Cholesterol good, blood sugar good, vitamin D a little low because lol Pacific Northwest, calcium somehow a little high. Beyond taking some vitamin D and taking less calcium, I'm apparently doing what I should be doing, supplement-wise.

And right now, despite some highly self-destructive behavior that I'm sure I'll write about soon, I weigh less than I ever have as an adult. Since I hit my adult height. Since I started puberty, probably. (WEIRD. I have Lots of Feelings about that, too.)

Anyway, the husband and I have to head out but I will try to compose a thoughtful (and reasonably concise) post about what I've been up to and what's been going on inside my head. I think keeping up with this blog, even if no one reads it, will be good for me from an accountability perspective. So there's a goal: update the blog regularly.