Inside Out and Upside Down

Moving Day!

2009-11-05T16:29:00.001-08:00

I'm alive, I'm well, and I've moved over to here. So change your bookmarks and come on over!

More of the same, really

2009-01-11T21:41:00.000-08:00

So that was Christmas, and New Year's, and another year is gone. I'm officially 18 months out from my surgery, and I've been the same weight since I was one year out. On the one hand, this is a good thing. My body has found a weight that it is happy at, and I don't have to try very hard to stay there. I can stop obsessing over what I put in my mouth and just be focused on life instead. On the other hand, I've stopped losing weight when I am still 40-60 pounds higher than I was hoping to be at the end of all of this.

I don't really know how to deal with this. 120 pounds! I've lost an entire person, and yet sometimes it's not enough. See, I'm still fat. Obese, if you talk to the BMI people. And I was all kinds of prepared for shifting from Fat to Skinny, but I wasn't prepared to shift from Really, Really Fat to Kind Of Fat. Don't get me wrong, I love the change. I'm healthier and more active and more comfortable in my skin. I don't worry about chairs breaking or armrests bruising my hips or what I'm going to do the next time I need a cute dress for a function. The day before Thanksgiving, I led my family on a 4 mile hike in the cold drizzle of Mt. Tamalpais and it is one of my favorite memories of 2008 just because I felt so fantastic during it.

But sometimes I feel like I need to carry around a picture of myself from 2006 to prove that I've really accomplished a lot, that I've come a really long way and that this? This is my Skinny. And then I feel pissed off because why the hell should I feel like I need to justify my current size to ANYONE? The ironic thing is that at the same time that I want to run around justifying my flabby ass, I am insanely tired of being told what a good job I've done, how amazing I look, how great I must feel. I started a new job in July and starting there let me breathe out at last, because they only know this me. They don't know the pre-surgery me, so they're not constantly watching what I eat or telling me what a good example I am or telling me how fantastic I look. To them, I'm just a mid-30's office manager who happens to be on the pudgy side. At a size 16/18, I'm average, and that's how they look at me. And I kind of love it.

I am trying to reconcile all of this, trying to accept that this is my reality and that those amazing before and after "size 28 to a size 2!" pictures don't happen to everyone who has this surgery. I am trying to believe that this is enough, that it's okay that the vast majority of the time I am perfectly content to be who I am right in this moment. I eat whatever I want (and it's usually good for me), I work out (not as often as I'd like but more often than most of my friends), I get drunk on occasion (because I still love wine), I take my vitamins (more often than not), and I weigh myself every day to make sure I'm staying in my 198-202 range (which I randomly decided is my Acceptable Weight Range). 90% of the time I'm truly content with my life as it is right now and I really like where I am physically. I'm not focused on losing weight anymore, but I am focused on getting healthier.

It's that other 10% of the time that I'm working on. That's the time when I see other patients who have lost more weight, faster, and I wonder what I'm doing wrong. That's when I look in the mirror and think that I have failed at this and I start thinking about going back to Weight Watchers to try and lose these last 40 pounds. Luckily, I have this fantastic support system, and they have been able to talk me off of that ledge more than once. But I need to work on this whole self-acceptance thing a little more on my own, so I need to make more of an effort to keep dumping this crap out of my brain and onto the web, because that is where brain dump belongs.

2009. The year I fix myself. (I hope)

Yarf express

2008-10-16T15:14:00.001-07:00

When I was about 6 weeks out from surgery, I started throwing up. Sometimes my vitamins would set it off, sometimes one bite too much of dinner would, sometimes I'd have the dreaded "stuck food" issue. Once, I had an insanely bad reaction to some carnitas, a reaction that meant my husband had to pull over 4 times during out 15 minute drive home from the Zoo so I could throw up.

It was my body's way of getting used to doing its thing again, my stomach's way of figuring out how exactly it was supposed to work now that it had been made teeny. And it lasted a few weeks and then the adjustments were made and voila, the vomiting stopped. Until this week.

Saturday: We went out for dessert...a small cupcake and a chocolate covered strawberry with a side of tea for me. I at 3/4 of the cupcake and suddenly felt horrible. i didn't tell my husband, but I ended up throwing up in the bathroom before we walked home.

Sunday: We had a somewhat late lunch, and I was still really, really full feeling when we headed out to dinner with friends. I took a few bites of my salad and ate a breadstick and suddenly knew I was going to throw up. I finally figure out that I had probably gotten something stuck earlier when I threw up 3 more times over the course of the night, unable to keep anything down.

Monday: Had 3/4 of a frozen South Beach pizza with a salad on the side for lunch, a normal meal for me. Suddenly felt insanely full and promptly went and threw up. Miserable for the rest of the afternoon.

Today: Had a salad no different than any other salad I've had ...tuna, light cheese, baby romaine. Carrots and hummus and Wheat Thins on the side. And now I feel like something's stuck again because I can't even look at a glass of water without feeling nauseous. I've already thrown up once and I think I feel another round coming on.

I have no idea what's going on here. Maybe I'm not able to eat lettuce anymore? Maybe my stomach is still trigger happy from last weekend? Maybe it's revolting aginst the crappy foods I've indulged in? I just don't know.

What I do know is that I am tired of throwing up. It hurts and dehydrates me and I am miserable for hours afterwards. I'd like to stop now, please.

Off the grid

2008-10-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

I didn't end this blog, really I didn't. It certainly seems that way though, with my disappearance after the anniversary post. In reality though, life intervened. We got a kitten, I got a new (crazy, hectic, stressful, awesome) job, my best friend got married, my other friend had a baby and I went back to school. In other words, life happened.

The only thing that did not happen was more weight loss. And exercise. Coincidence? Probably not.

Also probably not a coincidence: my current class is on Monday nights, which means I have not been going to support group, which means I am eating rather haphazardly. And haphazard eating + no exercise = Plateau City.

On the good side, I've maintained my weight loss (with minor fluctuation between the same 2 pounds) with little to no effort. I honestly believe that this might be my body's new "set point", the place where it's happy and comfortable. I'm certainly happy and comfortable here; I'm small enough to buy clothes off the rack of department stores without trying them on (size XL or 16/18), small enough to not draw attention to the size of my ass, small enough to be able to find a cute party dress off the rack without even trying. But I'm still pudgy enough to still have my fat girl cred, to have the ass and hips and boobs that my husband likes so much. You'd be surprised at how comfortable straddling the line between thin and fat can be.

And a funny thing happens when you get comfortable. When you get comfortable, you find yourself sliding into old habits, like Frosted Flakes at 10pm. Sure, it's a teeny bowl of Frosted Flakes but....it's Frosted Flakes! In the middle of the night! (Something tells me that Dr. Mueller would frown VERY BADLY at me for that one.)

People ask me what I can eat now. And here's the plain, unvarnished, gorgeous truth of it: I can eat anything I want. (With the odd exception of carnitas, ribs cooked a certain way, and ground beef.)

The plain, unvarnished, not as gorgeous truth: I eat anything I want. I just don't eat as much as I used to, because I am physically unable to. Sure, too much sugar leaves me feeling bloated and gross, but I can still have dessert if I know when to stop. (And no, I don't always know when to stop.)

So here's where I am. The bloom is off the rose, so to speak. My body has figured shit out and while my metabolism is better now, my rerouted intestines are not the advantage they once were. But I've got another 40 pounds I want to lose, so I have to do exactly what every other person out there has to do: eat right and exercise more and see what my body does with that. I am no different than any of my non-surgeried friends anymore, aside from the smaller capacity. I eat what they eat, I work out how they work out (okay really, I work out more than most of them these days) (which is a stunning statement, right there), and weight loss is no longer a random, miraculous occurrence.

And that sucks, because that means that damn it all to hell, I have to work at this. I have to buck up and put on my big girl panties (and ten million other platitudes) and get my ass in gear. And getting my ass in gear means blogging again, it means going beack to support group, it means joining things like the Breast Cancer Awareness 30 Minutes Challenge over at Elastic Waist and getting up and going to the gyme before I go to work more often than not.

But it also means not beating myself up, not shaking my fist at my reflection and saying I'm a loser for eating those Twizzlers (because a life with Twizzlers is a ad life indeed). It means exercising because I want to beat a previous record and it means sitting down to enjoy a four course fondue dinner at a fabulous restaurant with a fabulous friend because it looked too good to pass up (and oh my god, it was amazing). And it means not freaking out if I never lose another pound, because this may be it. All I can do is treat myself and my body better than I have been.

And most of all, it means coming back here and examining my belly button lint again. Lucky you!

Remembering where I came from

2008-07-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

So.

I think I am supposed to have something profound and deep and wise to say today. I think I am supposed to talk about some giant epiphany that I have had since that wacky summer day last year when I was wheeled into a cold operating room to have my guts rearranged. Or maybe I am supposed to talk about the monumental changes that have happened, the kinds of changes that rock you to your core and make everything Better! and Different! and Awesome!

But you know, other than that whole "Oh wow, I have an eating disorder or two"moment, this year hasn't been full of drastic, dramatic changes. It's been a year of slow and subtle and gradual changes. It's been a year of shifting my perspective, of changing my habits and my priorities.

If I had to describe it to someone, I would simply say "I was there, and now I am here. And next year I'll be somewhere different."

I weighed 317 pounds when I started the process of getting approved for surgery.

I weighed 299 pounds last year on the day I had my surgery.

I weighed 198.3 this morning, and there are 58 inches less of me taking up space on this planet.

I was there, and now I am here.

All of a sudden, there I am

2008-07-07T17:19:00.001-07:00

Inside of the wrist
Originally uploaded by Minarae

I keep thinking I'm in a weird plateau and have stopped losing weight because I spend days and days bouncing around in a 2-3 pound range that centers on what I weighed the previous month. And then at the end of the month, all of a sudden I drop 2 or 3 pounds and blammo, successful month!

This has been the routine for the past 4 months or so, and to be honest, it's getting tiring. That scale keeps playing with my emotions, taunting me into thinking I'm done now, thanks! This past month has been the most frustrating because I've been hovering in the 200-202 range for weeks and weeks. Somedays I'm up to 202, somedays I'm down to 200. Never less than 200 though! That's not allowed, apparently.

I enjoyed my 4th of July weekend immensely anyways. There was lazy coffee on Friday with my husband, followed by a movie with my mother-in-law and a barbecue with the whole damn family over at my moms, topped off by awesome fireworks. We ate out for almost every single meal we ate this weekend, I had wine with dinner, we went out to our favorite bakery for dessert....twice! (I am addicted to their Spiced Chai tea...a pot of that and a tea cookie or two and I'm a happy girl!) I took a lot of naps on the couch with kitties sprawled over me, and the only exercise I got was an afternoon spent playing in the hotel pool where my mother-in-law was staying.

In other words, it was an awesomely perfect weekend, complete with temperatures in the low 70's and lots of time in the sun.

Of course, I figured the constant eating out and wine indulgences and dessert indulgences would mean disaster for me. And considering that my one year anniversary is on Wednesday, I wanted to see what kind of damage I had to undo.

Needless to say, I nearly hyperventilated when I looked down and saw not 202, not 200 but 198.7 on the scale. (I also made some rather loud noises that may have left my neighbors to wonder exaclty what I was doing, all alone in my apartment.) I was shocked, to say the least.

But when I told my husband about how amazed I was, that I had lost all this weight despite all the eating out and wine and coffee and slackiness, he pointed out that I really never ate that much at any of our meals, that I got full really fast. And you know, he's right. I do get full very fast. I can eat whatever the hell I want (to a point) but I just can't eat much of it. Call it pouch awareness, call it working the tool, call it whatever the hell you want. All I know is that a year later, it's still working for me. It's still keeping me from pounding down 3000 calories in one meal, it's still keeping me from binging, and I still feel fucking awesome.

And to celebrate all that, I got a tattoo. It was an expensive, painful, time intensive tattoo, but it turned out so beautiful. People compliment me on it every day, even though they have no idea what it represents to me. I told Kevin last year that I wanted to get a tattoo either when I'd lost 100 pounds or when I hit one year out. (I was really hoping it would be the 100 pound mark that came first.) From my highest, I'm down 119 pounds. Since the day of my surgery, I've lost 101. I've lost 75% of my excess weight and I'm still losing, slowly but surely. The last 38 pounds I want to lose are totally doable.

I think that I can definitely be added to Dr. Mueller's list of success stories when I see him on Thursday for my one year check up. If only he had a Wall of Fame! Maybe I'll just make one of my own in my living room.

Someday maybe I'll just be happy

2008-06-25T16:38:00.001-07:00

Am serious hiker!!
Originally uploaded by Minarae

Earlier this month, I joined some friends in Las Vegas to celebrate the birthday of the fabulousWeetabix. And because Weetabix is a damn rock rockstar, it was indeed a Wild and Crazy Rockstar Weekend. it was Vegas the way Vegas should be: nightclubs and cocktails and cabanas and pool parties and floppy hats and just enough gambling to say you did some. It's been a couple of years since I've been to Las Vegas, and to be honest, the last time I was there, I didn't feel like I fit there at all. My clothes were all wrong and I was too flubbity to go swimming. I was hot and uncomfortable when we were walking around and I was nowhere near pretty enough to be seen in the nightclubs. This time was different, and while it was mostly the fantastic company that made it different, a big part of it was me.

This time, I showed up in Vegas with an array of dresses and sandals that made me confident enough to not just go in the nightclub but to fall down on the dance floor and then get up and keep dancing. I had not one but two swimsuits, and both of them looked decent on me (flubbity white thighs notwithstanding); in fact, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, with my big floppy hat and gigantic sunglasses, the low cut bathing suit on and a towel wrapped around my waist and thought "Damn, I look good right now." And then I went swimming. In public! In Las Vegas!! I spent no time tugging and pulling at my clothes or having anxiety over not fitting in just so. The heat didn't make me want to cry; instead, I was thrilled because for the first time in six months I was warm. (The dryness of the air can bite my butt though, ugh). In other words, it was a whole new experience for me, doing Las Vegas as a size 16.

And it was good, all of it was good. No, it was great. It was fucking fantastic and exactly what I needed, being with that particular group of people at that particular moment in my life, because I'd had a really shitty week and they are the ones I feel safe being completely fucking nuts around.

But on the way home, sitting in the car as we sped along the highway, I started thinking about me and Anne (who was also there that weekend). And I started thinking about how she has lost so much more weight than me, that she is positively tiny and fine-boned and petite and I am...still pudgy, and flubbity, and Not Skinny. Here we are, two people in the same group of friend who have both had weight loss surgery, and we have had such different results. And even though I reminded myself that she had a different surgery, she had surgery 8 months before me, and most of all, we are two different people, damn it, I still ended up thinking to myself that she won. She's the skinny one, she's the one who's lost over 150 pounds, she's the "normal sized" girl. And I must obviously be doing something wrong since I've only lost like 8 pounds in the past two months and I still haven't broken the 200 barrier (201.1 this morning, damn it all to hell) and I'm not even a full year out and ohmygodI'mafailure. And I thought that oh, my friends must have looked at the two of us and wondered what the hell I'm doing wrong to still be this big a year after my surgery because look at Anne! Anne lost way more weight in her first year than I did! Anne wins! Everyone who's had the surgery and lost more weight than I have wins!

And oh, I know it's all stupid and broken and lame of me to think this way because these are my friends, and they love me and dear lord in heaven, they are the only ones who don't immediately squeal "Oh you look so good!" every time I see them because to them, I have always looked good and they don't need to validate my looks now that I'm thinner. And yet I feel like I'm a disappointment to them, like I'm a disappointment to everyone I know who expected me to be a size 6 by now. Everytime I eat a piece of chocolate or collapse on the couch instead of going to the gym I feel like I am letting down Everyone. Them. Society.

As of today, I've lost 117 pounds from the highest weight ever recorded at my doctor's office (back in January 2007, that was). 117 pounds. That's a 12 year old for crap's sake! And yet I still feel like a failure because I am not losing as fast as other people, because I'm not losing as much as other people, because I'm still not as think as I "should be" after the surgery. I still want to lose another 40 pounds, because apparently, 117 pounds is not enough.

The problem is, right now I don't know what is enough. When will I be truly satisfied? When will I be able to revel in how good I feel and never have it slip into the "Yeah but..." territory that I slipped into after my awesome weekend in Las Vegas? When will I finally be able to look in the mirror and say "This is enough for me and no one else matters" and believe it?

I'm beginning to think that maybe I need therapy. (Duh, right?)

Hot damn

2008-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

I think I may have finally stepped into an honest to god stall this month. I've stepped on the scale a few times here and there and it has stubbornly stayed within half a pound up or down from where it was when I did my "official" weigh-in last month. So unless my body suddenly ramps up and burns off a few pounds in the next week, I may be declaring April the Month of The Stall.

I am amazingly calm about this fact. Maybe it's because I'm hovering around 200 pounds, and I've heard so many accounts about people's weight refusing to budge when they hit that range. Or maybe it's because I have been slacking a bit in the exercise department, only working out twice a week instead of 3 or 4 times a week. Or hey, maybe it's because I've eaten a few too many carbs lately, a little too much sugar. It could even be that I've only managed to weigh myself when I was PMSIng or the morning after a salty meal. Who knows.

But I'm still shrinking; I've shifted firmly down from 18/20 range into 16/18 (all my 18 bottoms are getting too big and all my dresses are 16s or XL). My boobs are perking up, smaller but not as droopy; Kevin is relieved that my prediction of ending up around a D cup seem to be coming true. My little baby turkey neck thing is finally starting to tighten up thanks to some very expensive face cream (okay, it was midrange expensive but still!) and there is a new muscle visible in my calf. So I know that my body is still doing it's thing, rearranging itself and becoming something new and maybe it needed so much energy to make the physical changes visible that it didn't have any left to get rid of a few pounds.

I'm a little shocked that I did not freak out this morning when I saw what the scale had to say; that's usually what I do, followed by a quick slide into a deep, deep funk that takes massive amounts of self-talk to get out of. It's a process that greatly distresses my husband, so for his sake I am thrilled beyond belief that today my reaction was completely different. Instead of my usual funk slide, I walked out the door in one of my (impossibly small) adorable new summer outfits, with a flower clipped into my (completely fucking awesome) new haircut and man, there was no way for me to be in a bad mood because I look beyond cute today.

I'm having a lot more of those days lately, days when I take one last look in the mirror on my way out the door and think "Damn girl, you look GOOD!" Maybe it's because of the anti-depressants or the fantastic new clothes I've bought lately, but I like to think that I'm finally coming around to really and truly loving myself exactly how I am right this second. It's weird, because I thought I really liked and accepted my body before I had the surgery and lost all this weight but I'm realizing now that I simply tolerated it. Looking cute for me depended an awful lot on how well the clothes hid my flaws, how well they covered me up and made me acceptable to be seen in society. It wasn't about actually thinking I looked good. But now it is. Now I put on a dress and realize that it hugs my curves just right. I know I am walking around with more confidence, more comfortable in my own skin. And I am loving feeling this happy and this at home in my body, even right now when my body is my own personal science experiment.

There are, of course, things about my body that I am not entirely thrilled with. But I'm trying to get over that, bit by bit. So this summer is the Summer of Embracing The Arms. My upper arms would make any retired grandma in Florida proud because they would make me fit right in down there. Flappity is really the best way to describe them, but I'm getting over it. And I'm doing it by wearing strapless bras and tank tops and sleeveless dresses and just not caring what people might think. And guess what? I've watched people and no one is recoiling in horror. No one is shielding their eyes or running away or looking disgusted. Really, no one is noticing my arms at all. Amazing but true!

So all in all, I'm in a good place right now, despite the whole "dude, you're in a stall" thing I have going on. At least I am today. Check back with me tomorrow.

Maybe they aren't such little things

2008-04-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today is a gorgeous, sunny, warm and breezy day. I'm sitting outside surrounded by accounting books and papers that I am ignoring for just a few more minutes because I'd much rather be doing anything other than my homework. I just finished a perfect iced latte and the sun is warm on my completely exposed shoulders.

You know, I have to admit something completely shallow and superficial right now. As much as my motivation for having this surgery was my health, I am really digging the being smaller thing. I am loving being able to go into Target and pull an adorable dress off the rack and buy it without trying it on, and even more than that, I love that it's an XL from the misses section and it fits perfectly when I get home. I adore the fact that I can finally pull off the adorable pixie cut that my hairdresser gave me because my face is thin enough for it to make me look fey and whimsical. I looked in the mirror the other day and realized that right now, at this particular point in time, I look exactly the way I have thought I should look for years. I'm wearing strapless bras and camisole tops and adorable sleeveless dresses as the weather warms up, and I'm getting compliments galore about them. My wrists have shrunk enough that I can finally wear bangle bracelets again and my watch needed two links taken out to fit right.

In other words, I am reveling in being thinner, in being just like the vast majority of American women.

It is still a foreign thing for me, this fitting into the realm of normal. I no longer get a second glance when I wander into a clothing store, because I can wear the clothes there. I don't have to wonder if I am going to fit into chairs at restaurants, I'm not the biggest girl in the gym when I work out, my legs are crossed whenever I am sitting down because that's what's comfortable, and I feel fucking fantastic. I am registered to do a 4 mile run with some friends in a couple weeks (we have all agreed that it will probably be mostly walking but we will do our best!), I can do yoga without suffocating myself with my boobs and I worked out enough to give my hip an overuse injury.

