Lynnegetsbrave

Send Message

Block

Add Friend

Yesterday was a rough day.  First, let me say I follow a pretty rigid diet.  I eat between 600 and 700 calories a day.  I eat 60 grams of protein minimum, less than 30 grams of carb and keep my fat grams low.  I try to get in at least 64 oz. of water but am striving for 80 oz of water.  So needless to say when I got on the scale, I expected to either way the same or less.  Incredibly I weighed 1.6 pounds more than I had two days previous.  I was devastated to say the least.  Honestly, I got off the scale and cried.  

All those negative messages I had heard throughout my childhood, spewed forth from my mouth towards me.  I looked at myself in the mirror and called myself a "fatass", a failure.  I told myself that I was probably going to be the one person for whom weight loss surgery didn't work at all.  I was scared, alone, and embarrassed of myself.

For the two days previous I had a queasy stomach.  I didn't overeat, but I ate for frequently and depended more on cottage cheese than dense protein.  I felt bloated because due to that queasy stomach I had not taken my diuretic which I am supposed to take every day due to lymphedema.  I knew all this in my head, but weight had been slow for the previous week and I was getting frustrated anyway.

To make a long story short, I cut my calories to about 425, flooded myself with plain water 80 plus ounces and made sure I got in that dense protein and my diuretic.  I peed all day, I kid you not.  Finally, this morning at 2:30 AM I got on the scale again.  Not only did I drop the 1.6 pounds I dropped a total of 5.4 pounds.  Why?  I suppose some small part of it could have been the calorie change, but primarily I think it was a real lesson in water weight.  There seems to be a paradoxical effect between the amount of water we drink the amount of water we put out.  So, the more we drink, the more we get rid of.  It was a lesson learned the hard way, but learned today.  

As for my self talk, that is a work in progress.  The good news is I didn't fall back into old behaviors and eat away my anger, sadness, and loneliness but it was tough.  It is uncomfortable to allow yourself to feel the feelings, and deal with your insecurities.  Another day...another lesson..another step forward in my journey.

I have looked at this page so many times and vacillated about whether to tell my story.  It is embarrassing in many ways, and yet I know that the consequences of secrets tear at people on the inside and cause all kinds of problems in our lives. Sometimes we are aware of these issues and other times as we uncover them they seem to  come as a surprise.  The journey although bumpy at times is inspiring, frightening, incredible, overwhelming, and even rewarding.  Sometimes I just want to hide, to stop the world, get off and get back on in a place where everything is suddenly fixed.

For me the journey that brought me to surgery started when I was 10 years old.  I was a normal, happy, healthy, child. Then disaster struck and my father who I loved so much, who was my best friend, was diagnosed with cancer.  He died 10 weeks later and my whole world crumbled.  He and my mother had been soul mates, met in 7th grade and fell in love.  My mother was devastated and was inconsolable when he died.  People thinking they were being kind, said God him needed him more than me, that he was so special God called him home. None of this makes sense to a 10 year old and just increased my anger towards the world.  My mother loved me immensely, but she was so depressed she couldn't take care of herself, much less a 10 year old child.  She turned to prescription drugs to dull the pain and many nights I picked her up off the floor and helped her to bed.

Don't get me wrong, my mother loved me.  I was an only child and she wanted the best for me and she wanted me to be perfect as least as far as weight.  For some reason she became focused on my weight when I was 12.  I wasn't but perhaps 10 pounds overweight, which isn't so bad for a little girl who did nothing except sit at home at night and cry for her dad.  But, the older I got the more controlling and focused she became.  Every bite I took was controlled by her.  For breakfast I was allowed one slice of toast.  For lunch, she made sure the lunch ladies at school gave me the minimum amount and for supper, well that was 1/2 a sandwich and 1/2 a baked potato.  I was hungry.  Growing children need more food than that...but I was also sedentary because my mom did not want to let me out of her sight, for fear of something happening to me and for fear I might eat something she didn't approve.

I learned to eat on the sly.  God help me I took money from her purse and snuck to the corner store.  She would weigh me every morning and right it on one of the walls in the unfinished basement.  What a tongue lashing I would get if I gained a pound.  I never did, but I never lost any either.  When I graduated from high school I weighed 134 pounds and I was five foot two.  I was a little overweight, but nothing compared to what I have become.  

Why am I talking about this?  This was the beginning to me in my battle with food.  I learned that some foods would bring comfort.  Chips, candy bars, all the things I wasn't allowed to have were increasingly important.  In those few minutes that I could sit down eat that "delectable" food, my problems, my sadness, my despair didn't seem quite so bad.  It is a habit that has followed me much of my adult life. 

I guess that is all I can tolerate for now.  I hope that for the people who read this, it will encourage to take a look back in your life and identify where you learned and what triggered your unhealthy relationship with food.  

Lynne