Just a little bit about my journey....
I've been overweight my whole life. The daughter of a thin mom and an overweight man, I was placed on my first diet at age 8. Kids teased me incessantly, and therefore, I've always been insecure about my body. My mom sent me to fat camp when I was 10 - kids dropped 20,30, 40 pounds over the 6 weeks....me, I lost 10. I've felt like my body battles me a lot.
I sometimes read posts from people who say, "I ate whole pizzas" or "Ben and Jerry's was my friend" or "I ate fast food several times a week." I am so jealous - I'm fat, but I don't have those habits. The good news is that means I don't have to break them, but I occasionally feel unexpectedly bitter that I don't get to binge but yet am the size I am. That feels so perverse!
Like many of you, I also really struggled with the idea of weight loss surgery. I know the common wisdom of how to lose weight. But years of tracking both my exercise and my caloric intake show that I almost never eat the intake that would be expected to maintain my weight, and am usually frequently below it. If I can stay under 1,200 calories, I can lose weight, but I'm freakin' hungry all the time. I have told no one except for my husband and my mom (who told my dad)...I just feel like I don't want people to judge me for not being able to do it "myself" even though I know that 30 years shows me I CAN NOT DO IT BY MYSELF. People who can just don't understand.
My surgery is coming up soon and I'm on my 2 week pre-op diet of 3 low-cal shakes and a Lean Cuisine. The nutritionist warned me this would be hard, but I'm finding that, closing out day 2, it's not. Yes, I'm hungry. But I'm really excited and motivated to get through this, and I can do anything for 2 weeks.
I need to up my exercise, and that's my Achilles heel. I have a desk job and I don't get out of the building a lot, as my work load is heavy. So while I get between 5-8k steps, it's not enough and it's not aerobic, and I don't do weight bearing exercises any more. I have a young son who is a terrible sleeper and who is hard to get down to bed, so I'm tired a LOT of the time and that has been my excuse. I've got to figure out a way to move past that for my health and my weight.
My doc actually recommended that I do the gastric bypass due to the amount of weight I'd need to lose to hit my goal weight, but I just wasn't comfortable being in a state of malnutrition for the rest of my life. I worry that I'm making the wrong decision, or that I'm making this weight loss journey harder by not doing that.
I'm also getting super nervous for the surgery. I tend to get really nauseated (and vomit) when I am under anesthesia, so I have concern about that. I am trying to get all my affairs in order just in case something happens to me so that my husband and son are taken care of (and know where everything is). I've been going through things like crazy, taking stuff to Goodwill, the dump, or a reseller - it almost feels like pregnancy nesting.
Anyway, enough for today and thanks for reading!
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