I admit it, I fucking LOVE being thinner. I loved being me at a bigger size too, but I'd be a liar if I said I didn't love the fact that for the first time our 25 years of friendship, my best friend and I can share clothes. I love being able to buy 4 dresses for the price I used to pay for one dress a year ago. I love not having to find shoes in a wide width, I love being able to wear tank tops on hot days without anyone giving me a second glance, I love getting on the scale and seeing it still going down. I love all of that outside appearance stuff just as much as I love the absence of heartburn and the lower cholesterol and disappearing joint pain.

Sometimes I even love it a little more because damn, it's good to look as hot as I feel.

The lighter side of things

2008-04-16T16:56:00.001-07:00

Project 365, Day 95: Abandoned storefront
Originally uploaded by Minarae

When they say your hair is going to fall out they mean ALL your hair. Somehow I did not realize this until one day when I was playing with my arm hair. I've always had longish arm hair, and a lot of it, but it was blonde so you couldn't see it. And I have this habbit of pulling on it when I'm bored. But one day I realized that I could barely grab it because it was so short. And also so sparse. Arm hair all gone!! (It's on its way back now, darn.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The gas is neverending. Seriously, there are times when I feel like one of those balloons on the diaper commercial, except my pinhole is releasing gas instead of water. Luckily, mine is usually of the silent and non-deadly variety. Seriously, it's like my butt is just sighing for no reason. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm bordering on incontinence or anything, I'm just not airtight I guess. It's annoying and also weird. (And occasionally, the gas is evil and rivals my husband's. But his is still undefeated in our house.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I went running the other day, and when I had packed my workout clothes that morning I had grabbed a pair of capris that I bought in October for the 3-Day. I hadn't worn them for a while, but the last time I'd worn them they were still pretty clingy so I thought they'd be okay. They were kind of loose when I put them on but I decided to go try and run anyway.

Just an FYI: It's really hard to run when your pants are falling off. (And yes, I have purchased new workout pants so I will not moon the innocents anymore.)

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In a related note, you will know it's time to get new underwear when all of yours starts creeping up your but all the time. Or when it starts sagging a little in the back. Those two things seem to happen at the same time though, so just keep it in mind.

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The other night I had a cupcake at a scrapbooking thing (gasp!), and I pretty much instantly became what we have dubbed "sugar drunk"...light headed, goofy, a little heart racing. And then I had a hot flash. My friends were greatly amused by it, and now they all know why I had the surgery because hoo, boy, getting sugar drunk is the reason behind why I DON'T eat 2 or 3 cupcakes at a time anymore. They should just be glad I didn't have a carb crash and pass out on them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"You walk a lot faster now," said my husband as we hoofed it around Santa Barbara last weekend. "I don't have to slow down at all."

Damn straight.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I am trying to fatten up my husband so I can finally weigh less than him. Bastard keeps losing weight too since he's naturally eating healthier since we keep a lot less junk around the house and he eats a lot less drive through food. Oh, and he's almost cut out soda. Last time we checked, I was at 208 and he was at 202.

On the good side, my neck is positively wee compared to his, as are my wrists and fingers.

But my birthday wish for this year is still to weigh less than him. Fingers crossed! Only 2 1/2 weeks to make it happen!

Trying to silence the noise

2008-04-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

Radio silence strikes again. Sometimes I get tired of diving in and mucking about in my emotional dreck, of which there is plenty. And every time I deal with something and walk away from it, I end up finding something new to deal with. So instead of blasting it all over the world wide web I let it ferment for awhile so as to let you all enjoy it like the finely aged liquor it is.

(Oh my god, I am SO LAME. But also amusing myself, because I am easily amused.)

Anyway, I'm at this weird point where I don't know how to classify myself. I'm not the fat girl that I used to be, but I'm not the skinny girl the world thinks I should be. I'm skinnier than some of my friends, but fatter than others. I can buy dresses off the rack at Target without even trying them on, and I don't need to buy any of my clothes at Lane Bryant anymore.

But...I'm still pissed off at the way the world treats fat people. I still get irate about lame fat jokes on sitcoms, and I'm still mentally a fat girl. I look at myself in pictures or in the mirror and I see a relatively average sized woman, but when I look directly at my thighs or my stomach I see giant expanses of flesh even as I am constantly surprised by how tiny my wrists and neck are.

So basically, I don't know where I fit. I have no realistic idea of what size I am anymore and it's throwing me off my game.

I'm going to be a matron of honor again this summer, this time for my best friend's wedding. She and I and three of the other bridesmaids went dress shopping a few weeks back, and I was trying on dresses in a size 16. I have not been a size 16 since I was in high school, so it was new territory for me. But the kicker was that when it came time to order the dress, I ordered it in a size 14 since the wedding is not until August. And I had to be convinced by my husband to order the 14 because I was walking around saying that maybe I should just get the 16 since it fits right now and I only lost four pounds last month. He successfully talked me into the dress, an a good thing too. (And for the record, it's this dress and it is surprisingly hot on me.)

The whole thing makes me exhausted because confusion is hard on my brain. I think maybe I need to just let myself be who I am, where I am without analyzing every fucking thought and emotion that crosses my head. Or at least I need to let myself do that more often, because the moments when I forget to think about everything all the time are the very best times.

In other news, we bought a new car for me last week (yay!!) and we are going to Santa Barbara to celebrate our anniversary this weekend (double yay!!) and life is really pretty damn good.

An open letter to the world

2008-03-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

You know what really pisses me off lately? What really pisses me off is the fact that I can't read comments at any fat acceptance/size acceptance websites ever without ending up walking around my house ranting about how fucking annoyed I am by people talking about how HORRIBLE and DANGEROUS weight loss surgery is, along with comments about how "it doesn't work" and "people are just doing it to get skinny" and "the surgery doesn't help health problems" and "having the surgery means you hate yourself because it's just a form of plastic surgery." Know what's even more awesome? Reading these comments (and long, ranty entries on numerous message boards and blogs) and realizing that the people saying these things are essentially saying that weight loss surgery patients are a bunch of idiots who were duped into having a deadly surgery just so their doctors and hospitals could make a few bucks.

And here's what I have to say about that: Fuck that noise.

First of all, did no one in the fat acceptance/size acceptance movement bother to read this study in the New England Journal of Medicine? I would like to point out the conclusion in particular:

Long-term total mortality after gastric bypass surgery was significantly reduced, particularly deaths from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

(In the interest of fairness, it also stated the following: "However, the rate of death from causes other than disease was higher in the surgery group than in the control group." To me, this is a "Duh" statement because people who have lost a ton of weight have a tendency to go out and start doing more activities that can lead to deadly accidents, and depression seems to be more than a little rampant amongst WLS patients. But that is a whole other can of worms to discuss at a later date.)

In other words, weight loss surgery works.

As far as the DANGER, DANGER, DANGER warnings go...well, duh. Surgery is dangerous! Surgery on your insides is especially dangerous! That's why anyone who's going to have any kind of surgery needs to research the hell out of any possible complications, needs to research the hell out of their doctor and their hospital and the aftercare that is expected. Any bariatric surgeon who's worth his or her gigantic salary will tell you up front that hey, you can die from this. Or you can get ulcers or hernias or strictures or deep vein thrombosis. Or you can be one of the lucky few who ends up with fucked up hypoglycemia issues or pernicious anemia or osteoporosis or beriberi. The key is to pick a surgeon who knows how to prevent (not just treat) these kinds of problems. Which leads me to my surgeon...I picked him because A) he had a 0% mortality rate and an insanely low complication rate (I think it was like 3%?) B) he had 17 years of laproscopic surgery experience, including his stint as Chief of Surgery at the hospital I had my surgery at and C) he has an excellent follow-up/aftercare program (which is why I take a shit ton of vtamins, more than a lot of other WLS patients that I've met, but I take them because he's done his research and he has figured out what I need to do to prevent myself from having problems).

I say on a regular basis that I have been very blessed to be without problems, to be healthy and complication free, but the reality is that most of us are doing really well. I sit in my support group every month and look around and see people of all ages sitting around and talking about how good they feel, how many miles they walked, how many pills they are no longer taking and I wonder how anyone could begrudge them thier surgery. How could anyone look at these people and think that the surgery has been anything other than something good for them?

Look, I know that this surgery is not for everyone. The idea of telling someone they should look into it makes me gag, because I completely believe that it's no one's right to tell another person what they should do with their body. Really, I'm not trying to say that all the fat people in the world need to get the surgery so that there will be no more fat people ever. And I think that's where a lot of the anger and antipathy and outright misinformed ranting comes from: an innate fear that gastric bypass surgery is going to become so common that fat people will be pressured to have it RIGHT NOW, that it will become the boob job of the 21st century. In reality, it is a drastic last chance for people who want to keep being able to walk, who don't want to take 10 pills a day to force their bodies to operate correctly, who would like to breathe without wheezing. Telling them that they are wrong for taking that step, that they are mutilating themselves and are sure to fail and calling them betrayers of fat people is not helpful. It's just another form of marginalization that is no different that the marginalization of fat people that you are trying to overcome.

I will tell you a true thing about me: size acceptance helped me decide to have gastric bypass surgery. Counterintuitive, isn't it? But here's the thing...I never used to pay attention to my body or think about what it needed until I started reading and thinking and discussing size acceptance with people. Once I did, once I finally focused on myself and the signals that my body was sending (had BEEN sending me, for a couple of years), I realized that it was telling me it needed some major help. My knees were screaming about needing to be replaced in 10 years, my blood was shouting about how thick I was letting it get, my heart was racing to keep up with me and every I time walked up the stairs at work, my lungs reminded me that their capacity was not enough to handle a body as large as mine. And because I was finally able to love my body for what it was, I was able to love it enough to help it get back into shape, through any means necessary.

There are still days when I feel like a hypocrite, when I worry that my (gorgeous, witty, intelligent) fat friends will think I can no longer empathize with them over body issues because I took such a drastic step to change my own body. But that's mostly just my personal brand of brokenness talking, and I get over it and get back to having awesome discussions with them about the idiocy of the media. What would be really awesome though is if some of the people who are so adamantly against WLS, the people who sneer at us and tell us we've destroyed our bodies and are no longer healthy would just sit and talk to a few of us. Maybe then they'll realize that it's really not as evil as they think it is. And neither are we.

The state of the wardrobe

2008-03-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

My closet is in need of another clean out this month. The majority of my work shirts are entirely too big, and considering that a button down white tailored shirt is a staple of my work wardrobe, that's something that needs to be remedied. (My best friend thinks I need to stop wearing white button down shirts so damn much but whatever, it works.) (Of course, she just gave me an adorable black shirt dress that I cannot wait to wear this summer so I guess maybe she knows what she's talking about.)

I just passed off two batches of bras to a friend of mine; none of them were more than 6 months old and none of them fit me for more than 3 months at a time, and her boobs are growing at an amazing pace since she's currently gestating my newest adopted niece or nephew so she was in desperate need of bigger bras. Our boobs are inversely proportionate right now; mine shrink at the same rate that hers are growing. Although really, mine haven't shrunk as much as they could have, much to my husband's relief. The latest round of bras are 36DDs, which I currently keep very full but I figure by next month, the fullness will give way to a perfect fit. They are impossibly tiny and only have TWO HOOKS. I haven't worn a bra with two hooks since I was 16. (When I announced this little fact at support group last night, the other women all laughed and cheered; only other fat women understand the significance of bras with 2 hooks after years of bras with 4 hooks.)

I'm firmly into a size 18 on the bottom; some 18s are a little smidge too big, but the Levi's I bought the other night without trying them on fit perfectly. And they are low-rise! Never in a million years have I ever considered jeans that were low rise, but amazingly enough, as it's shrunk, my ass has totally dropped down enough that now the low rise jeans fit pretty much perfectly. The annoying thing is that I am pretty much a 14/16 on top so yeah, kinda pear shaped these days. Okay, REALLY pear shaped. I'm hoping that the running that I finally picked back up this week will work these thighs of mine out.

Anyway, I've reached a point where I can grab a pair of XL workout pants off the rack and not try them on and know that they're going to fit, which is super fantastic. I haven't stepped into a Lane Bryant since December (when I needed to buy some Spanx and bras), and I don't think I will need to ever again since I was able to find bras and undies at a department store this week. It's both crazy and weird that already, even though I have another 50 or 60 pounds to lose, I'm normal in a way I haven't been for years. I can walk into a mall with my skinny friends and buy lingerie from the same store as them, I can go to Target and buy the adorable spring dresses that my friends are wearing, I can run into any department store and grab some workout clothes or jeans without having to try them all on first.

I have to admit that this part is pretty damn awesome. Definitely helps balance out all the scary moments.

Definitely an E-ticket ride

2008-02-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

First of all, thank you all for your comments on the last entry. Seriously, putting all that out there was scary to the nth degree, but the support I've gotten because of it made it worth the fear.

Second of all, wow, I sure do know how to dump a major bit of news and then disappear, don't I? I have excuses! Good ones! Which involve school and homework and Disneyland and me being tired from it all. ANYWAY....

So now that I've had my Giant Breakthrough, I am faced with an interesting fork in the road. The way I see it, there are two ways for me to deal with my eating disorders. I can either A) redirect my compulsion and binge behavior into some other area of my life (running, shopping, knitting, drinking, working, etc) so as to still have my usual coping mechanism in place or B) I can learn how to not run away from emotions and situations that make me uncomfortable and develop new coping mechanisms. And I've decided that really, B is my only option if I want to be successful at this whole happy, healthy WLS patient thing.

But really, becoming a compulsive knitter who binged on yarn when she is having a bad day would be much easier than Option B, you know? Option B involves really hard work, a lot of facing truths and changing behaviors and soul searching. And also honesty. And possibly therapy. And definitely a lot of support group time.

(Unfortunately for my husband, it also involves a lot of me talking, talking, talking about this to him. He is very good at the listening thing though, thank god.)

One of my resolutions for 2008 was Be More Brave. This past weekend, I was at Disneyland with a very dear friend, and we went to California Adventure. She loves rides that involve nothing but plummeting to the ground; I absolutely hate them because of a giant fear of falling. But she really wanted to ride the Tower of Terror, so I decided to be brave and ride it with her. It scared the living daylights out of me, with the up and down and big drops and fast rising. I kept my eyes closed and screamed at the top of my lungs through the whole thing, with one hand grabbing my friend's leg and the other hand white knuckling it on a handle. I wasn't able to tell if we were going up or down after awhile, but the screaming helped.

And then we got off and I was fine and it was actually...kind of fun. I might even ride it again the next time we go.

The reason I'm telling you this story is because I realized today that the Tower of Terror is pretty much the perfect example of what I've been going through (and what I'll be going through); it's frightening and exhilirating and makes me cling to people and scream through the ups and downs. So I'm totally going to have to keep up with my Be More Brave resolution if I really want to do the whole Option B thing. Or you know...ride crazy ass rides at Disneyland anymore.

This is my confession

2008-02-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

This morning I sat and started to watch the ever so lovely Morgan from Fatgrrl.com on The Mike & Juliet Show. I was looking forward to seeing what M&J had to say this time around after watching them with Mo Pie and Rachel last week. But I only made it halfway through the clip before I had to turn it off and walk away and try stop feeling so shell-shocked because it all hit a little too close to home for me. As I sat there listening to them tell their stories, I realized that my own stories sound remarkably similar. And that in turn led me to realize (finally, at last) that I am just like them; I am one of them.

I don't think I've ever really acknowledged to myself just how fucked up I was. How fucked up I am, still. I've made offhand comments about my disordered eating, sure. But before today, I haven't acknowledged even to myself that this is me. And when things are out of control in my life, this is me too. I have never confessed that the reason I am fat (because yes, I am still fat; like I've said before, I'm a more "average fat" right now but I'm still fat) (and that's okay, because this is comfy, but that's a whole other entry right there) is not because of my mother or kids picking on me or any other outside thing. It's because from the time I was a little girl, something inside drove me to eat without stopping whether I was hungry or not.

Food was never something I saw as sustenance or fuel. It was something I used to comfort myself, to stave off boredom, to beat myself up about all the damn time. I remember eating 4, 5, 6 slices of toast when I would get home from school as a kid, followed by a couple bowls of cereal. I would stop at the ice cream truck every day on the way home from junior high, then have a second snack when I got home. I would rearrange the contents of the freezer to hide the fact that I ate 2 or 3 frozen burritos between the end of the school day and dinner time; it helped that there was a teenage boy in the house too, because the moms assumed he was going through a growth spurt and the disappearing food was because of him. When I got to college, I had people to binge with; we would all eat crap when we were studying. Midnight runs to Del Taco for full meals even though I'd had dinner just a few hours earlier, milkshakes and omelettes after evenings of binge drinking at Hollywood & Vine, burgers and fries while debating politics. It wasn't all socialized binging, of course. My senior year in college, my then-roommate would go home most weekends; I would stay at the apartment by myself and order in vast amounts of Chinese food or make Rice Krisipies treats and eat the entire pan. Food was how I entertained myself through a number of lonely weekends that year.

I've often said I am an "emotional eater", but in reality, I am someone who medicates with food. At the height of my worst depression episode (which was really more of a nervous breakdown), I would eat an entire order of Papa John's cheesesticks and a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for dinner. When my roommate noticed the plethora of pizza boxes, I started making sure to throw all the trash into the dumpster outside before he got home rather than leaving it for him to find. Eventually he moved out, and then my live-in boyfriend dumped me and I was all alone. Living by myself was both heaven and hell for me. I could make entire batches of cookies or cupcakes and eat them freely, without having to hide them. I remember wolfing down cupcakes in two bites, hovering over the trash can and wishing that I wasn't so averse to throwing up because at least then the food wouldn't end up on my body in yet another roll. I had a friend who would come over for movie nights, a friend who was a crazy ass black belt level athlete and could eat anything without gaining an ounce. We would order those insane P'zones from Pizza Hut, one for each of us, and we would eat the whole thing. And then we'd make alcoholic milkshakes to top off the night. I was miserable every time we did it, but it didn't keep me from doing it again and again and again. I suffered from chronic acid reflux that left me with a weird post-nasal drip and an addiction to Tums, but even knowing that I would wake up in pain in the middle of the night could not stop me from filling my stomach yet again with pepperoni and cheese and ice cream.

When my husband moved in with me, things got a little better but the behaviors never went away. I didn't binge in front of him, but the compulsive overeating kept going. I would obsess over Twinkies to the point where I would send him to the store to get them for me; I am ashamed to say that I used him as my food proxy, hiding at home so I didn't have to worry about a clerk seeing the fat girl buy Twinkies or ice cream or giant hunks of cake. His solo bowling night is Wednesday night, and if I didn't have other plans I was quite often at home eating everything in sight. I've never admitted that to him; I've never admitted that to anyone. Sometimes, if I was having an especially stressful day at work, I would start planning my binge before I even headed home. And other times, when the stress was too much, there'd be a binge in the middle of the day. I remember buying a foot long Subway sandwich meal for lunch (complete with chips and a cookie, of course!), and then stopping at the donut shop next door for a dozen donut holes that I ate before I even left the parking lot. I drove back to work in a sugar coated haze of self-hatred, but it didn't stop me from scarfing down the enormous lunch I'd also bought. And the reason I gained 20 pounds when I broke my wrist wasn't just because I couldn't cook; it was because I got myself through the pain and stress and upheaval with Sno-Balls and Taco Bell on a daily basis despite the fact that both of those things made me hate myself a little more every day. The crazy thing was that the only way to shut up the self-hatred and anger was to eat more food, until the coma-like crash that inevitably happened at the end of a binge.

I have a million more stories about this, stories and images that have been running through my head ever since I started watching that video clip. This isn't me trying to make anyone feel sorry for me; there's a part of me that worries that I will come off as jumping on someone else's train with this entry. But this is simply the truth of how I lived my life, truth that I haven't confessed even to myself before today, and I need to get it out of my head before I explode. Remembering all of these stories is leaving me more than a little horrified at what I put my body through. It makes me nauseous to think about it all now, to actually finally confront it head on and admit that yeah, that's me. I'm yet another person who has been struggling with an eating disorder for most of her life. Admitting that to myself has opened my eyes to another simple fact: whether I meant to or not, I chose to have gastric bypass surgery to treat my eating disorder. (Wow, that sounds a lot more fucked up on paper than it does in my head.) I wanted to lose weight, but I could not do it without a physical reason for binge eating to stop being feasible for me. Every time I dieted, I would eventually turn back to my old behaviors, the constant eating, the stuffing myself to the point of illness, the ongoing anger and guilt and shame over how much food I was filling myself with. But it wasn't until today that I even recognized the behaviors for what they are; apparently, I needed that physical disconnect in order to even begin to work on the mental side.

As I have said to people in the past, I've always known what to eat and if I could have afforded to hire a Marine drill seargant to follow me around and smack food out of my hand I would have done that. But I couldn't afford that, so I had an internal Marine installed. I physically cannot binge to the levels that I used to, at least not right now. I am made physically ill by my trigger foods and I no longer have the stomach capacity for a P'zone or a dozen donuts. And those two things are helping me break a vicious, ugly cycle that I was in for my entire life. The scary thing is, I am at the point where snacking is entirely possible. The compulsive overeating is already starting to rear its head again, and that scares the ever-loving shit out of me despite the fact that I am now able to recognize it and step away from the behavior before it gets out of control. On the good side, I now realize where the shame and guilt and frustration I feel towards myself if I eat too many carbs or dare to have some sugar come from. In my mind, too many carbs is a binge and is punishable. I still have to talk myself out of giving in and eating things that I know for a fact are going to make me sick; those conversations with myself really suck. And they are all coming from the compulsive eating/binge eating side of my life.

One thing is for sure though: today's realizations have shifted my focus off the weight loss and back onto straightening my shit out. And I'll tell you what, I am thankful every day that I have my Celexa and my support group leader (who is both a behavioral therapist AND a WLS patient, so she *gets it*) to get me through this, because I think that the journey I started back in July is about to get a lot harder for me.

Six months down, 600 to go

2008-02-03T18:35:00.000-08:00

I've been remiss in updating this blog with my six month stats. Heck, as I write this I'm much closer to seven months out than 6 months, and it's been three weeks since I saw my surgeon's office for the official check up. Ah well. That's how my life goes these days.

So here's the stats as of January 9th:

In six months, I lost 72 pounds (89 from my highest weight). I lost 39 inches (and 12 of those were from my waist). I went from a size 24/26 to a size 16/18 (and am now able to buy XL shirts from the misses department). My cholesterol went from 220ish to 180 (HDL is around 65, as are my triglycerides; LDL is around 100). And my blood pressure is just fine and dandy.

In other words, things are working pretty damn well.

I've been kind of slack on the whole picture/measurement taking thing lately; I never did measure myself in January so those numbers are actually from late December. I seem to have gotten to a point where it's just not as much of an obsession for me. I'm not losing as fast as I did at the beginning (but really, if I'd kept losing 15 pounds a month, I would have freaked out) but I still haven't had a stall; I'm a slow and steady loser which is just fine with me.

When I saw my nutritionist on the 9th to talk about my six month bloodwork, she said everything looks good except my B12, which was in the normal range but below 400. So instead of 2000mg a week, she wants me to do 1000mg a day for the time being and get retested later this month. I'm not surprised though; my B12 was low enough for my PCP to be concerned before I had the surgery, so whatever, I take B12 every day now.

Speaking of my PCP, I know I have raved before about how much I love her and how freaking awesome she is but I have to gush a little more. I saw her for my yearly check up this month too (woo, doctor's appointments everywhere!) and she sat and talked to me about everything, asking about food sensitivities, checking on my vitamin regimen and my exercise habits. And then she looked at me and said "So, how are you doing emotionally?"

"I'm a little on edge," I replied with a sigh. "I'm pretty emotionally raw, and really irritable and...yeah."

Because here's the thing. I am a woman with a history of depression and anxiety that started manifesting when I went through puberty and landed me in a series of therapists' offices throughout my early to mid-20's, along with a 2 year stint on EffexorXR. My mother got hit when she went through menopause. So basically, I am someone with screwed up brain chemicals with a genetic predisposition towards them being screwed up even more by hormones. The one thing I know about depression is that it's not something that gets cured and never comes back; the potential for it is always there for me, so I'm hyperaware of my mental state at all times, always on the lookout for a relapse. And I've been plenty aware that I've been less emotionally stable lately; I've been quick to anger, unfocused and sad and tired and anxious. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure that the fantastic flood of hormones from the rapid weight loss has been exactly the kind of trigger I could have done without.

So the good doctor and I talked about it, and while I'm not in the nervous breakdown stage that led to the EffexorXR, we decided a little something might help me out right now. And now I'm taking a teeny tiny pill, smaller even than my old birth control pills were; it's just 10mg of Celexa for the time being but it's working. And oh, it's been nice not having a simmering rage inside at all times. And it's even nicer not cycling from rage to sadness to giddiness to exhaustion within a span of 10 minutes.

To sum up:
Am crazy, but have crazy pills to control that.
Am low on B12 but have pills to control THAT.
Am shrinking but have pants to cover that.
Am successful WLS patient and am quite content with that.

No cover-ups here

2008-01-14T19:18:00.000-08:00

Last week at my support group, one of the women there was talking about how she's an "undercover gastric bypass patient" because she hasn't told anyone outside of her immediate family. She said people ask her what she's doing to lose the weight, people who want to lose weight too, and she tells them that it's all "eating right & exercising!" I instantly thought to myself "Wait a minute! Not cool!" but since it was a support group, I figured I should save the indignation for my blog.

Here's the thing. As both a WLS patient and someone who believes in HAES, I think that keeping one's surgery under wraps and pretending that you are dropping huge amounts of weight in a short amount of time just by exercising and eating healthy foods does a great disservice to every overweight person you say it to. And that's why it pisses me off when famous people hide or deny their own WLS (Star Jones, I'm looking at you). Every denial or chipper "Oh, I'm just eating a lot of protein and working out a lot!" from a WLS patient perpetuates the "Eat less and move more and you'll be skinny, fatass!" message that we're bombarded with every day.

I won't deny that I have used the "Oh, I've been eating right and exercising" line. I have used it once, when trying desperately to avoid discussing my weight loss with my father-in-law and his wife. But in general, 99% of the time when people say "Wow, you look great! What are you doing to lose the weight?" I answer them truthfully. I tell them I had gastric bypass surgery, and that it's helping me eat less and eat right, and that I'm totally starting to run. The last thing I want to do is make someone who's struggled with his or her own weight feel like they just aren't trying hard enough or aren't dieting the "right way." I do not want someone to tell themselves "Well, Melinda lost 71 pounds in 6 months so I can too!"

This is an issue that's found its way into the political arena because of Huckabee's semi-mysterious weight loss. Now here's the thing. It's entirely possible that he did some crazy liquid diet and now maintains his weight loss by eating some kind of uber-restrictive diet. But yeah, the evidence I've seen and read about in more than one place makes me think that the probability of him having surgery is pretty high. Regardless of how he did it, I believe with all my heart that he did not do it the "old fashioned way." He had to do something drastic to lose 75 pounds in 6 months, and telling people that they just need to start eating better and exercising more (as he does in his book) is not fair to anyone.

The thing is, I could totally pass for someone who hasn't had WLS. I have some sagging skin but not so much that I look freakish; really, it's not even enough for anyone to notice (yet). My hair thinned out some, but not enough to have bald spots or anything. My color is still great (if a little pale, which it always has been), and what I eat wouldn't give me away in mixed company. But I choose not to pass, because I feel like I need to be honest with everyone else in order to be honest with myself. The truth is, I couldn't do it alone. I couldn't diet the weight off, and it needed to come off to make me healthier, so I got a permanent helping hand installed to help me out. Like it or not, people look to me for answers now, because I am Losing It. The least I can do is be honest with them.

Cyclical discontent

2008-01-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

This Friday brings with it the annual HALF THEIR SIZE!! issue of People magazine. They had a couple of the women on the Today show this morning, along with a peppy editor from Peopl.

I kind of wanted to smack the peppy editor within about 2 seconds of her opening her mouth. And that was because she, like so very many people out there, went on about how THESE people lost their weight "the hard way." She literally said "they haven't cheated by getting surgery...they did it the hard way." She actually lumped weight loss surgery in with pills as a "quick fix gimmick," and then my head exploded. (I was really wondering how Al Roker was keeping from running over to whack the peppy editor on the head because COME ON. At least Meredith kind of stood up for all us "easy way outers".)

Now here's the thing. I used to think of gastric bypass surgery as the easy way out. I used to think that you had the surgery and whammo, you're skinny! You can eat what you want and never worry again! I think I've established pretty well that this is not how things turn out. Surgery is not easy. It is not a gimmick or a quick fix, and my god, I wish that would stop being perpetuated.

What I really want to know is why losing weight via diet and exercise alone (aka "the old fashioned way") is seen as more virtuous than losing weight with the help of a surgical procedure. Most of these people turned to some kind of program (Jenny Craig, LA Weight Loss, freakin' Optifast), so it's not like they did it all alone. How is losing a bunch of weight by eating prepackaged food somehow better than losing it via surgical intervention? Really, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Good for them, and good for us; we all figured out what was going to work for us and we took charge and changed our weight and our lives.

Truthfully, I know that some of my anger at this comes from the fact that there are still days when I wish I had been able to lose the weight without the surgery. Those are the days when I feel like I'm weak for doing this, that I was a giant failure for needing such a major helping hand to get over my own disordered eating. And then I get pissed off again because dammit, I feel weak because people like that stupid People editor keep saying that I cheated and took the easy way out. It's a nasty little cycle, isn't it?

I'm happy for those people. I think it's fantastic that they were able to lose the weight that they wanted to lose, and I'm glad that they are healthier and happier. But I don't think it's fantastic that they think they're better than me just because they did it a different way than I did it. It's never easy; it's all the hard way. That? Is the one single truth about weight loss, regardless of how you do it.

And to all a good night

2007-12-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

This weekend is the first weekend in over a month that we haven't had a million things to do all weekend. Ah, the holiday season. Party after party, errand after errand, all while bundling up against the cold and trying not to eat your way across America. And also not blogging, obviously.

"They" say that Americans gain an average of 5 pounds every holiday season; I think I've probably beaten that estimate pretty much every year since I was 18. Cookies are my kryptonite, and spending a month surrounded by them (and boxes of See's candy and cans of Almond Roca and cups and cups and cups of eggnog lattes) meant spending a month filling my face with them. I want to say I didn't eat any of that stuff this year. I wish I could say that I said no to every offer of dessert, that I walked by the treat table at work without ever tasting something, that I was a perfect WLS patient throughout the entire holiday season. But I can't, because I totally indulged this month, and I indulged more than once.

I did not, however, eat the pounds and pounds of cookies that I have eaten in the past. I had one or two Hershey Kisses every so often, instead of handfuls every day (because those candy cane ones are awesome). I baked 4 kinds of cookies and made rocky road fudge with my Little Sister, and I shared a couple of cookies with her while we baked. And then all the baked goods got sent out of the house, gifts for people at work. I made a kick-ass apple pie for Christmas dinner...and then skipped a slice in favor of a couple of my favorite cookies ever during the day. I broke my no alcohol rule and had a few glasses of champagne at one of my friend's parties. I drank numerous lattes but this year, they were sugar free cinnamon dolce or sugar free gingerbread lattes instead of those luscious eggnog lattes of Christmases past.

In other words, I still enjoyed myself and enjoyed the treats of the season but I did it with an awful lot of moderation. For once I didn't slip into my usual holiday stressfest habit of surviving on fast food and baked goods, and it's amazing how much better I felt through it all.

I won't lie and say that all this moderation has been easy. I still have a lot of intense guilt surrounding cookies. And Hershey Kisses. And champagne. Empty calories! Sugar! Fat! BAD FOOD! More than once I had to talk myself down off the ledge about the whole situation. I had to remind myself that I had only eaten ONE cookie, not ONE DOZEN, and that one cookie is okay as long as I'm doing everything else...the water and the protein and the vitamins and the working out. (Okay, the working out did not happen as much as it should have but hey, I was sidelined by some lovely acute bronchitis so there's no guilt there.) It helped that at least once a week, someone would load up our treat table at work with a plate of cheese and summer sausage. It was protein! And a treat! Perfection!

The hardest part was being given food gifts. A huge can of Almond Roca. A pound of See's Candy. Homemade fudge. A gift basket from Harry & David. And some of that was from people who knew I had the surgery! So the Almond Roca was regifted to my mom, who likes it as much as I do. The See's Candy was given to my Little Sister's family. The fudge and the gift basket were nibbled a little by my husband and me, then thrown away.

As whacked out as my head got, and as off kilter as my schedule and eating habits were, I survived. I survived by making a huge pot of turkey chili that was loaded with beans and protein at the beginning of the month and living off of that. I survived by making my pink salad a couple of times, and eating that for breakfast (or lunch or dinner or whatever). (Pink salad is a family recipe that is actually perfect for weight loss surgery patients...sweet and fruity and creamy but high in protein. Tastes indulgent when it's really not. Try it, you'll like it!) We're staying home for New Year's Eve, because we're socialized out. I'll cook up some Marinated Chicken Skewers from Trader Joe's, and some pink salad for me and cheesy broccoli rice for Kevin and we'll survive on that for 24 hours.

And I resolve to not feel guilty about it. Happy New Year indeed.

No more fantasies, no more excuses

2007-12-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

Have you read Kate Harding's entry The Fantasy of Being Thin? If you haven't, go. Read it now. I'll wait.

Done? Okay, settle in because I have Things To Say about it.

Now, we all know how I've struggled with being both a body acceptance advocate and a WLS patient; they are two things that seem 100% at odds with each other, aren't they? How can I say that I accept my body when I took the extreme measure of rearranging my intestines in order to change it? How can I tell women "Love yourself and ignore your flaws! Weight is just a stupid number!" when I keep a spreadsheet of my measurements and weight to track my losses? I am either the world's biggest hypocrite or I am very, very confused.

But here's the thing. I believe that to be successful with this surgery, to be able to not only lose the weight but develop a healthy relationship with food and exercise and all that other good for you stuff, you need to first accept your body for what it is. You need to look in the mirror and memorize every bit of it. You need to figure out what your limitations are, what your talents are, what your abilities are. And then you need to accept them and move the fuck on with living your life to the fullest.

Blunt, aren't I? Stop waiting until you are "thin enough", stop putting things off until you reach "goal". Just go out there and start seeing what you're made of. Run, dance, cook, shop, read, travel, whatever it is you want to do, stop waiting to do it, regardless of whatever size you are right this second. Because here's the cold, hard truth: you may never reach the goal weight set by your doctor. I may not either. But I'm not going to let that stop me from having a damn good time with this life of mine.

I was talking to my college roommate the other day, for the first time in over a year. And I told her about me having the surgery and she was, quite frankly, a little surprised. She wasn't the first one; a number of people who have known me for years were surprised since (in their words) I was always happy with myself and my life. It's as though there is this perception out there that you have to be miserable in life and hate yourself to do something so drastic. For me, it was the opposite. I did it out of love for myself and my body. I paid close attention to my body, and it was telling me that I was on the cusp of numerous health problems, and I saw what my body's future was every time I looked at my mother. I wanted something different than that for myself, and I needed help to get there.

Before the surgery, I did not let my weight rule my life. I didn't starve myself into a smaller sized wedding gown; I worked with what I had and I was fucking gorgeous the day I got married. I didn't shy away from meeting new people or dating prolifically, and my bed wasn't empty unless I wanted it to be. I traveled all over the country, I applied for (and got!) new, better jobs when I was bored with my old ones. I walked in 5Ks, I walked in the Breast Cancer 3-Day, I took road trips with friends. I wore high heels and red lipstick, dyed my hair whatever color fit my mood, and danced until the wee hours at bars filled with drunk coeds. And the only times I tried to lose weight were when my doctors said things to me like "high blood pressure's becoming a problem" or "your cholesterol's higher than I'd like to see it."

Here's the thing: my life today is not that different than it was before the surgery. Seriously, it's not. I have the same awesome husband and the same (usually awesome) job and the same fantastic friends. I also have the same family and the same volunteer work and the same day to day stressors. I have not magically become smarter or more popular or better in any way. And I'll tell you another thing: that is why this surgery has been so successful and so easy for me so far. I already had a life that I loved, a life that makes me happy and fulfilled and content before I lost a single damn pound.

A perfect body does not equal a perfect life, nor does it equal a perfect soul. And I don't expect to have a perfect body as a result of this surgery. I expect to have a healthier body, and already, I'm there. Can it be even better? Yeah, I think so. Every day I can push it a little harder, I can do a little more than I used to. I'm going to start running this month, something I was physically not able to do a year ago. I'm going to start running even though I'm still pudgy and soft and do not look like a runner, but I want to run so I'm going to run.

What are you going to do?

Pride goeth before the fall

2007-11-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

I got a little cocky last week. It's easy enough to do; I am one of the lucky ones who doesn't have any food sensitivities, who able to eat pretty much anything she wants. Chinese food, chicken, eggs, all dairy products...name something that someone you know wasn't able to eat and I probably can.

But I got cocky last week, and I paid for it. See, I don't dump on sugar the way most people do; I don't get the racing heartbeat or the cramping or the headache or the passing out thing. I've had sugar in bites of dessert since I've started eating regular food; the most that ever happened was a little bit of light-headedness. It was enough to remind me to stop after 3 bites, but not enough to make me really sick. Perfect, right? Instant portion control! Really though, fatty food is what makes me more sick...instant nausea if I eat anything too greasy, to the point where I need to lay down for awhile.

So one Sunday night we went out to Applebee's before heading to the bowling alley, where I ate a very tasty salad filled with chicken and spinach and apples and blueberries and strawberries and blue cheese. And then the three of us (me, my husband and our bowling teammate) decided to each order one of their "shooter" desserts. Figured it would be perfect for someone like me; small, just a few bites of something sweet. I ate about half of it (a chocolate mousse one that was quite tasty), then shoved it away from me.

Ten minutes later, I was in the bathroom. And 10 minutes later I was there again. And when we got to the bowling alley for our league night, I dashed off for the third time. But I wasn't done yet! One more trip, and then I was as empty as I could possibly be. Seriously, it was flashbacks to my first month home...I was actually daydreaming of being constipated by the end of it.

It was a Lesson Learned, I'll tell you what. The dessert followed on the heels of a salad filled with fruit. Fruit which is loaded with natural sugars. That plus the refined sugar in the dessert combined to be Too Much. And I'll tell you what, I will not be eating that much sugar again for a very long time, if ever.

But it was a lesson I had to learn for myself. Kevin probably could have told me that I might not want to eat it, but he kept his mouth shut and for that, I'm grateful. (He did say he would remind me of that night the next time I have a sweets craving.) This whole journey is a series of lessons that I have to learn for myself, no matter how uncomfortable they might be. I'll tell you what, I don't want to spend another night running back and forth to the bathroom while my body empties itself out in an attempt to get rid of the sugar.

I told Kevin later that this year, during the holidays, I want to use my sensitivity to sugars (which cause bathroom issues) and carbs (which make me sleepy enough to almost pass out if I eat too many) and fat (which makes me nauseous). I want to use them to make moderation a habit rather than a chore. Life without an occasional indulgence is not what I'm going for. What I'm going for is life without uncontrolled binges. Two bite-sized brownies is okay. Scarfing down 4 or 5 full sized brownies for breakfast is not. As long as I remember that, I'll be okay.

(And I won't be in the bathroom for hours either. Awesome!)

I'll see you at the top

2007-11-12T17:58:00.001-08:00

At the top
Originally uploaded by Minarae

Remember when I wrote this entry back in May? I was totally convinced that there was no way I would be able to do the 3-Day, just 4 months out from surgery.

Boy, was I wrong.

The walk started on Friday, which happened to be my 4 month anniversary. I'm 55 pounds down but I was still worried, because you know, I'm not skinny yet. I'm still packing on quite a few extra pounds; maybe I hadn't lost enough yet. But I had started training with a group back in August, led by a highly energetic woman names Roxanne. She kicked our butts into walking faster than I usually do, farther than I usually do, more often than I usually do. The training walks were usually attended by the same people and eventually we became this giant team, 71 members strong. And what I forgot was that I was in pretty good shape even before the surgery, so all this training was probably going to make things easier for me.

What was awesome about the gigantic team was that we were all able to find someone that walked at our pace and keep us company through the 3 days of endless walking. My partner was Nancy, and she's the one who took this picture. She took it on the top of the Torrey Pines Reserve service road, a long and windy and steep hill that we had to walk on the first day. The last time I did the walk, I had to stop 3 or 4 times on my way up it.

This weekend, I didn't stop even once. I even passed people on the way up! When I got to the top, I told Nancy that I was having A MOMENT, and she said I needed to take a picture of me, at the top, with people behind me. And you know, that was only the first big hill; we had one on Day 2 and on Day 3. And guess what? I walked straight up those too. In fact, I walked every single one of those miles, with no major injuries and no blisters. It was a goddamned miracle.

This was huge for me, on a number of levels. First, it was huge because I know that I never would have been able to do this 55 pounds ago. I think I need to send this picture to Dr. Mueller with a note that says "Thanks for making this possible for me." Second, I did this while I was still a fat girl. On Sunday night, I was in better shape than a lot of thinner people on that walk. I was limping less and I was blisterless and I was just plain in better shape. And I think it's so important to point that out, because having this surgery has not changed my mind about health at any size being possible. If I, at 242 pounds, can train successfully for an event like this and get through it with nothing more than the standard pain that comes with an endurance event like this, then anyone can.

And they should. Because man, the view from the top is amazing.

My fridge is like a drugstore

2007-10-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

To the outside world, I am obviously a person who enjoys her food. I mean, the ass had to come from somewhere, and mine came from copious amounts of fresh baked pastries, cream laced risottos, garlicky shrimp scampis and stacks and stacks of well buttered toast. Food was something that I used to cure my boredom, to calm my stress, to make me forget the things that were depressing me. If I craved something, I ate it. I didn't really think about things like nutrients when I ate; I just thought about how it tasted and how quickly I could get it into my mouth. Really, food was an accessory for me.

But as I told Danyele last weekend (over a shared plate of scrambled eggs), I have recently found myself thinking of food in a totally different way. It's not just fuel to me anymore, it's not just something I eat to savor a taste that I'm craving.

I have come to think of food as medicine. It's probably because I've started doing my grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, which means I'm eating all kinds of organic and unprocessed foods. There's so little room for me to fill with food now that I cannot help but think about everything I eat in terms of how it's going to affect me. I am not a person who likes to take a lot of supplements; as it is I can barely deal with the vitamin regimen I have to follow so I don't want to add in fiber supplements and probiotics and a bunch of other things just to keep my body functioning well. I much prefer to eat high fiber cereal and Greek style yogurt to give my gut what it needs.

The only vitamin/mineral issue I have had so far is an oddly fluctuating potassium level. Do I take my potassium supplement every day? No, because I really only need it on days when I'm doing a lot of outdoor endurance exercise (like say...walking 20 miles a day for 3 days). Instead I make sure to eat some bananas or cantaloupe to make sure I get some potassium from a food source. My HDL levels were also kind of low but instead of taking a fish oil pill, I've added more nuts and avocadoes to my diet so I can increase the amount of monounsaturated fats in my diet (and thus raise my HDL levels). My Kashi GoLean Crunch loads me up on fiber, and my Greek yogurt (high in both protein AND active cultures!) helps keep my insides primed and ready to absorb as much of the other nutrients as they can.

The crazy thing is, it seems to be working. My skin looks fucking AMAZING these days, my eczema hasn't acted up in 8 or 9 weeks, I'm sleeping better and I'm as regular as I could possibly wish to be. Finally, for the first time in my life, I am truly listening to and respecting my body. I am feeding it what it needs rather than stuffing it with what I want, and it's making all the difference in the world.

Tiptoeing towards the middle

2007-10-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

When I got home from my vacation on Saturday, our whirlwind wedding/tourism extravaganza, I made Kevin go get the scale for me. I was sure that I had gained at least a pound or two on my 10 days away from my usual schedule. After all, I'd missed three days of my vitamins. And I'd eaten a few of the lovely little Polish cookies the bride's aunt had provided for the festivities, not to mention a couple of pierogies AND a couple bites of Chocolate Seduction (the bride's mother's specialty). On top of all that, I hadn't stepped into a gym for at least two weeks so I must not have gotten enough exercise (I conveniently forgot the 5 hours I spent walking around Philadelphia) (oh, and the 5 hours I spent walking around the King of Prussia Mall).

In other words, I totally HAD to have gained some weight. And I wanted to see what the damage was.

Kevin rolled his eyes at me (unlike me, he hadn't forgotten the 5 hours in Philadelphia), but he got the scale down in hopes of calming down The Crazy that rears its head every now and again. And lo and behold...I'd lost 6 pounds.

I told this story at support group last night, and R., our support group leader (who is both a WLS patient AND a behavioral psychiatrist) smiled at me like she'd heard it a million times before. She started talking about how all of us in the group had spent so many years stuck in this cycle of trying and failing to lose weight, of starting and stopping diets and beating ourselves up for it that now we have this whole belief system built around good foods and bad foods that tells us that if we eat bad foods, if we aren't perfect, then we will fail. And then she told us that somehow, we have to learn how to find a balance between obsession with perfection and total diet anarchy.

And as she spoke I realized that the week I'd spent away from home I had not been "bad". What I'd been is what I've always wanted to be: normal. I ate at restaurants with my friends, I indulged in small amounts, and I still kept my focus on protein and water (and even vitamins on occasion). My rearranged insides didn't make me stand out from the crowd or keep me from enjoying myself. Yeah, I tested my limits a little; I didn't dump but I did prove to myself that I am a three-bite girl now when it comes to anything sugary. (Three small bites of the Chocolate Seduction left me feeling buzzed like I had just had a shot of vodka; I cannot imagine how sick I might have gotten with one more bite.)

But I beat myself up despite all that, despite the fact that for once in my life, finally and forever, I was able to stop myself, to limit what I ate even when it was something that would have been a trigger for binging just 6 months ago. It wasn't until I got on that scale and saw that I had lost more weight rather than gained it back that I was able to stop beating myself up. But R. was right; it's all about finding balance. It's all about learning how to let myself just be, learn that it's okay to indulge on occasion without going overboard, that I can be diligent about what I eat without obsessing over every single calorie that goes into my mouth and freaking out when it goes over 800. Because if I don't find that balance, I'm going to spend the rest of my life with food and my weight as the center of my existence. And you know what?

That's not what I signed on for. I spent the first 32 years of my life thinking of food in terms of good and bad, thinking about it all the damn time and letting it be the thing I focused on no matter what I was doing. I had this surgery so that I could finally, FINALLY put that burden down, so that food would no longer be something that consumed my life. And last week, on my vacation, I finally got there. I finally got there and then I beat myself up for it.

I wish I could say that I'll never feel guilty for eating a bite of cake again, but that would be a lie. All I'm saying is that maybe next time, I'll save the guilt for the second bite instead of the first. And then maybe someday I'll be able to realize that two bites is two bites and is not going to mean the end of the world.

One step at a time, that's how to cross this balance beam.

Convenient inconveniences

2007-09-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

I just ate a peanut butter & banana "quesadilla" for dinner. Well, 3/4 of a small one anyway. I'm sure there are numerous people out there who would be horrified to hear that, including my nutritionist, but you know what? Fuck it. There were 10 grams of protein in it, and I need more of the fat that peanut butter has since my HDL cholesterol is lower than I'd like. (I am of course not ignoring the fact that oh my, I am so, so full; peanut butter is filling like cotton stuffing for me.)

Food's been on my mind a lot today, mostly because it was the farthest thing from my mind for most of the weekend. See, I'm one of those people who has a hard time saying no to charitable causes so when my friend asked me to be the Parking Chair for the San Diego Heart Walk, I said okay. Of course, I said okay BEFORE finding out that being one of the chairs on the planning committee meant that I would be doing manual labor for basically 36 hours straight when the walk finally happened. And that was after months of planning meetings and diagram making and discussions with the city and the parking company and the shuttle company.

So I was up at 4:30 in the morning on Friday, and from 7am to 9:30pm I was lifting parade barricades and loading boxes and driving golf carts. And every so often I would remember that hey, I needed to eat. And so I'd eat a few almonds, down a quick protein drink, pull the filling out of a Subway sandwich. I'm positive that I was nowhere close to 50 grams of protein, because I kinda forgot to eat dinner. (I also forgot to use sunblock, which...ouch.)

Saturday was even worse. Out the door at 2am, onsite at 2:30 and I hit the ground running. I spent the next 7 hours literally moving nonstop, forgetting to even bend over every now and again, much less remember to eat. I ate a handful of almonds, slugged down some Nectar, scarfed a few spoonfuls of yogurt. I had carefully packed some hardboiled eggs and string cheese and yogurt in a cooler but then I just didn't have the time to stop and eat. I really have no idea how I managed to keep going through all of that with basically nothing in me, but I did.

And then I enjoyed some chips and guacamole with my fellow committee members and called it a day.

Needless to say, this was not the best food weekend. It was not a good food weekend and yet I am not beating myself up for it anymore than I'm beating myself for what I ate for dinner tonight. And that right there is amazing, isn't it?

Even more amazing is the fact that tonight I bought a bunch of organic beef jerky snacks to take with me when I go on vacation this week. Look at me, all planning my protein and shit. Man, vacations were already hard enough, what with my packing lists and need to take at least 8 pairs of shoes with me wherever I go. Now I have to worry about things like vitamins and protein so I don't keel over and die or something.

But you know what? It is totally worth it, and not just because the bridesmaid dress (the dress I ordered 2 sizes smaller back in June) totally needs to be taken in. It's worth it because I was able to do manual labor for 36 hours straight and actually have fun doing it rather than be miserable the whole time because everything hurt. It's worth it because I am actually looking forward to spending days and days wandering around Newport and Philadelphia taking pictures and playing tourist because my god, I can walk for days now.

Yep. It's totally worth packing my suitcase full of beef jerky and Nectar packets. See you in a couple weeks.

Trying to step away from the ledge

2007-09-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

My body is not a wonderland so much as it is a creepy House of Mirrors these days. There are times when I stand naked in front of my mirror and I imagine that I can actually see myself melting, that I can see the skin and fat oozing downwards along the lines of my body. I have watched myself shift from a woman who could only be defined as having an hourglass shape to one who is most definitely pear-shaped. There are saddlebags where there never were before, a result of fat disappearing and making my thighs start to sink. I can fold my belly up onto itself, resembling nothing so much as a Gordita wrap. Warm, pillowy flatbread indeed.

When I type, I am constantly distracted by my hands. My rings are always all akimbo, turned the wrong way with my wedding band spinning one way and my engagement ring spinning the other. And when I reach down to fix them, I can't help but gape a little as I watch the tendons that run the length of my hands dance just below the surface of my skin. I never used to be able to see them move, I just assumed that they were there; now I have visible proof of how my fingers are able to move. And my knuckles are sharper, pointier, deadlier. I should be careful about punching people now.

There are 22 less inches of me now, and a bunch of pounds are gone. I never know how to answer when someone asks how much I've lost. My surgeon would use my starting weight from my consultation and say 45 pounds; my PCP would use my highest weight and call it 48 pounds; I tend to qualify it and say I've lost 30 since the day of surgery. And as awesome as all of those numbers are, as fan-fucking-tastic as it is to be able to say "I've lost 30 pounds in 8 weeks!", I'm having a very hard time not comparing myself to other people, having a hard time convincing myself that 800 calories is not too many, having a hard time convincing myself that this is not all going to stop any minute now, causing my body to stop melting and my inches to stop disappearing and my pounds will stay right where they are, soft and comfortable on my hips.

I'm in a place where I am not always comfortable. I don't know this body, I don't know this life where I eat nothing but healthy food and have a cholesterol number that's dropped 75 points since last November (141, people. It hasn't been 141 since I was in high school, I'm pretty sure). I don't even recognize myself right now. And I'm not talking about my reflection; I'm talking about my SELF, my being, the person that is living this life. I am not the woman with the tendony hands, I'm not the woman who counts out 6 Cheez-Its to satisfy a craving, I'm not the woman who plans workouts at 9pm because that's when they fit into her busy schedule.

The smaller jeans have been easy to slip into. The entirely new life is going to take some breaking in.

Insert linktastically random entry here

2007-09-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

I've got just over 2 months left to finish training for the Breast Cancer 3-Day (feel free to donate/pass on the link!), and I'm so far behind the recommended training schedule it's not even funny. On the other hand, I've already started working out about 10x more than I did the last two times I did it, so I'm pretty sure I'll be okay.

Anyway, I've started trying to participate in more of the actually organized training walks. So Thursday I was doing a little 5-6 mile walk with a group (despite the super horrific humidity that we've been dealing with) and about 3 miles in I was suddenly way behind the group and really, really struggling. And I had no idea why, other than the fact that good lord, the women who were there that day were all speedwalkers! It was really incredibly frustrating, because come ON, it was just five miles! It should be no problem! I had no idea why I was freaking out, but I was.

That night I got home and found a message from my doctor's office; my PCP had ordered some bloodwork to be done around the 2 month mark and she'd gotten the results from the blood I had drawn on Thursday morning. And my potassium was low enough (3.1 when it should be at least 3.5) that she had called in a prescription for me for potassium supplements and wanted me to come in again on Friday for a second blood check. So I looked up low potassium levels and voila, the answer to why my walk was so hard on me appeared.

And then OF COURSE my potassium levels were fine at the next blood check, but since that was after eating versus the fasting first one I'm thinking this is something that's going to reappear whenever I do endurance-type exercise that involves a lot of sweat. Things like...oh, walking 60 miles in 3 days. So before the 10 mile training walk on Sunday (in 85+ degree weather with 70% humidity no less), I went ahead and took the potassium supplement and between that and the sugar free sports drink mix that I found (which amazingly does not taste like ass!), I was okay afterwards. No muscle cramps, no sore butt, and I only had to take a 45 minute nap that afternoon.

So I'm thinking that potassium before a really sweaty outdoor workout (like a training walk or a session with my favorite exercise class ever) will keep me healthy and happy and in general, not dead.

I'm assuming that all my other levels were okay, since she didn't say anything about those. I'll find out the other results when I see her on the 11th, I suppose.

In other news, people in my life have started asking me what I can eat, what I do eat, occasionally asking "Can you eat that?" I feel like I eat SO MUCH; I'm averaging 600-800 calories a day and man, I have got to stop thinking that anything over 800 is gluttony. Because COME ON! 800 calories is nothing! I can burn half of that in 30 minutes on the elliptical! And really, self flagellation is both unattractive and unproductive for me, especially considering that A) my nutritionist doesn't worry about calorie levels until 12-18 months out and B) I exercise a lot.

Today it was super hot and humid and gross and I mostly survived on sugar free creamsicles, cold watermelon and cheese. In other words, I totally snacked my way through the day, with a couple Nectar drinks to round things out. So I'm not a perfect eater by any means. But here's a few of my meals from last week. I have found that I have to be awake for a couple hours before I can handle anything other than a protein drink or water in the morning, so I take both my breakfast and my lunch with me to work. I use one of these to hold all my food; with some ice packs in there, I can keep it in my office and not have to worry about anyone questioning my food. (By the way, I highly recommend the Laptop Lunch box; the little containers are the perfect size for post-op meal planning.)

And just for shits and giggles, here's my vitamin stash. And also, there's this:

This was taken last month, at the BBQ we threw for Kevin. I'm hot and sweaty and red but holy cow, there's collarbone dimples showing! And my eyes are suddenly bigger, what the hell is up with that?

I guess all this gut rearranging and food measuring and vitamin taking and sweaty exercising is working or something. Cool.

Life without the tunnel vision

2007-08-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

Last week, my husband turned 31. Well, first he had a kidney stone, and then he turned 31. And since we did very little to celebrate when he turned 30 last year, it was decided that this year would be the year of Big Celebrations. Big as in my mother-in-law came down and we had a big ass barbecue at my mom's house and did various other socializing type things.

Thursday night we celebrated his birthday with a nice dinner out at Jake's, a restaurant we never go to often enough. My mother-in-law and her boyfriend were with us; it was the first time they'd been around me since the surgery and I knew they'd be watching to see how I ate. At one point, Boyfriend asked could I have a roll if I wanted it, and I said yes, I could, but was able to honestly say no, I didn't want one. I was looking forward to a few bites of their amazing crab cake, and even more than that, I was looking forward to some perfectly cooked macadamia panko crusted salmon (I never get salmon at home because Kevin hates it). I didn't want to fill myself up on one roll.

So that's what I had...a little bit of crab cake, a few ounces of salmon, and a lovely to go container that meant I would get to have more yummy salmon the next day for lunch. The three of them each ordered dessert and I joked about Kevin being my surrogate eater, but in reality, all of it sounded too rich, too sweet, too much. I was perfectly content to sit and just talk with them while they finished their desserts and I sipped my water. It was a perfectly lovely meal, and afterwards I walked 3 blocks to the car in heels I'd been wearing all day, and I wasn't a bit miserable. My feet didn't hurt, my knees didn't hurt, and the only thing I was worried about was falling down because it was dark and there were no streetlights.

People talk about their "wow moments", but that was more of a "wow evening" for me. In January, I weighed 318 pounds, and would have eaten three times as much at the restaurant. I would have walked away stuffed and whiny about having to walk three blocks, because my feet would have been killing me. Last week, I weighed 275 (which is still a lot but damn, that's 43 pounds less) and nothing hurt and I wasn't stuffed and I was able to walk 3 blocks without blinking. And finally, FINALLY, a meal out with family was not just about the food we were eating. It was about sitting and spending time talking to people we see too rarely; the food was just a nice accompaniment.

And on Saturday, I was able to do it again. We'd planned carefully, picked out a marinade with very little sugar for my chicken breasts (this one, in case you are looking for a good one), made sure there was some fruit there that I could eat with it. And then I went on and enjoyed the party. I ate my half a chicken breast and cantoloupe, I drank a zillion bottles of water, I cut and served the black forest cake I had made...and I never once felt deprived or left out or weird. And I had a really, really good time with our friends and family.

So you know, even though I really wish someone had told me "Oh, you'll totally throw up every so often for awhile" rather than saying it was a "possible side effect", I am still so glad that I did this. I'm glad because I finally know what it feels like to not be obsessed with my food, to not have to eat it all out of a desperate fear that I will never eat that particular dish again, to be able to just sit and socialize with people and have them be my focus without wondering if they would think badly of me for having seconds.

It's not a whole new life or anything; it's just a better version of the one I already had.

Haves and have nots, part the zillionth

2007-08-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Remember how I was all braggy about how I have no food intolerances? Yeah, well...my heart was broken by some carnitas the other night. I'm thinking roast pork is something I will have to stay away from because after eating some I ended up spending the 15 minute drive home from the Zoo alternating between hanging my head out the window for fresh air and having my husband pull over so I could heave on the side of the road. But hey, at least I finally know what the hell "foamies" are!

Onward.

I've been looking back over the checking account statements and noticing how much money I've been spending on supplements and vitamins and wow. It really adds up after awhile. I'm lucky enough to live in a world where I have an FSA that can help cover the vitamin costs, but the protein mixes are just going to have to be added to the food budget, I guess. And of course I really only like the Nectar protein mixes, which are $30 for the big container. I couldn't possibly have gotten hooked on the generic vanilla protein shake instead. Add that to the $125 I'll be spending every quarter on vitamins for the rest of my life, and I begin to realize why there is such a large number of post-ops who end up not having optimal success with this surgery.

It's a basic fact that it's easier and cheaper to eat crappy food; take a look at the diet of any broke college student and you'll see what I'm talking about. But you cannot afford to eat crappy food if you are a WLS patient and you want to be both successful and healthy; you have to suck it up and pay for the good cuts of meat, for the high protein/low carb foods, for the stacks and stacks of vitamins. Medicare and Medicaid pay for this surgery now, and here's the thing: to qualify for either of those medical plans, you have to be living below the (ridiculously low) poverty line. And that means that those patients are not leaving the hospital and going home to a situation where they will be able to afford high quality, fresh foods on a regular basis. They will be more likely to have to choose between vitamins for the month and paying the rent, and guess what's going to win? And what kind of aftercare are these patients being given? Something tells me not as much or as good of care as privately insured patients are getting, if my mother's stories about Medi-Cal are any indication (she's the Medi-Cal coordinator for a hosptial here in town so she knows of which she speaks).

I've always been irritated over the fact that having access to good healthcare, healthy food and even active lifestyles is pretty much only available to the middle and upper classes. Yeah, yeah, you can buy cheap fruits and veggies at farmer's markets...but there are no farmer's markets in the ghetto. And yeah, you can go walking or jogging and not need a gym to exercise...but you do need a decent pair of shoes, and some free time not taken up by your totally necessary second job.

And now I'm getting irritated because it seems like even WLS is something that will work better for the middle and upper classes simply because they have more money to afford the vitamins and protein and healthy food that are absolutely essential to being successful afterwards. It makes me want to rail against the unfairness of it all, but I feel like I'm simply shaking my fist in a hurricane.

Who knew I would eventually feel like one of the lucky ones when I was swallowing my 14th vitamin of the day? I certainly didn't.

TMI is probably stating it lightly, but I'm all about honesty

2007-08-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I was absentmindedly playing with my wedding ring (which has been noticeably looser over the past few days) and I decided that I should weigh myself. When I told Kevin he needed to go get the scale out from his Super Secret Hiding Spot, he arched an eyebrow at me in his patented "Are you really sure about this because I am TOTALLY going to do it" way. I insisted that he go get it because I was certain it would be good news when I hopped on it this time.

And so he did, and so I did, and....

5.3 down from last Thursday. Like magic! Except really it was all that anabolic state scientific stuff and not magic at all. And now I can say I've lost just over 20 pounds since the surgery last month and be Very Impressive. (And also stop being mopey.)

So there was that, which was really super awesome. But there are other things that are not really super awesome. Yesterday I did not go to the gym because I didn't get home until 8pm and it had been a definitely Not Awesome day on the body side.

(And now I am going to regale you with stories about my bodily functions so feel free to not read it if you are eating lunch or something. Or if you just don't like the word poop.)

Back in 2001, I worked at an academic research institution, which is as well known for its striking architecture (designed by Louis Kahn) as for its research (Frances Crick was a scientist in residence while I was there; he had very bushy eyebrows). And part of that striking architecture were breezeways that wrapped around the building, so that to get to the bathrooms, we had to go out on the walkway first. (Stay with me, I swear there's a point to this.) At the time I was working there, I was trying to be more healthy and started taking a daily multi-vitamin every morning, usually right after I ate breakfast at my desk because they had a tendency to make me nauseous. Well, one morning, I took my pill a little too long after I ate my oatmeal and soon I found myself running out the door and onto the breezeway trying desperately not to throw up.

I failed, miserably. Oatmeal barf was all over the breezeway and me, and it was most definitely not fun. And I realized that really, standard multi-vitamins were not for me, because I did not want to puke because of them. So I stuck to children's chewables, until the surgery.

And now I take 14 vitamin pills a day, split up over the hours between 8am and 10pm. (I told you my doctor is very proactive in deficiency treatment!) My morning pills are one B-1, 3 chewable iron, and one chewable multi-vitamin. I usually do them about 20-30 minutes after I eat breakfast, when there's still a little food in my stomach. But yesterday was busy, and I didn't take them for over an hour after breakfast, AND I took them too fast.

And then I spent 20 minutes in the bathroom throwing up, because vitamins still make me nauseous. Who knew?

I don't throw up often (this was only the third time, and this was the first time it wasn't because I ate too fast), but it does happen more easily. Something I don't exactly enjoy, that's for sure, and definitely a downside. At least it's a tolerable downside since A) it does not happen very often and B) even when it does, it's usually over super fast and relatively pain free for me.

Oh, and today? I did my chewables at the very end of my meal, with no waiting. And no nausea, go figure.

On top of the vitamin nausea yesterday, I've had the ongoing saga that is constipation (a saga I'm sure we've ALL been through). Lots & lots of protein + not much fiber = Unhappy Butt. Seriously, it was like my butt just forgot how to work all of a sudden! Before the surgery, I was one of those people who was a once a day, every day girl, so this whole "have to do an ab workout on the toilet" thing was making me not happy. My butt and I quickly became adversaries, warring it out every day as it teased me with a "gotta poop!" signal only to refuse to let go of the goods.

Thanks to the addition of Benefiber to my morning and evening protein drinks (not to mention a more varied diet these days), my butt and I have come to a grudging accord. In fact, I think there may even be a pattern of regularity starting to happen. This makes me happier than you can imagine. It makes me so happy, in fact, that yesterday after a low-key but successful trip to the bathroom, I literally patted myself on the ass and said "Good job, butt!"

I am having conversations with my butt, people. If that doesn't tell you how serious this issue had gotten, I don't know what will.

To sum up: 5 more pounds gone, vitamins make me ill, and my pooper is finally starting to work right. Could life be any better?

Nobody tells you it really sucks sometimes

2007-08-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

You know what no one tells you about weight loss surgery before you have it?

No one tells you that it is a complete and total mindfuck.

Oh sure, you read the stories about stalls and hibernation syndrome and slow loss, about people not being able to recognize that they are not as big as they used to be, about patients still wondering if they will fit into a restaurant booth and being shocked when they do.

But those stories are all easy to ignore, because it's much easier to think that you are not going to have any of those issues. You're not going to freak out and melt down when the scale refuses to budge because it's just a number! At least, that's what I believed about myself, because it's much easier to focus on the promise of crazy rapid weight loss and stories about people losing 30 pounds the first month.

I believed it until today, when I found myself sitting in my surgeon's office fighting back tears while telling the dietician that I was not doing so well because when I weighed in this morning I weighed exactly what I weighed 3 weeks ago. Even my home scale backed that up....when I did my one month weigh in at home, it was exactly right where it was 10 days ago. And when I say exactly, I mean it didn't move up or down even 1/10th of a pound. In other words, I've lost 15 pounds in one month, and that all fell off in the first 9 days. (At least I didn't gain 6 pounds, like I dreamed I did last night!)

Surprisingly, (and also awesomely) Laura the dietician said she wasn't concerned in the least, that 15 pounds in one month is pretty average, that plenty of patients stall like this in the beginning. She was, in fact, pretty damn happy with what I've been eating and how much water I've been drinking and how much I've been working out. But it didn't make me stop wanting to cry.

Dr. Mueller did better at making the "I want to cry" feeling go away, because he is also awesome. He told me that in fact, the stall tells him that I'm doing everything right. Totally counterintuitive, right? Well, we talked about the fact that I am down a size in clothes and that when I measured myself this morning (I'm doing monthly measuring) I'd lost 14.5 inches (I KNOW! Can you believe that?). And when he heard that part he said "See, now I really know you're doing what you're supposed to!" and went on to explain that the lack of weight loss combined with the shrinking size means that I'm already shifting from a catabolic state to an anabolic state. And being in an anabolic state is good! And the weight should start coming off again soon, he said, and when it does it'll be all fat.

Of course, the whole anabolic vs catabolic state confused me so I looked it up as soon as I got to work and here's the best explanation I found:

One way of categorizing metabolic processes, whether at the cellular, organ or organism level is as anabolic or catabolic. Catabolism is the part of metabolism that breaks down molecules into smaller units to generate energy and simultaneously takes measures to conserve energy. Stress, such as during weight loss program, can put the body into the catabolic state, in which the body can experience muscle loss, reduced metabolic rate with a corresponding reduced calorie expenditure and lower perceived energy levels, and weight gain in the form of fat. One aspect of the catabolic state is that it can be characterized as having high cortisol (a catabolic stress hormone) levels and low testosterone (an anabolic hormone) levels.

Conversely, in the anabolic state the body experiences muscle maintenance or growth, normal metabolic rates, and weight loss in the form of fat. The anabolic state can be characterized by relatively low cortisol levels and high testosterone levels.

So yay me? I guess? It's just so fucking hard to deal with, because I've never attempted to lose weight without that number on the scale being the be all, end all measure of success. And it wasn't just me using that to keep track of how well I'd done, it was my doctors and my Weight Watchers leaders and friends and everyone. It's incredibly hard for me to let go of that, it's incredibly hard to know that whenever someone asks me how much weight I've lost since the surgery I can only say 15 pounds; I'm so ashamed/disappointed that I'll probably add in the 10 pounds I lost on my pre-op diet and say 25 instead. Or maybe I'll just keep saying "I don't know, but I've lost a clothing size!" So far, that seems to make people happy for me.

But I still can't wait until I can answer that question with a number instead.

Cures what ails me

2007-08-07T23:00:00.001-07:00

The past 36 hours have been kind of hard for me. Yesterday I ate some soup at work and managed to not chew a piece of chicken enough, and I discovered last week that the only thing that will make me sick is not chewing enough and eating too fast. Despite this, I managed not to throw up, but when it came time for me to take my afternoon vitamins, those fuckers got stuck in a bad way.

Now see here's the thing. My surgeon is really aggressive in his practice, and that extends to the prevention of vitamin deficiency. What that translates to is 14 pills a day, including 6 calcium pills. And those calcium pills are quickly becoming the bane of my existence. Luckily, I have already found a liquid alternative I will be investing in soon if this doesn't get easier soon.

Anyway, my afternoon pills include 3 of my 6 calcium pills, and taking them so soon after my little "not chewing enough" incident made my pouch super not happy, and also sore enough that this morning, even drinking was hard. I was dreading my vitamin taking today until my friend told me to try using warm water to take them since that's what she has to do to take her vitamins. And it worked! Score one for my friend. So I got the vitamins down, but eating was still a touchy subject all day.

The whole thing left me feeling worn out and cranky and a little pissed off at my body for rebelling this way. I came home and sulked and ate some smushy cottage cheese, and then Kevin and I headed to the gym.

And thank goodness we did.

A half hour on the elliptical and a round of circuit training was exactly what I needed. About 10 minutes into my time on the elliptical, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my legs and my breath and the way I felt like I was running through clouds. And right then, as I built up a good sweat and felt my heart race a little more suddenly became very aware of my ass, I made up with my body. I didn't just make up with it, I fell in love with it all over again.

We've got a complicated relationship, my body and I. It's got a lot of adjusting and relearning to do and sometimes that adjusting is going to hurt and be sucky, but I've just got to remember how totally fucking awesome I felt tonight on the elliptical to make this whole wacky deal all worth it.

Placeholder

2007-08-06T16:50:00.001-07:00

I never get tagged for memes. Never. It's probably because people who know me would figure I'd just ignore the tagging; I'm a bitch like that sometimes. But Dagny tagged me and I'm in between ruminations so I will go ahead and respond. But I won't tag anyone else because A) I'm lazy and B) everyone's probably already been tagged.

Eight Obscure Things About Me

1) When I was a young, naive, virginal college freshman, I declared that I would only sleep with 10 men over my lifetime. Luckily for me, things worked out with Kevin; if they hadn't I'd have been screwed because he was #10.

2) I spent a large amount of my life believing that I have blue eyes and am 5'7". Turns out my eyes are more on the gray side of blue-gray...and I'm only 5'6".

3) My hair has been literally every semi-natural color it could possibly be; from white blonde to raven black. I've been dying it since I was 18 years old and right now, I honestly have no idea what my natural color is.

4) I was a Girl Scout from the age of 8 to the age of 13; I quit right after receiving my Silver Star, which is the second highest award you can receive in Girl Scouts (kind of like the award right before the Eagle Scout award). I used to have a T-shirt that said "Girl Scout gone bad". I wish I could find another one like it.

5) I learned how to read sometime between the ages of 3 and 4, but I didn't learn to tie my shoes until I was almost 7. My brain has always worked better than my fingers.

6) I graduated 18th in a class of 350 when I graduated from high school. I am S-M-R-T smart.

7) Sign that Kevin and I were truly meant to be together: My mom got pregnant despite an IUD; his got pregnant despite being on the Pill. If I ever get pregnant (Kevin's had a vasectomy), I figure our baby will be some kind of oracle sent by the Universe.

8) From my father, I inherited a second toe that's longer than my first. From my mother, I inherited a right hand pinky finger that is shorter than my left hand pinky finger.

The space between

2007-08-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

You know what's weird?

What's weird is that in all of my research that I did before I finally decided on the RNY, I never managed to realize that the topic of weight loss surgery is basically a battlefield.

On the one side are the people who truly believe with every bit of their being that WLS is bad and evil and unnecessary. They can pull out piles of testimonials from people who had horrible, terrible outcomes; they will tell you repeatedly about the worst complications that can happen, and death is not the worst of them. They will call WLS mutilation and amputation and deformation, because it is the worst thing they can imagine anyone doing to themselves.

On the other side are the people who think that WLS is nothing short of a miracle, the answer to every medical problem ever associated with being obese. They will tell you about the dozens of people they know who had the surgery and are doing GREAT and are happy and healthy. They will point out that complications are part of any surgery, that overall statistics are highly favorable.

That first group would be quick to tell me that I have doomed myself by having the RNY done. I would be regaled with stories about vitamin deficiencies and intestinal blockages and staple leaks that will surely make my life miserable over the next few years. My own stories about friends who are 2, 5, even 10 years out and in fantastic health will fall on deaf ears, or will be called anomalies.

The second group would be sure to heap praise on me, and ask me when I was going to convince my mother that she needed to do it to because it will make her life so much better! She should do it right now! They would be sure to preach to me about how horrible fat is, how it ruins your health and your life and everything is better forever once you have the surgery.

I somehow managed to never notice that these two sides are as bitter and angry towards each other as red states and blue states. And now, I find myself firmly in the Green Zone between them. I just wish that both of the groups would wake the hell up and realize that they're both totally wrong and both totally right. If there's one thing I learned when I was trying to decide about the surgery, it's that there is no right answer for everyone. For some people, it truly is a life-saving procedure because they are suffering from so many problems related to their weight that they are dying and this gives them their life back. For others, it turns into a nightmare of complications that leaves them more miserable than before. That's just the facts, ma'am.

I am not someone who believes that every fat person is unhealthy, because I've been an active, athletic and healthy fat girl for my entire life. Hell, I've been healthier than most of my thinner friends. But I cannot deny that being morbidly obese can and does cause health problems, because I have watched my mother suffer for years from ailments directly related to her weight. I have seen the pain, watched the pill taking, heard the wheezing when she gets worn out. She is a wonderful person, and she is the reason for the self confidence I've always had, but even she would not be able to deny that her weight has affected her quality of life. And I saw myself heading down that same path, and I had to find a way to stop it, and WLS was how I did it.

That said...I have to admit that as happy as I am with my WLS outcome, there are times when I wish that I had been able to do what my coworker/friend has been able to do. Sometimes I wish that I had been able to buckle down and work out and eat according to a strict diet and lose the weight as well as she has been. For her, that worked, and the idea of having surgery to help her is foreign. And yet, we are both able to support each other and cheer each other on, because we're both in the Green Zone. We're not taking sides, we're not preaching, we're just...existing, and doing what we've decided we need to do for ourselves.

If only everyone was, because the last thing we all need during this whole weight loss journey thing is a bunch of arguments over the "right way" to do it. It's time for people to shut their mouths and stop telling other people what they should do, you know? That energy could be better spent taking care of yourself instead.

Just something to think about.

Silver cloud, rusty lining

2007-07-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

I've exercised in some way, shape or form on 5 of the past 7 days and my ass, it is aching.

I've gotten an average of 64 grams of protein in, and I always get 64-72 ounces of water in.

Yesterday, I put on a pair of jeans that is a size smaller than the jeans I've been wearing lately; those jeans haven't fit since before I broke my wrist (and gained 20 pounds while recovering).

Every shirt I own is fitting me differently (half of them are too big now), and so are my shoes.

My husband noticed yesterday that when we're spooning, his arm doesn't have to reach as far to get around my middle.

My boobs are still ginormous, but my bras all fit better.

And today when I did my weekly weigh in, my scale said I had gained 3 pounds since last week.

That's how it goes. There's all these other things telling me that hey, I am losing weight! My body is shrinking! Things are going the way they are supposed to! And then along comes the evil, stupid scale to try and convince me that no they're not! It's failing, I'M FAILING, just like every other time.

Luckily, those jeans still fit me perfectly this morning, so I am (mostly) able to ignore the evil, stupid scale. And right now I am debating whether to weigh myself at home at all. I'll be seeing both doctors on a regular basis, so it's not like I'll never get weighed. At the very most, I'm only going to weigh myself on the monthly anniversary of the surgery, because bodies are too finicky. Those 3 pounds are probably water retained by my body to help heal the muscles that are aching from all the new working out I've been forcing them to do (that happens pretty much every time I start working out in earnest), but hopping on and off the scale all week is not going to make the water go away any faster.

I know that I am supposed to be obsessed with that number on the evil, stupid scale, especially now, when I am supposed to be losing weight LIKE CRAZY. But I don't want to be. I don't want to obsess about that number because I have other numbers I'd rather be obsessed with. Numbers like my jeans size and my inches and how fast I can walk 5 miles are so much more important to me in the long run. And numbers like how many grams of protein I've eaten and how many ounces of water I'm drunk are so much more important to my body that those are the numbers I need to pay attention to.

So tonight, I'm having my husband put the scale away until the 9th of August, and it will only be taken out again on the 9th of each month for the first year. I think sacrificing one morning a month to the stupid, evil scale is plenty.

Especially since I've already sacrificed 32 years to it.

Progressing apace

2007-07-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

I realized this week that I am so very, very blessed to have the doctors that I have. I chose my PCP based on the fact that not only is she about my age, her main area of interest (aside from internal medicine) is weight management. And just like I hoped, she's actually well-informed about obesity research and treatments, which means that she actually knows how to take care of me post-op. I can't help but think that I'm not her only bariatric patient because she really knows her stuff, which was demonstrated really well when I saw her from my post-surgery follow-up on Wednesday.

She asked all the right questions, made sure I really knew what had been done to me (she told me she's actually had patients say "Oh, they moved some things around inside and...*shrug*", so she was pleased when I was able to tell her exactly what Dr. Mueller did to my insides), looked at my incisions to make sure they were okay, and scheduled me for a follow-up with bloodwork for September. It's nice to know that I have a PCP who knows what to watch and how to make sure I'm healthy afterwards.

What's even nicer is the fact that Dr. Mueller and Dr. Falquier are part of the same healthcare system, so Dr. Mueller's been sending reports over to Dr. Falquier this whole time to keep her updated. Again, so lucky to have such a good team behind me on this.

Dr. Falquier did bring up one thing that made think; she asked what kind of weight loss rate goal Dr. Mueller had given me. And I realized that he's never once said "You should be losing X pounds per week." The focus from his office has been almost entirely on behavior modifications...learning to eat right, getting back on the exercise train, etc. So I told her that really, I'd be happy with an average of 2-4 pounds a week, and she said that sounds pretty well doable. (And then she reminded me that yes, I will have weeks without big losses, so be prepared.)

Speaking of food and exercise, soft foods have been an adventure. I'm learning the new ways for me to know when to stop eating (my pouch makes me a little nauseous when it gets full), and I've tried a bunch of different things. So far, no adverse reactions to eggs, green beans, peaches, cottage cheese, string cheese, deli meat or canned chicken. We used to always joke about how I had an Iron Clad Stomach that could tolerate just about anything; I guess now I have an Iron Clad Pouch. At least for now I do!

As for exercise, I did a 2 mile walk on Tuesday, we rejoined the gym and are going to Tai Chi on Sunday morning, and today I did my first Slim in 6 workout, which kind of kicked my ass with the 10 million squats and plies. On the good side, my ass will look AWESOME if I keep doing them.

And now I'm going to go make some uber-protein pudding, because it will definitely be easier to get that down rather than Yet Another Shake.

Momentous occasions deserve shopping

2007-07-20T19:27:00.000-07:00

Today I got up and I worked out.

If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be getting up and working out (aerobically! and with weights!) a mere 11 days after someone stuck a bunch of probes and instruments into my gut and rearranged my intestines, I would have laughed myself into oblivion. But there I was, sneakers on and weights in my hand, sweating along with a perky blonde DVD exercise leader. And I am both amazed and awed by my body's ability to let me do that.

And instead of taking a nap (which oh, I wanted to do) I then proceeded to celebrate my half hour workout by going outlet shopping with a couple of friends. See, I have clothes for right now (and probably about another month) and I have some clothes for when I get down to a 14, but I have nothing for in between. So we hit the stores and I bought and bought and bought, until I had a big pile of clothes in varying sizes which will keep me clothed enough to not get fired for public indecency.

And then, just for fun, I bought some shoes. And two of them are polka dotted and AWESOME.

In other words, I rewarded myself by spending a lot of money that I probably shouldn't have, but the reassurance that I have a serviceable skirt to wear in 3 months makes it worth it.

In other news, I am so very,very bored with the full liquids stage. I am so very bored that I am daydreaming about tomorrow, when I can start drinking protein shakes again. I am missing protein like you would not believe, especially in light of the Period From Hell that hit me this week. and then! On Monday I start my soft foods diet, which means I get to eat CHEESE (and other stuff too, but the cheese is the best part). And since I get to eat cheese, I paid an ungodly amount of money in shipping charges to get the best string cheese in the whole world shipped to me from Wisconsin. It will be the best Monday ever.

I'm just hoping I still remember how to chew after all this liquid diet crap.

Excuse my annoying blissfulness

2007-07-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

My best friend is here with me this week, and it is awesome. Right now she is working on PhD homework and I am...well, I'm puttering on the internet until she's done. She and I have been friends since we were 8, and at this point we're sisters more than friends. When I told her I'd decided to have the surgery, she was nothing but supportive, and she's stayed that way the whole time. She's a teacher, so when I told her when the surgery was, she immediately said she would come down and spend a week with me while I recovered.

Both of us figured that I would be in much worse shape then I've ended up being; we thought she's be doing some nursing me back to health action this week. Instead, we are planning shopping trips and excursions to Balboa Park, long walks to get me back in shape (in between homework, of course). Today she took me to my follow up appointment but now I'm released to drive, so she doesn't even have to do that anymore.

When she got here on Tuesday morning, she brought this big duffel bag full of clothes she had culled from her closet, and she handed them all over to me. There's some cute dresses and tops, a couple pairs of jeans and dresses. They're just about all size 14 or large, which logically I know I will probably reach. But I held up a pair of jeans as we were going through everything and the ass on them was just so impossibly tiny. I looked at her and said "There is no way these are every going to fit me. They're so TINY!"

And she looked me right in the eye and said "They are going to fit, and they'll fit sooner than you think." She was so confident about it that I couldn't do anything but believe her. So I folded up the jeans and I packed them away for Someday.

This morning I sorta stopped believing they would fit, ever. I haven't been a size 14 since I was a sophomore in high school, and that? Was 17 years ago. So you can see where my hesitation is when it comes to believing that those tiny little jeans are ever going to fit my big ass. This, despite the fact that as of my follow up with Dr. Mueller today, I have officially lost 15 pounds since surgery day. I mean, of course they'll fit someday if I keep doing that, right?

In other follow up news, Dr. Mueller said I am doing awesome, can go back to bowling, and that I better be doing something other than walking for exercise the next time he sees me (because "we all walk everyday, go do some other stuff too"). In fact, he told me I could go climb Mt. Everest if I wanted to. (I won't though, because Mt. Everest is cold. And makes people die.) Sounds like it's time for us to go sign up at the YMCA again. Oh, and I ordered some new exercise DVDs so there's that to look forward to.

In other words, things are looking good. Great, in fact. And I'm just hoping no one and nothing pops my little balloon of happiness anytime soon.

A good way to start the week

2007-07-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

I've always joked that my husband and I are essentially 12 years old. We enjoy a good joke about just about any bodily function, and our minds are constantly in the gutter. Before the surgery, I used to be the belching champion in our house and every time I let loose with with an especially loud one, Kevin would laugh. I have never had to pretend like girls don't fart or poop or otherwise behave like a normal human being.

And I am so very, very glad of this because whoa nelly! The gas that happens after the surgery! And you know, if I don't let it out when it hits, I feel a little bit like dying because ouch. The farting has been a constant source of amusement for my husband and I, and for that reason, I feel blessed. Every day this week I've thanked the universe that I am not one of those women who has never farted in front of her husband before because I have HAD to let some go around Kevin this week. I do not know how those women survive after the surgery, you know? Big props to them.

So other than gas, life is pretty good. my blood pressure was finally back to normal this morning, and I got to sleep more than 4 hours last night. And I got to eat Cream of Rice this morning and oh, it was tasty. I added some Splenda and cinnamon, then sprayed a little I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray on my serving and it was like eating rice pudding. So tasty! And hooray, I'm out of my 45 calorie a day zone!

But hey, I did my one week weigh in and holy moly! In one week, I've lost 13 pounds according to my home scale! So I guess it can work even if it is going so easily.

Of course, I am still reserving the right to completely and utterly freak out sometime in the next few months.

In which I know more than my doctor

2007-07-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

So I was going to get up this morning and write a whole entry about how oh my god, no one told me that insomnia would be a side effect of the surgery! And now I can't sleep! And it sucks! Because I am tired!

But then I remembered the stupid clonidine patch. And figured that maybe, just maybe that fucker was doing something to cause me this insomnia because you know, I was able to get comfortable this morning at 4:30 but still wasn't able to fall asleep until 5:30. Hell, I'm even sleeping on my stomach again, and this morning I felt like I'd only done 50 sit ups instead of 10 million. So it's not pain or discomfort keeping me awake.

And after last night's 100/67 blood pressure (I am borrowing my mom's home check one), we had already decided that the patch needed to come off if it was still that low today (normal for me is 125/78), because I was feeling oddly worn out yesterday...tired but couldn't nap, low energy, etc. So I check it this morning...97/63! AND! I looked up side effects of clonidine..dry mouth (got it), insomnia (got it), restlessness (got it), and fatigue (got it). Oh, you mean I'm sensitive to the drug? Maybe that's because I DIDN'T NEED IT. Man, I cannot wait to tell Dr. Mueller about this little adventure.

Needless to say, the patch is now off. Here's hoping it leaves my system fast enough for me to get a good night's sleep tonight.

In other news, I bought myself presents since I was up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning.

First: a ticket to San Francisco in October, because Southwest is having an insane sale and the ticket was under $100. And that is a good enough excuse for me to go to San Francisco on a whim.

Second: Since my surgeon's office (and a few other people) strongly recommended I get a medical ID bracelet, I bought myself this; it'll match everything I wear and actually be pretty...and potentially save my life, so awesome! Functional jewelry!

And now I'm going to go have a Popsicle for breakfast. Kids everywhere are jealous of me.

Chicken broth is my new best friend

2007-07-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

Amazingly enough, my vision is back to normal today, which indicates to me that miracle of miracles my high blood pressure has resolved itself! And you want to know why?

Because last night I got to sleep in my own bed, on my side, with one of my kitties curled up on my feet. (Riley, the smaller, younger one has been seriously clingy since I got home. I think he missed me.) No matter how good a hospital is, there are just some things they can't offer.

Today I got to start "eating" clear liquid stuff...Jello, chicken broth, Popsicles, etc. I am very glad that we decided to splurge and buy a ton of this really good organic free-range chicken broth at Costco, because that shit is GOOD. It's like a liquid chicken, and since I've been craving savory flavors, it was the perfect lunch today.

Last night, I dreamt about booze. Other post-ops dream about food but I dream about giant mugs full of rum and coke. Figures.

In other non-typical patient news, today I went to the donut shop with my husband. Hey, it was time for a walk, he wanted some donuts, the donut shop is the perfect distance away from out house for a decent post-op walk so we went to the donut shop. And because I'd much rather have a plate of nachos than a donut right now, it was zero problem.

I keep thinking that this has been way too easy for me. I'm getting my energy back really quickly (although I did take a 2 hour nap today), I'm getting my water in no problem, I don't have any bad pain, and food cravings pass in a moment. If it's this easy, how can it possible work, you know?

And I know it's stupid to think that, but I can't help it. I just can't stop thinking that nothing this big should be this easy if it's going to work.

But I bet everyone thinks that, right?

Right?

The adventure en toto

2007-07-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

First of all, 5:30 in the morning is just an unholy hour for someone to be expected to be at the hospital, ready to be cut open. But I was there, bright and early with my mom and Kevin in tow. The prep work was painless enough; the woman doing my IV was awesome and it did not hurt even a little bit. On the outside I was super calm and collected, making jokes with my loved ones and reminding Kevin about the doctor's appointment he needed to make. But apparently, I internalize my stress utterly and completely, because my blood pressure was a whopping 155 over 105. 155/105! Good lord, it's never been that high before. We all wrote it off as white coat syndrome and I went on about my surgery having business.

I couldn't help but think that it was a good sign that when the surgical nurse came to talk to me beforehand, she made sure to tell me that A) I picked the right surgeon because he was the best one at the hospital out of all the surgeons who do this surgery, B) the nurses actually FIGHT over who gets to be on Dr. Mueller's surgery teams, especially for this procedure and C) Dr. Mueller has AMAZING HANDS and does the best stitches she's ever seen. Apparently, I picked the doctor who's a combo of all the Super Docs on Grey's Anatomy.

All I know is that I was out before they even put the mask on me, which was good because it wasn't until I was kissing my mom and Kevin goodbye that I started getting teary. So hooray for being put to sleep before I could get all emotional!

The surgery went really, really well...it took him about half an hour less than it usually takes him because it was so easy for him to work on me. I guess I did a good job shrinking my liver down to a manageable size! Next thing I knew I was in recovery and I could hear all of them talking about how I had had a reaction to the telemetry sticky tab things because my skin was all red; I knew it was just because my skin is sensitive to having things ripped off of it, but I was too out of it to be able to tell them. Luckily they figured it out themselves.

I got to my room and hoo boy, I was spoiled because I got my own room! And it was a double room so it was nice and big so I could have more than 2 visitors at a time, which was the best part. Technically, Kevin could have stayed the night but the recliner didn't look comfortable so I sent him home to get some sleep. Figured I really needed my home care person to be well rested.

I didn't have a morphine pump ( but I did have really responsive nurses); they gave me morphine when I asked for it and Gas-X when I asked for it. Most of my pain was taken care of by an On-Q Pain Pump. It was basically an epidural for my abdomen, which meant zero incision pain. The only thing that hurt was my diaphragm, and my lungs at first. And that was pretty much gone by yesterday afternoon.

They were actually talking about discharging me yesterday afternoon since all the dang nurses kept telling me I looked like I'd had surgery a week ago. I certainly didn't FEEL like I'd had surgery a week ago! Luckily (and ironically) they kept getting high blood pressure readings on me during the day (mostly because they kept taking it either right after I finished walking or right when I was having a gas pain attack), so I got to spend one more night while they waited for a my clonidine patch to work its magic. It makes it hard for me to focus on things in the distance, but it got my blood pressure down enough for me to be discharged this morning, and I was home by 10:15.

I'm doing really, really well. I've gotten in my 64 ounces of water, we've done a few walks up and down the block, I even went to Walgreens! It's not all roses, of course...my body has decided to get every last bit of digested food out, which means diarrhea, cha cha cha. What I wouldn't give for just some plain old gas, you know? At least I know it'll run out eventually, right? I also discovered that Liquid Tylenol does not set well with me...I don't know if it was the corn syrup or the taste or what, but right after I took it, I was MISERABLE. My stomach hurt and I couldn't get comfortable anywhere. So I've switched to Children's Tylenol meltaways and that is way better. I am totally stoked that I don't need the prescription painkiller; for once, my high pain tolerance is working in my favor.

So anyway, things are good. I'm good, I'm hydrated and I'm able to sleep. Thank you all SO MUCH for your good wishes....I know it's cheesy, but I really believe that all the good vibes I got from my internet community had to have helped things go well.

And now I'm going to go watch TV and sleep. Yay for being home!!

I'm alive!

2007-07-11T11:01:00.001-07:00

Home and shaky but sucking down my Propel and being a good little patient.

Everything went amazingly well, and the hospital took great care of me but I'm glad I'm home.

More later.

A better frame of mind today

2007-07-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

Waffle Report:
Dude, this pre-op diet has changed my appetite in a major way. I ate half a Belgian waffle, 2 strawberries, half a sausage patty and like 6 bites of scrambled eggs. And I was stuffed! Six months ago the whole plate would have been emptied. But it was tasty, and it was finished by 9 so my insides get almost 24 hours before the surgery to empty itself out.

In Other News:
I was obsessed yesterday with getting the apartment straightened and cleaned up, and then I was obsessed with getting my car cleaned out and washed. So we cleaned and washed and vacuumed and everything's done. I told my husband (Kevin) last night that I wasn't sure if the obsession came from me wanting things cleaned up just in case I die or if it came from me wanting to have everything clean and organized for my new fresh start that starts tomorrow. We decided it was the latter, since I did he same thing before the wedding, and again right before I went back to work after my wrist-mandated disability time.

After breakfast we ran a few errands..Bed Bath & Beyond for a Magic Bullet and a third place setting of our fine china (we only got two sets when we got married and I really want us to have at least 8 sets...hooray for those 20% off coupons I keep getting!), then Costco for Kevin food (the man doesn't cook, so he gets microwaved food for a couple weeks) and Propel and chicken broth and bottled water (Kevin drinks it too, so it'll disappear even if I hate it). Oh, and vitamins. And tampons, which came in a big enough box that I probably won't need to buy them again this year.

Then I came home and packed (robe, slippers, comfy PJs for the ride home, Chapstick, a book, a brush, and socks), and I think I will go take a nap before I make dinner for Kevin. We're bowling tonight, my last night for at least month, and then I get to come home and take a Hibiclens shower tonight and tomorrow morning. The Hibiclens thing is a little annoying but considering that I am A) allergic to sulfa, which is what works best on MRSA and B) had to battle a MRSA infection a couple of years ago, I have no problem doing anything that will help prevent me from going through that again. (And woohoo, my MRSA cultures came back negative last week so I won't have to go through contact isolation!)

To Sum Up:
I'm all packed up, I've got my Propel and chicken broth and Jello and sugar free popsicles and even a Magic Bullet. Let's do this thing!

How may minutes in 34 hours?

2007-07-07T19:12:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last 3 days dealing with car problems and in-laws, and I am perilously close to a nervous breakdown. But I am only 34 hours away from when I am supposed to check into the hospital.

I think it did not really seem real until Friday, when my boss hugged me goodbye at the end of the day. Hugged me! The only other time he has ever hugged me was at my wedding. Everyone was wishing me well last week, telling me they'd keep me in their prayers and asking me to have my husband call or email them and let them know things went well. And most of them don't even know what kind of surgery I'm having; I told about 10 of my closest coworkers about it, but I told my boss I was having some preventative maintenance done; I think he figures I'm either having plastic surgery or I have "female problems" (which would explain why I'm still not pregnant after being married for more than a year).

I've been spending hours lurking on Obesity Help, reading message boards and profiles. If I'm not there, then I'm lurking on blogs of people who had the surgery, reading and re-reading about their experiences right after the surgery. I still need to pack for the hospital and run to Costco to stock up on Propel and bottled water and chicken broth. The house is clean and the car is fixed and tonight I'm going to wash my little Civic so it'll be clean when I get home.

I am so, so lucky; my surgeon does not require a bowel cleanse, just a two week mostly liquid diet. So tomorrow I get to "enjoy a regular breakfast" (I am totally having waffles at Brians) and then liquids for the rest of the day. I much prefer that over super poopin'.

Anyway, I'm finally starting to freak out a tiny bit. Luckily I am so tired from the last few days I should be able to sleep through most of the next 34 hours.

A different view from here

2007-07-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

"This surgery is all about you," she said. "And your friends and family need to know that it's not about them, it's about YOU. It's time to get selfish."

I thought about that, over and over even after the support group leader had finished her presentation to my pre-op classmates and I. She was saying this to us to emphasize the fact that our success with this surgery depends entirely on us, on how selfish we're willing to be about taking care of ourselves and following the rules for post-op living.

I have, from the very beginning, assumed I would do incredibly well after the surgery. And the reason I assumed this is because I have always been a teacher's pet (and a doctor's pet). I am eager to please, a rule follower who wants to be the best at everything, a person who thrives on being told "Good job!"

When I broke my wrist, I did everything my doctor told me to, just so he could be impressed the next time I saw him. He wanted me to be able to make a fist so I spent hours forcing my thumb to bend down so I could do it. My physical therapist called me a star student, with my mobility getting better with every visit since I would go home and do my exercises religiously. I was obscenely proud of the fact that my doctor told me at the end of my treatment that he was impressed because I had recovered much better than he thought I would since my broken wrist was "way high on the scale of bad."

I am crazy about praise, in other words. And I want Dr. M to tell me how awesome I am when I go in for my follow-ups, I want my nutritionist to tell me that my diet is exactly what I whould be eating, I want the program coordinator to ask to use my before and after pictures on their website. In other words, I want to be the star pupil.

I have not been perfect with my pre-op diet, I will fully admit that. But I have been pretty darn close to it. All liquid protein all day, and only 1 meal a day. I had a cupcake yesterday, but I didn't have the lasagna that was offered. On Friday, I went to Target and bought little toddler sized forks and spoons to start eating with, and I picked up a couple of sippy cups so I can make sure to sip my water after the surgery rather than do my usual glugging it down. (Luckily for me, Target had 10 ounce sippy cups with zero cartoon designs on it, so no one needs to know what they are.) It takes me as long or longer than my husband to eat dinner now, despite my smaller plates. My mindset is shifting over to the place I want it to be in after the surgery, and it's a relief, because I was afraid I never would get there.

Despite my few moments of imperfection this week, I've lost 8 pounds, which I'm sure will please Dr. M. It's like a weird preview of what's going to happen after the surgery, and it's nice to know I'll be under 300 when I climb up onto that operating table. When the program coordinator took my official "before" pictures on Wednesday, I had her take some for me on my camera. And oh, my lord. I remember now why I never let anyone take a picture of me from behind. So I'm kind of glad that my ass will maybe be a smidge smaller by the 9th.

I'm tired and loopy and my mind is running a zillion different directions. If I can just get through this last week of waiting without going crazy, I'll be happy. I'll also be happy if someone decides to make a white Russian flavored protein mix. That would be awesome.

I'm not as freaked out as I sound

2007-06-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

One summer when I was in college, my mom, her partner JM and I embarked upon the only diet the three of us would do together in my entire life. After watching my mom do Weight Watchers and OptiFast and a few others, the three of us decided to do the infamous Cabbage Soup Diet for some reason. I think that we must have known someone who had done it and had tons of success with it.

We ate so much of that damn soup. And we were still hungry because really, cabbage soup is not the most satisfying thing, what with its lack of protein and all. Every night we would find ourselves anxious for our one meal of the day that wasn't soup. I remember going to the grocery story with JM to pick out the biggest potatoes we could possibly find for the baked potato night because we were so looking forward to them The need to just chew something was more than a little maddening, but damn if I didn't lose 7 pounds that week.

I've been thinking about that crazy week on the cabbage soup diet a lot the past couple days. I've been thinking about it because I started my pre-op diet yesterday and that means I'm not chewing a damn thing until dinner every night. The crazy thing is that I'm not hungry during the day, because the protein drinks are really pretty filling for me. But I miss the chewing, which is twice as dumb since I also have TMJ and chewing too much gives me headaches. Since I miss the chewing, I am glad for sugarless gum, because it keeps me occupied when I just want something to munch on.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Tomorrow is my pre-op class, which I've been told will last until from 11:15a to about 3:00p, after which I will need to go get the chest X-ray they kept telling me I don't need but they have suddenly decided to order for me. I'm going to be cultured, bled and admitted, and I'm going to spend hours absorbing all the information that they can throw at me. And then all there is left to do is wait for July 9th to hurry up and get here.

It's really real now.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In bridesmaid dress news, I ordered it tonight, only to be told that it may very well not get her until September 18th. For a wedding on September 23rd. Which I am flying out to on September 20th. So I'm putting a ton of faith in the bridal shop and have scheduled my alterations appointment for the 18th so I can pick the dress up on the 19th and have it on the plane with me on the 20th.

After much consultation with a group of friends and the trying on of roughly 30 gajillion dresses, I picked out and ordered this dress in Truffle, a color which the bride says was a-okay since I am the maid of honor and am fully allowed to look diferent from everyone else. It's a V-neck halter top, so I added a wrap to cover my arms (about which I have great anxiety) and voila, pretty dress! Pretty dress which I could maybe wear to a gala ball at some point later, if I suddenly become someone who regularly goes to gala balls.

I ordered it two sizes smaller, with the promise that they can take it in up to two more sizes if need be, so I think it'll be okay.

One less thing to freak out about, right?

Where's the Amazing Kreskin when you need him?

2007-06-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that my insurance company is not so much of a Godzilla as it is a marshmallow creame puff, because not only did they approve me super fast, they even sent me a very nice letter that gave me permission to have it done any time between July 9th and December 31st. (But I will totally be doing it July 9th, don't you worry about THAT.)

When I spoke with Sarah last week, we started double checking with each other to make sure we had covered all our bases with each other.

"I sent you the info on the pre-op class, right?"
"Yep, got that. So I stop taking my birth control when I finish this pack this weekend, right?"
"Yep, and then you don't take it for a month after surgery."
"Okay, and I start the pre-op diet (which is amazingly similar to the post-op diet) two weeks beforehand, right?"
"Mmhmm. You have the info on that?"
"Yep."
"Sounds like we're settled then."
"Yep. All that's left is my freak-out, then we're good to go!"

And then we laughed because ha ha, I have "freaking out" on my to do list, aren't I funny!

Except dude, it's totally on my list. Actually, freaking out has its own list because there are a number of things I need to freak out about before the surgery. I figure if I just focus on freaking out about one thing a day between now and then I will be SUPER CALM when I go into the operating room.

Today I am freaking out about The Dress. And today's entry by Anne is like a peek into the future for me. Except with the added bonus of not having a dress made especially for me.

See, I am going to be my friend's maid of honor in September. September 23rd to be precise. And I am super excited to do so because A) I love weddings and B) my wedding is the only one I've been in so far and C) I love carrying around flower bouquets. And since my friend is AWESOME and wants all her bridesmaids to feel pretty she said "Pick out a dress from David's Bridal that you like in either Apple or Cinnamon and I will be happy." So yay!

Excpt for one little thing. David's says "Order your dress 6-8 weeks ahead of when you need it. And also leave time for tailoring, so really 10-12 weeks ahead of when you need it." So really, I need to order it by June 30th, because something tells me I will not be wanting to try on dresses the week before my surgery. Or the week after. So (ignoring the fact that they have no dresses with sleeves, which is just mean), I get to go try on a dress in a couple weeks and then guess what size I will be on September 23rd.

I have never in my life wished I had a crystal ball more than I do right now.

Today I am a size 24/26. In September I will be...a different size. A smaller size. A size I have not seen in 5 or 6 years. From everything I've read and everyone I've talked to, I'm guessing that in 2 1/2 months I'll lose somewhere between 45 and 60 pounds. And since I usually lose a size every 20 pounds, I'm guessing that I can order the dress 2 sizes smaller than I am right this second and then just tailor it from there. Hell, at this point I'm figuring the bride's mother might just be doing last minute tailoring for me once I get out to Providence.

Trying to convince the saleslady that it's really okay for me to order a dress two sizes smaller will be an interesting feat, I'm sure. They'll take one look at me and say "Honey, I don't think so." Luckily, I am getting more and more used to discussingmy upcoming WLS with just about anyone, so discussing it with a stranger in a bridal shop should be no problem.

At least with my currently black hair and pale skin, I'll look like Snow White in my pretty red dress.

Putting the Big in Big Sister

2007-06-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

Last week, a horrid little troll of a woman here at my office told me she thought she saw a picture of me on a news website. I thought maybe it was a picture of the crowds from the Rock & Roll Marathon or something. Instead, it was a picture accompanying some blurb about obesity, one of those horrible middle of the torso shots that is so very unflattering. It was completely and obviously not me, (seriously, the clothes were extremely unflattering and the chin line practically screamed "Not Melinda!") and I very quickly told the woman that no, it was not me thankyouverymuch.

It was pretty much a nightmare come true, realizing that this woman (who is, for the record, a bitter, unattractive, not well-liked eavesdropper who could stand to lose more than a few pounds herself; transference much?) thought that I was large and lumpy enough to pictorially represent The Obesity Problem in America. I'll admit, I always scan those pictures when they appear on the news, making sure than my midsection isn't one of those ones being filmed, relieved when I realize that once again I'm not there. But to have someone else think that they ahd spotted me? Ugh.

And I wasn't even going to write about the whole thing except....it made me feel ashamed. And angry for being ashamed. And as much as it doesn't affect the way I think about myself (because I am still awesome in my own quirky, special way), it stuck with me. It's weird, I can go for days, weeks even, forgetting that I am fat. I'm just....me. Even when I look in the mirror or glance at pictures of myself, I don't think "Hey, look at the fat girl! Oh wai..." I don't think about it unless someone else points it out to me. (Then I think about it all the time.)

I did, however, brace myself before meeting my new Little Sister; kids can be brutally honest and I didn't want to have the same reaction to her noticing I was fat as I did to the horrid little woman across the hall from me. I wanted to be brave and strong and say "Yep, I'm fat, but that's okay because I can still run and play with you." I even practiced saying that in my head beforehand!

But she didn't say anything about me being fat. She just wanted to tell me about the new book she was reading for school, she wanted to ask me questions about where I live and my pets and what I do at work. She didn't see the fat first; she just saw her new Big Sister, and that was enough for her. And I suddenly didn't care so much about what the horrible troll-woman thought of me.

Which is good, because it really doesn't matter, does it?

Check it, check it out

2007-06-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

I have a little somethin' up over at Elastic Waist this morning.

And if you aren't already reading Elastic Waist every day, you should be. And I'm not just saying that because they posted something I wrote. I'm saying that because it's awesome...there's something to make you think every day on there.

Really truly real now

2007-06-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that I loathe going and sitting through my Weight Watchers meetings? Yeah, I know, I've mentioned it ad naseum. But oh dear loard, it's even worse now! Because I know this progam inside and out and I sit there and I give hints and advice to people, totally sane and rational advice, and the whole time I'm doing it this cynical voice inside of me wants to follow it up by yelling "But it's totally not going to work for you!"

But I don't because maybe it will work for them. Maybe.

My husband thinks that maybe I just have short-timer's diseases, that maybe now that there is an end in sight and I've basically been told that hey, don't need to do that anymore I'm just writing the program off. And he's probably right, because I'm really not following the plan at all, I'm just going in for the weigh-ins at this point. And I do not know why I am even doing that because hello, I have a perfectly awesome digital scale at home that I weigh in on every Tuesday morning (as opposed to Thursday evening).

Actually, I do know why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I'm afraid that my insurance is going to get all Godzilla on me and respond to my surgeon's authorization request by walking around yelling "GRAH!" while stomping on buildings and blowing flames all over the place and the only thing that will make them stop and say okay is my WW Booklet O' Shame filled with consistent weigh-ins.

I wish I had Sarah's confidence, because she is so sure I will get approved within the next 10 days that she has PUT ME ON DR. M'S SCHEDULE. She has scheduled me for surgery and now Dr. M has a little note saying "Cut Melinda open and rearrange her insides" on his calendar. And I have an appointment for the pre-surgery class he requires me to take. And...I have a date. I have a date that I can roll around on my tongue like a watermelon Jolly Rancher. A date that I can highlight on my personal calendar, a date I can draw goofy doodles on in our calendar at home that keeps track of everything we are doing forever. I have a date but I am scared to shout it out to the world because what if I jinx it and I get Insurance Godzilla action instead?

July 9th.

I KNOW!! It's practically 3 hours away! And I have nothing done! Oh wait, I did take care of the making (and eating) of some damn fine pumpkin cookies. So hey, there's one thing off the to do list.

Maybe next I should stock up on some underwear that will actually fit me come August.

(July 9th!!!! Eek!)

Big to do

2007-05-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

So I was looking at my calendar the other day and realized that hey, this week would be my sixth visit with my PCP since I started all these WLS appoinment shenanigans. And also, hey, I really need to try and make sure that I get the surgery done the week of July 9th in order to squeeze my disability time in the middle of everyone's vacations.

And that's how I found myself on the phone with Sarah, the very nice CNA who does all of the insurance and paperwork wrangling for Dr. M's office. I told her I had gone to see Dr. D, the shrink, and that she should be seeing his report by next week (and oh ho, how I can't WAIT to see that report because I had to complete an MMPI and I can't help but wonder how crazy I will turn out to be). Oh, and also, by the way, this week would be my 6th visit with Dr. F so what are the chances that we'll be able to apply soon? And should I send over my Weight Watchers records?

And Sarah said no, she just needed copies of Dr. F's notes from each visit and Dr. D's report and we'd be set. I had my consultation with Dr. M and his nutritionist, I've got my six months of medically supervised weight loss attempts, I've got my psych consult and my blood work and my PCP's authorization. I finally have everything, she said, and she would probably be able to send in the authorization request within the next couple weeks (as soon as she gets Dr. D's report). And then she told me that yeah, the second week of July sounds totally doable since my insurance usually replies in about a week (two at the max) and since they're a PPO with a flexible clinical policy bulletin about WLS, she doesn't see any reason they will turn me down.

I hung up the phone and did a little gleeful butt wiggle, then promptly cancelled my Weight Watchers Monthly Pass. Only then did I look at the calendar to see just how long I'd have to wait.

Did you know that the second week of July is only 6 1/2 weeks away? Neither did I, which is why I promptly FREAKED RIGHT THE FUCK OUT because crap on a cracker, that is not very long at all!! That is less than 2 months! That is only 46 days!! It's practically TOMORROW, for crying out loud!

So yeah, my now suddenly much more likely surgery date is right around the corner and I am both freaked the fuck out and excited as all hell. I have so much to do. I need to shop for clothes, I need to buy protein shakes, I need to exercise so much more than I have over the past couple of weeks. I need to drink the two bottles of wine on my fridge since I've decided to just not drink any more after the surgery (a topic for another day). I need to make pumpkin cookies because they won't be a Christmas staple for me anymore and they are the best cookies in all the world. I need to write an "in case I die" letter and get my husband set up with FDSL so he can stay home and take care of me and oh dear lord, I need to tell my boss I'm going to be out for 2-4 weeks because oops, haven't exaclty mentioned that to him yet.

I had no idea that this surgery was going to take as much planning and as many to do lists as getting married did.

Funny, I had this same weird feeling right before I walked down the aisle too. And since that marriage thing has worked out pretty well, I'm thinking this will too.

Exactly the same, only skinnier

2007-05-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when the shrink (who got his BA the SAME DAMN YEAR AS ME) was doing my pre-op consultation he asked me how long I'd been overweight, and I glibly replied "My entire life! Since the day I was born a 9 pound, 9 ounce baby!" And that answer was just so absurd because hello, overweight since birth? What kind of crazy idea is that? So what if I weighed 9 pounds, 9 ounces? I was also 23 inches long and 3 weeks overdue, but that's not what I talk about, I just talk about how I was a GIGANTIC FAT BABY.

The thing is, I cannot remember a time when I did not think I was fat. My earliest memories of elementary school involve me chasing some boys, intent on punching their daylights out because they had called me a fattie. I had dimpled knees, meaty thighs, pudgy little fingers. I was the class chubster, keeping my rounded belly well past the kindergarten years unlike my classmates who slimmed down and sprouted up as we dashed through the playgrounds. I turned into a semi-bully and a complete know-it-all, responding to the taunts with occasional punches and making sure that I was always the first one to wave my hand in the air with the right answer. Little did I know that being a know-it-all smart fat kid was pretty much a million times worse than being a not smart fat kid in the eyes of my classmates.

And somewhere along he way, I stopped believing my lovely, pudgy grandmother's declaration that it was just baby fat, that I would shoot up like a sprout and become lovely and slender (she believed this would happen despite the numerous butter-and-jelly sandwiches she would make for me). Instead, I started believing the kids at school, the ones who called me fatass and lard butt. And once I believed it, fully and truly believed that I was a fat kid and there was nothing I could do about it something clicked and my subconscious decided that hey, I might as well eat the whole world.

So I did. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted. I would share pizza with my friends at school, I would come home and eat stacks of cinnamon toast with pitchers of Kool-Aid. I joined a soccer team but only for one practice; fat girls weren't supposed to get sweaty and run like skinny girls. Fat girls were supposed to be bookish and hate the outdoors, so I eschewed fresh air in favor of piles of books read while curled up on the couch. Oh sure, I rode horses competitively for a couple years, but that wasn't really exercise, that was just me living out a girlhood dream.

And so it went, through elementary and middle school, right into high school. I was the really smart, really funny fat girl, the one who had friends in all of the social groups because I wasn't a threat to any of them. I ate gigantic cinnamon rolls during my breaks, I drank oodles of Pepsi, and I didn't care about things like fruits and vegetables because hey, I was the fat girl so I got to eat whatever I wanted to with no thought about diets. And after high school came college.

Mm, college. Binge drinking, binge eating, binge sleeping. I would occasionally drag myself into the gym on campus on a regular basis just long enough to drop a few pounds. And then I would get lazy again, head back to the cafeteria for a giant baguette with 5 pats of butter and a 32 ounce Pepsi for lunch. But I was healthy! I rode my bike (for 10 minutes at a time)! I walked (across campus a few times a day)! I was pretty and I had people to make out with and guys grabbed my ass at parties and I had friends and an awesome job at the bookstore and I even had some other fat friends. I was the fat girl, so it didn't matter that I was steadily putting on 10-15 pounds a year, it was expected of me.

Except I didn't even realize that being the fat girl had become such a big part of me. I was so unaware of it that I was a little shocked every time I saw a picture of myself. Who was this giant woman? I was only chubby, so that couldn't be me! And there was a little voice in my head that kept telling me it's just baby fat, it'll go away eventually. Except...wait, it was supposed to go away a long time before I got to college, wasn't it?

Eventually (really, pretty damn recently) I realized that the big assed woman in those pictures really was me. And so now I'm finally accepting that I am the fat girl, the fat chick, the fat woman, the big hot piece of buttery goodness. These days I finally realize that being fat doesn't mean that I can't work out or that I can't be giddy over a pile of fresh veggies and fruits from the farmer's market. It doesn't mean that I can't turn down a dessert or that I have to wear sweatshirts embroidered with sparkly cats. It means I am who I am, and I can be active and healthy and dance and lift weights and be in love and have a great job and be awesome.

How might my life have been different if I hadn't believed them, those schoolyard hellions with their taunts about the size of my thighs and the largeness of my butt? Would I have run with more abandon? Would I have found joy in playing soccer, in running around and getting sweaty and exercising? Maybe I would have discovered my love for fresh, cold watermelon rather than my obsession with hot, buttered toast. And maybe my grandmother's prediction would have come true and I would have grown up and stretched out my baby fat and become a lovely, slender swan instead of staying a fat, fluffy duck. Maybe I would have been prom queen, or one of those impossibly bitchy cheerleaders. Or maybe I would have been exactly the same, just skinnier, which is exactly what I'll be after the surgery. Maybe I wouldn't be needing bariatric surgery now if I hadn't believed them back then.

Regardless, I hope that the little girls in my life never have to go through this, the daughters of my friends, my honorary nieces. I hope I am able to tell them not to believe the mean kids at school, that they don't have to become what they are called. And I hope that I am able to tell them (and convince them) that even if they do become part of the fat girl brigade, life can still be pretty damn cool. And I hope it doesn't take them 30 years to figure it out like it did me.

Let's check out the headlines, shall we?

2007-05-09T17:04:00.000-07:00

Time for my occasional trip around the internet....

Wow. I'm never going to complain again about my six-month wait. As annoying as all the insurance hoops are, at least I know that it's a matter of months and not years that I'll have to wait. Add that to the fact that other hospitals are shipping their patients to the very city I live in and I feel incredibly lucky.

WTF?? While the wellness program is a nice idea, I don't think that any of those board members were really thinking about anything other than the money factor, and I'm sure that all of them neglected to compare the cost of the surgery with the current cost of his medical care (which would be drastically reduced post-op). Again, counting my blessings becaus A) I'm covered and B) I'll get paid for my time off.

This is kind of neat. My own surgeon is very aggressive about things like clot prevention etc for all his patients, but this would probably help surgeons get their patients better prepared physically so that their recoveries would go better. Of course, I'm sure the insurance companies would love to use it so they could start turning down the high-rick patients. Double edged sword right there.

So, what do you think?

Dream deferred

2007-05-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was walking with my friend Tracey, the coworker who's doing the Breast Cancer 3-Day with me this year. She's already registered, but I still haven't managed to, mostly because I keep forgetting to do it when I actually have the money for it. I usually remember right after dropping a bunch of money on shoes. Or makeup. Essentials, you know.

Anyway, the walk is in November. And my surgery will (hopefully) be in July, so I figured that hey, no problem! I can walk 60 miles in November! It'll be almost 4 months after surgery, which means at least 60 pounds lighter, which means AWESOMENESS and easier walking. And so I started working out now, walking and doing aerobics and being all healthy with the food because if I get in good shape before the surgery then I can recover super fast and be all kinds of fit and ready to walk those 60 miles. And the hills! This year I will do all the hills! Because I will be so much skinnier!

Now, this is going to be my third time doing the 3-Day. I did pretty good for a fat girl, especially considering that the first year I ended up with gaping wounds on the arches of my feet which made the medical team pull me off the walk for an entire day. The second time I did way better, and I think we figured out that we walked somewhere between 45-50 of the 60+ miles. Both times it was the hardest, most insane, fantastic thing I've ever done. So I'm really looking forward to doing it this year, especially considering I'll be doing it lighter than I've been in 10 years if all goes as planned.

But yesterday I realized that maybe I'm being too optimistic. As I told Tracey, I'm pretty much going to have to bring my own food for the entire weekend, since I won't be able to eat the plates of pasta that they like to load us down with, or the yummy, yummy PB&J sandwiches they hand out as snacks along the way. No oranges either, and no salty potato chips to help replace my electrolytes. So okay, I'll pack my fanny pack with protein bars, right? Except oh my GOD, you burn what you eat so fast! I already felt like I was constantly eating when I did the walk with a normal sized stomach, but I think I would literally have to be eating every half hour to have enough energy to make it through.

But what worries me even more than the eating is the hydration. When you walk up a big giant hill and it's hot and you are sweating so much that there is salt crusting your skin, tiny sips of water are not enough to keep you from dying. You need big giant gulps, alternated with gulps of Gatorade or PowerAde or something else with those precious, precious electrolytes in it or else you end up hallucinating in the medical tent while they hook you up to an IV.

So the only way I can see myself being able to make it through this is by doing the entire walk with a protein bar (or shake or something) in one hand and a bottle of water in the other hand, and me taking a bite every 5th step and a sip every 10th step. And quite frankly, I am just not that coordinated (see: broken wrist of 2006 & broken ankle of 2002, both suffered while I was walking without distractions).

I'm a little heartbroken that it seems that this will not be the year that I finally do all 60 miles, because I have a feeling that when I sit down with Dr. M and discuss this he's either going to say don't do it or he's going to limit me to something like 8 miles a day, either of which are both bummers. And I know, I know, I can do the walk again next year and that will be my year to conquer the entire 60 miles. But...I wanted to do it this year. I wanted to conquer it this year with my brand new body.

I've waited long enough, dammit.

Reconciliation

2007-04-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what happened to me, but a few weeks ago I suddenly became a person who Works Out. As in I get up every morning at 6am, put on my sneakers and follow along to a DVD featuring a woman with a darling Australian accent who encourages me to listen to my body because it is my coach. Well, if it's my coach, then it has apparently decided it is time for me to get my rear in gear, to borrow a phrase from my middle school gym teacher. So I work out in the mornings and then, a few times a week, I go out and take 5 mile walks with my coworker. My coworker walks fast, and is tall with long legs. I do not walk fast, and I have stubby legs, so these walks sometimes kick my ass. But I feel so awesome afterwards. (Good thing, too, since we're going to have to up those walks soon since we're doing the Breast Cancer 3-Day in November.)

When I work out a lot, I can't really stand the idea of putting junk food into my body. Which means that on top of all this working out, I'm suddenly eating all kinds of fruits and salad and protein. I go out to lunch and I don't finish my sensible meals of grilled chicken and salads. And I'm not snacking as much and my sweet tooth is suddenly disappearing and so you know what happened?

I lost 8 pounds in 3 weeks. When I saw my doctor last week, she walked into the exam room and said "Well hello, skinny!" because I had lost 7 pounds since she saw me last month. (Sidenote: Have I mentioned that I love my PCP? She's tiny and awesome and so, so, SO supportive and she actually knows lots about WLS because weight management is one of her areas of interest. I kind of want to have her babies.) My jeans are fitting a little looser, I'm starting to be able to wear shirts I put away after the weight gain from the wrist debacle, and my skin looks better than it ever has. In other words, things are AWESOME right now and I am kicking ass at this whole weight loss thing. I am totally regaining my Healthy Fat Girl status.

There's a part of me that thinks that maybe, just maybe, I should just rethink this WLS thing. I mean hell, I'm doing so well! Maybe I can keep doing this, the eating salads and avoiding cupcakes and saying no to piles of hot, buttery sourdough toast. I'm a fat, hot, buttery piece of gorgeousness just the way I am, and I'm healthy and happy and doing great at this whole living life thing.

That last sentence is totally true. I believe it with all my heart, and I am having a hard time reconciling that with the fact that I am about to do this big, giant thing that's going to make me not fat, and probably not buttery. And I wonder sometimes, how can I call myself a proponent of fat acceptance when I am about to do the one thing that's pretty much guaranteed to make me not fat? I know I'm doing this for my health. I'm doing it for my tired knees that really want to keep doing those 60 mile walks but won't be able to for much longer if they keep having to haul around 300 pounds. I'm doing it for my heart, which would very much like to keep beating for another 60 years but probably won't if I don't make its job a little easier. I'm doing it for my feet, which love how cute they look in those 4 inch heels but will probably start getting bone spurs if I don't lighten their load.

But that's not what most people think when they hear that someone has had or is planning to have WLS. They think people just want to get skinny. I have a group of acquaintances in my circle of friends that belong to NAAFA and are proudly fat. And more power to them, because these women have got self-confidence and moxie up the yin yang. They are not people I see often enough to know them well enough to feel comfortable discussing this whole thing with them. And I'm sure that they will assume that I did it to get skinny, and I'm pretty damn sure that they will assume that I hated being fat, and therefore, I hate fat people.

I worry that I will have to make more of an effort to let the world know that I think people of all shapes and sizes should be accepted exactly as they are. I worry that fat girls will look at me and think I'm a Skinny Bitch. I worry that my fat friends will think I want them to have the surgery too, that I'm judging them for not doing it. And I'm worried that they will judge me for doing it.

That last bit is why I haven't even really been telling anyone about this sudden change in behavior, this fantastic turnaround that has weight dropping off of me, because I figure if I tell anyone, they'll suggest that I not do the WLS. But what they don't know is that I've done this before. I've lost the weight before and then I've gained it back. And it invited some friends to join it. And I know how I am, and I know how my body is, and I know that this is the best way for me to lose the 150 pounds I need to lose. Need, not want.

I need to do this. Now if I could just get over the fact that I feel like I'm betraying every fat girl out there, that I'm betraying the fat girlfriends who have told me that they wish I had my self confidence, that they love how just out there I am. It's a hard thing to reconcile, and I wish that someone would just tell me how to do it before I end up driving myself crazy.

Well, crazier.

Preach it

2007-04-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

This week my surgeon's office called to touch base with me since we're right about halfway through the Interminable Wait. The insurance handler type person mentioned that hey, I might as well go get a psych consult in case they need it for the approval. See, my insurance's clinical policy bulletin on WLS is vague and open-ended, with lots of room for interpretation. And while it is a pretty short list of requirements, my history of past episodes of depression severe enough to be medicated means I get to go get my head shrunk before I get my belly shrunk. (Ha. so clever!)

So now I'm waiting to hear back from the behavioral health people to find out who I need to go to. I'm wondering exaclty what this is going to entail, other than me proving that I really am stable enough to behave after the surgery.

In other news, this entry over at Big Fat Deal (which is informative and smart and funny and run by three of the most awesome women I know) has me thinking a lot about The Fat Club. You know the one...the one where we can call each other fat but no one else can. It's the one my friends and I have laughed about in the past. The Fat Club is where it's okay to have a big ole booty and where one may on occasion poke one's belly while providing funny sound effects (ahem). We can call each other fat and not get our feelings hurt because we're all in the club. We're all right there, with our fleshy bellies and our mounds of boobs and our thighs of thunder. And we laugh about it and talk about how our menfolk love the curves and we have ourselves another martini.

And we all think we're beautiful. Because we are. Quite frankly, I've been out with Weetabix and Mo Pie and we are a whole pile of Hot Fat Chicks who Do Not Give A Shit what anyone thinks, and not a single person in our path has been able to deny our hotness.

But let me tell you. If someone from outside The Fat Club calls me or one of my friends fat....oh, it's on. Feelings are hurt, shame is thrown around, and quite frankly, it sucks. Because outside of The Fat Club, fat is still a bad, bad word, a harsh, angry, hateful word.

I once had a random homeless guy yelling at me while I sat at a light because he didn't like where I stopped my car. The worst insult he could come up with was to repeatedly call me a fat bitch.

My husband almost killed the man because he got so angry on my behalf. No word should ever make him that angry.

So yeah, I think we need to expand The Fat Club out. Spread the word and proselytize a little bit. Stop describing ourselves as Rubenesque or full-figured or zaftig and just claim it. Fat. Own it. Say it. Make it mean the same whether it's spelled with a "ph" or an "f".

And the next time someone calls me fat, I'm going to do my damnedest to remember my own words and simply reply "Yeah, and?"

All I want is normalcy

2007-04-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that I absolutely loathe sitting through my WW meetings? I'm surrounded by these people who are all so balls to the wall and gung ho on the diet and it makes me irritable.

It makes me irritable because I can't do it. I cannot throw myself into it and embrace the good health guidelines religiously and lose weight every week like those people do. Especially this one guy who sits behind me and spouts of crap about "facing the beast" and how the way he gets through his workouts is to be angry at himself and belittle himself for being stupid and getting fat. And the people there just lap it up, agreeing with him and talking about what an awesome strategy that is.

No. It is not awesome to call yourself stupid for gaining weight. It is not awesome to be angry at yourself while you work out. It is not awesome to belittle yourself and encourage other people to do it to themselves too.

I will fully admit that I'm not following the program as written. The last couple of weeks I didn't rack a single Point, and really, I wasn't surprised to have posted a gain last night. But you know what? I only ate half of my Chinese food lunch last weekend. I did a five mile walk on Monday night, followed by a three mile walk on Tuesday. I drank so much water that every day I lost track after 3 liters. And I remembered to take my vitamins every single day.

But apparently, I should be mad at myself, because that will motivate me to not eat the marshmallow egg. Fuck that. Being mad at myself (or my mother or my friends or my job) is what got me fat in the first place because nothing calms me down like a quick shot of carbs and sugar.

I hate sitting through the meetings because it's just another reminder that I'm not normal. I can't sit down to a meal and eat just enough to satisfy me; I have to eat it all, even if I know I'll be overly full afterwards. If only I had a dollar for everytime I groaned "I'm gonna have a pizza/ice cream/pie/pasta baby!", I would be a very rich woman. I have yet to meet a cupcake I did not want to immediately devour (and usually did), and more than once I've eaten enough cheese to feed an entire nation worth of rats.

This is not how a normal person behaves around food. Normal people do not daydream about cheesecake or count the hours until their planned binge on pizza. Normal people don't have to have arguments with themselves about whether or not they should eat that Twinkie, and they don't have to constantly convince themselves to cook a vegetable to go with dinner.

Eating is not the center of their universe. But it is the center of mine.

This is not what I want to be. Logically, I know what I need to do. I have the knowledge, and I even like most of the healthy foods that I'm supposed to be eating. I should totally be one of the balls to the wall WW dieters. But I'm not. And sitting through these meetings is not helping me become a normal person. It's just making me more obsessed with food.

And man, that pisses me off the very most.

The other side

2007-03-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

I told my husband that my goal weight will probably be around 150 pounds, to which he responded "Wow, I'll be able to pick you up no problem."

To which I of course responded "Cool, will you give me piggy back rides everywhere we go then?"

Because dude, if one of the byproducts of the surgery is being able to be carried around by my husband when I'm feeling lazy then far be it from me to snub my nose at it.

Six other things I will do when I'm skinny:
1) Cross my legs. All the time, possibly even while walking.
2) Buy lots of pairs of knee high boots, some with scary hooker heels. Watch my husband panic when I wear them because he'll be afraid I will fall.
3) Learn how to run correctly so I no longer look like a flailing giraffe when I do so.
4) Sit on my husband's lap. And also wear his shirts as sleep shirts.
5) Go to the beach. Take coverup off and not care who sees.
6) Borrow my best friend's clothes. Possible "forget" to give them back.

Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be letting myself think about things I'm going to do when I'm skinny or clothes I want to wear when my ass is half the size it is now. I feel guilty thinking about that side of it, like I'm not supposed to be daydreaming about what I'll look like because I'm not doing this for my looks, I'm doing this for my health.

But I can't help it. Regardless of why I'm doing this the fact of the matter is that I'll end up skinnier than I've ever been, and that opens up a whole new world of options for me when it comes to appearance. Right now, I can't wear turtlenecks because they make my face look fat, so never mind the fact that I love how a black turtlenec with jeans and black boots looks. My calves are ginormous so it does not matter a whit how badly I might want a pair of knee high boots because none of them will fit. I can't wear tank tops for fear of flying away on the wings of my flappy arms. Bathing suit choices are limited to my choice of Boring or Old-Lady styles. When I'm cold, my husband's coat can't keep me warm because it doesn't fit around me.

But that's all going to change, so I daydream. I look in catalogs and on the internet and wander through malls picking out outfits. I wriggle in glee when I realize that I won't have to worry about finding shoes that are both wide and cute.

It's exciting, this planning for the other side. I just hope the fall lines aren't all fugly.

Traitorous

2007-03-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

I have to admit something.

I am sometimes extraordinarily judgemental towards other fat people.

Specifically, I am extraordinarily judgemental about the way they dress. More then once I have visibly cringed upon seeing a girl wear an outfit that clings too tight or allows rolls of flesh to hang out. I saw a woman the other day in the parking lot who had squeezed herself into a stretch denim jumper that had to be two sizes too small and I shuddered a little when I realized I could see her cellulite. On Monday when I went walking at the bay, I saw a woman stretching, a woman who was much smaller than me but who also had a lot of belly. And as she stretched her shirt rode up and I could see the fleshy whiteness of that belly sticking out like bread dough allowed to rise for too long. And I was embarrassed for her, even though I don't know her and no one was staring at her. She certainly wasn't embarrassed.

I'm fully aware that this is me projecting my own fears onto other people. I spend a lot of time tugging my shirt down to make sure nothing gets exposed. I pick out outfits based on how well they cover my "unfortunate bits" (and oh, there are so many unfortunate bits). I avoid clingy things and tight things and sleeveless things in hopes that no one will notice that I'm as fat as I am. When I stretch out before or after I walk, I make sure that there is no one behind me to be stunned into a coma over the enormity of my ass when I bend over. I never wear tank tops when I work out in public, regardless of how ever-loving hot it might be. Every minute of every day I am acutely aware of my body and I do everything I can to make sure that it's as aesthetically acceptable as possible to the rest of the world.

I wish I had the courage to wear tank tops in public. I wish I had the confidence to not care about someone catching a flash of belly or being subjected to the sight of me bending over. But I don't have either of those, and so my sensibilites get offended when other fat people do. And I've tried to not be like that. I've tried to get behind the "You go girl!" mentality of it all and accept that these women are showing themselves off because they love themselves, I've wanted to be able to stop judging these girls and women but I just want them to cover themselves up.

But I just can't. I can't do it anymore than I can accept skinny girls wearing absurd fashion trends involving leggings or pants under dresses or formal shorts.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a traitor to the cause.

Maybe I am.

Irrational? Maybe.

2007-03-12T16:40:00.000-07:00

This entry by Anne has been rattling around in my brain for days now. It kind of made me gasp because it seemed like she dropped in for a quick visit to my messy brain. No one ever talks about how to get used to suddenly having an entirely new body. Weight loss surgery is the closest we can come to that full body transplant that so many of us daydreamed about, you know? I can only imagine it is something akin to being told in the morning that you won a solo trip to Paris but you have to fly there that afternoon, so you end up desperately reading a phrase book and studying a map in order to be able to get around the city once you get there in between cycling bouts of sheer terror and total exhiliration.

I'm like Anne in that I've spent my life pretty happy with myself. For every moment of "Oh my god, my ass is stuck in this chair, I hope no one is looking at me", I have 5 moments of "My body is a work of art because it can do so much". I know every curve and every lump and every perfect and imperfect part of my body. I know that stretch bootcut jeans look awesome on me and that I can never go wrong with high heels or V-necks. I know what works for me and I know what doesn't.

I also know that my husband is a T&A man. His ideal female form has broad hips, a big, round butt and boobs out to there...natural boobs, not fake ones. So on top of the whole having to get used to an entirely new body in a short amount of time, I have this fear that he won't think I'm as sexy if I get too skinny, if I lose my ass and my boobs disappear. He says he doesn't see this as a problem, and reminds that he's also one of the few guys I know who thinks Nicole Kidman is sexy (such a dichotomy, my husband). He is, of course, hoping that I manage to keep the boobs; quite frankly, so am I. I think I can deal with the rest of my body changing so dramatically as long as I have some familiar landscape to look down at from time to time.

I'm not afraid of suddenly being visible; I've never, ever felt invisible. Doors are opened for me, customer service reps always take care of me, my employers have always treated me well. I've decided that it's because I'm pretty. It seems to be okay to be fat if you are conventionally pretty. I worry about what might happen once I've lost the weight and I'm pretty AND thin (if I stay pretty...after all, I might have a face that's only pretty when plump). Will anyone take me seriously? Or will the retired old Navy guys I work with suddenly see me as a piece of fluff that they don't have to listen to?

And other things. How will I know what to wear? How will I deal with suddenly being able to wear turtlenecks without fear of looking like I have 6 chins? Will I be able to restrain myself and only buy one pair of knee high black boots? What if my best friend doesn't recognize me since we only see each other once every few months? What if my cats start freaking out because I'm not soft and squishy anymore? It doesn't help wthat a (very well-meaning and very supportive) friend said "You're going to look weird skinny. You're not going to look like Melinda."

So the question becomes...who the hell will I look like?

Is there a cheeseaholics group?

2007-03-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

I spent last weekend in Wisconsin, and I ate my weight in cheese.

Okay, not really, but I did eat a lot of cheese. And drank a lot of alcohol. And while it was a fantastic time, I had these little moments of melacholy because this is an annual gathering of friends and every so often I would think "This is the last time I'll be able to do this with abandon".

And that right there is why I'm having this surgery. Man, food should not be something I should be melancholy about. That thought never should have entered my mind because I was surrounded by some of the best and most awesome people in my life and that's what my focus should have been on. I shouldn't have been wondering how much cheese I'll be able to eat next year.

Probably the most awesome thing about the trip is that I got to tell people in person about what I'm planning for my summer. See, I've been online for 6 years now, and I have this whole other blog that's been around forever and all these people who know me, but I haven't been able to mention the surgery there because I don't want to deal with the assvice. So that's why I started this blog; I even tried to write in a slightly different voice so people wouldn't figure out it was me. But I got to see a bunch of my internet friends and tell them what's going on and guess what? Nothing but support. Not only support but offers of emails and phone calls as needed from other women who had gone through the surgery already (I had no idea that I knew so many, seriously). It was eye-opening, talking to one woman who had been through it 10 years ago, another who just had her plastics done, and another who gave me a whole new perspective on what it's like to be the friend of a WLS patient. It kind of reaffirmed my decision, too.

And now that Blogger has outed me, I'm going to go ahead and out myself on my other blog. And also, I'm going to start writing like myself, which is way more entertaining. But I'm going to keep all the weight loss stuff here, just because.

In other news, the meeting of insurance requirements continues. I'm back to Weight Watchers and have managed to lose 4.6 pounds since January 18th. (I managed to lose .8 pounds while on vacation and eating my weight in cheese. Maybe I should go on an all cheese diet or something.) I kind of both love and hate my meeting. My leader is awesomely hilarious, but there is this one chick in there who keeps bugging me. It's mostly the way she talks, I think. I'm sure I bug the hell out her too, what with my propensity for saying things like "There was no way in hell I could eat it all" but the rest of the group finds me amusing.

Dear God, I'm the class clown of Weight Watchers. Uff da.

My regular doctor continues to be awesome, which is good since I have to see her once a month to talk about The Diet. Apparently my B12 levels are low and I'm slightly anemic (Does cheese have iron? Maybe I should eat more cheese.), so she's a little concerned. So am I, considering that B12 absorption is something I'm going to have to be worried about after the surgery. So I've started taking a daily B12 pill and have got to get myself to start taking that damn daily multivitamin more often. It'd be easier to do if the chewables didn't taste like fruit flavored dust. All vitamins taste like dust though, so whatever. I'll eat the stupid things.

Back in the game

2007-01-31T15:35:00.000-08:00

Good gravy, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted here. Well, actually, I totally can.

Here's the thing. Six days after my last entry, I fell down and broke my wrist and had to have surgery on it and basically spent the rest of 2006 sitting on my ass. So now I weigh 10 pounds more than my highest weight, which means that I am seriously fat. (Whereas before I was apparently only laughingly fat?)

Anyhoo, I'm plodding along the path to surgery approval. I'm pushing back my expected surgery date to July because of the rather large chunk of disability time that I had to take thanks to the whole wrist debacle and also thanks to insurance requrements.

I went back to Weight Watchers and I'll be doing that for at least 6 months to meet the diet portion of the requirement. And I'll be seeing my doctor every three weeks to talk about how it's going and build up my chart etc, etc. Turns out I also need to be keeping notes on my exercise levels, which (as I told my husband) means that I either need to get my ass moving or start lying. It's just as well though because damn, I am out of shape. My surgeon's office has been awesome about making sure we were following all the right steps, so that's been reassuring. I finally got to meet Dr. M in December and he is awesome. He told me I'm pretty much a perfect candidate for the surgery...no medical problems, young, and motivated.

I've started sharing my plans with more and more people and I still have had nothing but support for it. I gave up soda last week, since I'm going to have to stop drinking it after the surgery anyway. Haven't been able to kick the caffeine yet, but that will come eventually.

There's a part of me that just cannot WAIT to get on with it and have the surgery right now; July seems so far away. But at the same time, I know that time flies and I really need to take advantage of this opportunity to get into the right frame of mind beforehand.

Motivation revisited

2006-10-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a really, really crazy month since I last wrote, and so much has been going on.

A few weeks ago, I went up to the Central Valley with my family to go to a funeral. It was the first time I had flown with my mother in a number of years, and I am incredibly ashamed to admit that I was embarrassed for her. I was embarrassed that she had to buy an extra seat, that she had to do special pre-boarding, that she could barely walk through the airport. And I was sad for her, because she has so obviously accepted that this is her life and this is how it will always be.

The most defining moment for me came on Sunday morning though. I came home a day before everyone else, so my mom was driving me up to the Sacramento airport. It was the first time she was driving the rented minivan and when it came time for her to climb into the driver's seat, she almost didn't fit. And my heart just broke into a million tiny pieces for her as I watched her struggle with the seat and the steering wheel until she was finally able to make it work.

Needless to say, my own surgery plans were at the forefront of my mind while we were driving to the airport, so I ended up talking to her about it. She surprised me by being very supportive, basically telling me that I need to do whatever I need to do and that she would support my decision no matter what. I asked her why she had never gone through with it, because her doctors have tried more than once to get her to have the surgery. She admitted that it's because she's scared, mostly of the anesthesia. And she's scared for me, too.

But I'm more scared for her. Every since she got back from the trip, her leg has been bothering her, to the point that this week she called me in tears because she needed me to go get her muscle relaxants since she could barely make it to the bathroom because her leg was hurting so badly. It broke my heart and it makes me worry about how much longer she'll be mobile.

All of this was really the kick in the pants that I needed to get things moving on my end. My husband and I went to another surgeon's seminar and we both liked him much better than the first one we went to. So I finished all my paperwork ans faxed it off to the office yesterday. As soon as I get my consultation scheduled, I'll breathe a huge sigh of relief.

I've started talking pretty openly about having the surgery lately, too. I've been very lucky so far; everyone I've told has been totally supportive and my best friend is downright excited for me. Little does she know that I'll be borrowing her clothes as soon as I can after the surgery!

Speaking of which, I'm heading up to visit her tomorrow, and I can't wait. This month has been such a roller coaster for me that it's definitely time to go blow off some steam.

I wonder if I could claim the surgery under worker's comp

2006-09-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Funny how life gets away from you, isn't it? I've had about a million ideas for things I want to write here but I just haven't had the time to sit and do it. Work has been incredibly stressful and now I get to fly to San Jose in the morning so that I can make it to a funeral for a relative's funeral in Turlock. We're flying Southwest, the family and I, which means that I will be wearing my tightest jeans (so as to keep my copious ass as small as possible) and my mom had to buy an extra seat. I am very grateful that I've never had that issue; in fact, it's only 2 or 3 times that I've even had to ask for a seatbelt extender. I'm sure that most people would assume that someone who weighs at least 300 pounds would never fit into an airplane seatbelt but there you go. I'm also only a size 24/26, and no one in my day to day life who I've told that number to has believed me without some serious convincing.

It's yet another demonstration of a strange phenomenon I've noticed. As I go through all the before and after pictures on ObesityHelp, I keep seeing people who look so much larger than me but weigh a good 50-100 pounds less than I do. I suppose that this is why I've not minded the slow creep of weight that has settled on me. Somehow, I've kept my ankles and my waistline and even my long neck. I don't feel like a shapless lump, and I can still find cute clothes that are even stylish. And so being big has been okay.

But not anymore.

Next week I'm going to my first seminar, given by the surgery group that did my friend's mother's surgery 5 years ago. And then I'm going to meet up with my friend's mom for a nice long afternoon chat so I can hear her story. I've got a second seminar that I'm going to go to; i've narrowed it down to one of these two centers and really, it's going to come down to who can do it soonest and who can do it laproscopically. Both of them are COEs that come highly recommended with great aftercare support and affiliations with hospitals within a 15 minute drive of my home, so really it's just a matter of seeing who I have a better feeling for.

I also decided this week that I'm not going to let my work's fiscal year schedule affect when I do the surgery. If they end up giving me a surgery date right smack in the middle of it, oh well because the stress eating that I've done over the past few weeks because of my job is a big reason why I need this surgery. So there.

I have a good excuse

2006-09-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging because I've been reading. I finally went and picked up Weight Loss for Dummies this weekend (which to me was more embarrassing than buying tampons, so I did what I do with the tampons and made my husband buy it). And I spent all weekend reading it and will probably read it again a million times.

Anyhoo....

This strange thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I decided to have weight loss surgery and then I instantly decided that the decision meant I could eat whatever I want right now. Because it doesn't matter! I can gain some weight now because I'll lose it all later! Woohoo! Free for all!

Ahem.

I got over that feeling last week, when it seems that all of the junk I ate over the past month suddenly decided that it was time to take up residence on my frame. My (stretch!) jeans were a little too tight, and my ass suddenly wasn't fitting into my coworker's visitor chair so well. My shirts were riding up and my husband was silently cheering the fact that my ass and my boobs are where I put weight on first. All of this was not acceptable, and I woke up around Thursday night freaking out a bit.

So I tried to just get through the weekend and have a "good food weekend". And I did. We went out to eat twice and both nights, I came home with half my meal because I stopped when I was no longer hungry; not even full, just not hungry. And then I decided to maybe do a little dieting. Just something to kickstart me back into eating better. So I loaded up on Slim-Fast (Optima! Proven to keep you full LONGER, I swear! Woo!) and started that today.

I'm not exactly thrilled with the whole Slim-Fast idea because there's kind of a lot of sugar in it. Like...a lot. Really, should a diet shake taste like strawberry Quik? Luckily for me, I'm an anomaly in the WLS world...instead of being diabetic, I'm actually borderline hypoglycemic so the sugar isn't such a huge no-no for me. And in the meantime, it will at least get my ass back to fitting comfortably in my coworker's chair.

(Of course, tonight we're having pizza for dinner since we're going to my mom's and football is on. OF COURSE.)

Speaking of coworkers, I actually told that particular coworker (the one whose chair I barely fit into anymore) about my plans and her first words were "Wow, that's really drastic!" But once she heard why I was doing this and we talked for awhile about it, she was nothing but supportive. It makes me feel better about dealing with it here. I'm in a weird situation in that A) I work closely with a large group of people and B) we're a very tight knit large group of people so if I don't tell them about the surgery they will A) worry immensely about my while I'm out and B) think I'm dying or something and that's why I'm losing so much weight. So the plan is to let people know why I'm going to be out so that they can support me rather than worry about me.

One thing I am really glad of is that we have a great HR department that will help me get all my disability stuff set up. I have always bought into our voluntary supplemental disability insurance (our version of AFLAC, basically) so I'll be able to get full paychecks while I'm out, and I won't have to use any comp time. I find it kind of weird that nothing I've read online talks about the time off factor other than to talk about either vacation time or unpaid leave. Around here, you get disability for any surgery, as far as I know. Is there some kind of exemption for bariatric surgery that I don't know about that makes disability unallowed?

And if so, why are we not up in arms about it?

Trading one for the other?

2006-09-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

I have to say, I did not do much laboring this Labor Day. There was a lot of napping and trying to stay cool instead. More than once I caught myself thinking "Well, I'll be able to handle the heat better next summer after the surgery!"

I told a couple more friends this weekend and both of them had pretty much the same thing to say to me, oddly enough. Both of them mentioned other people they know who have had the surgery but for whom it ended up not working; one of the people had gained most of the weight back and one had not only gained some of the weight back but had also gained a prescription pill problem. But right after telling me these stories about their other friends, both of my friends told me that they think that it will work for me because I'll do it the right way and be smart about it.

The second warning story, Pill Girl, made me think a lot. My friend made a very good point when she said that Pill Girl hadn't worked on her emotional issues surrounding food and had instead replaced it with pills. On top of that, Pill Girl not only refused to follow her diet, she actually kept eating everything she wanted and chose to allow the resulting throwing up and diarrhea become part of her life. She lost most of her hair, had vitamin deficiencies...basically, she got the surgery and then did not change anything else in her life. And so it didn't work the way it was supposed to.

Man, that story made me do all kinds of "Well, I definitely WON'T do that!" I declared that *I* will take all my vitamins and follow my diet and do everything I can to avoid vomiting and/or diarrhea (that last one especially because man, do I hate experiencing those two!), and I won't lose as much hair because I'll pay attention to things like vitamin levels and no WAY would I go off and get addicted to pills instead of food! Of course, it's easy for me to say that from here, the pre-op side. Hell, I'm a month away from even going to my first seminar so it's realllly easy for me to say. But the truth of the matter is this: I have an addictive personality, and the addiction I've chosen for all these years is food. So what's going to replace it when I finally cut that addiction off at the proverbial pass?

Personally, I'm hoping it'll be knitting. Or maybe running. Or writing. But there's a chance it could be something else. It won't be smoking, because blech. Hate it. It won't be illegal drugs because I have no idea where to get them. And prescription pills are way too much of a bother (and expense!) for me to get addicted to. But...there's always alcohol. I already do that whole "had a bad day, let's have a drink" thing every now and again, so the potential for me doing that rather than eating every time I'm bored or lonely or sad or celebrating is actually rather high. And that's not a road I want to go down.

So I've decided I will need to quit drinking after the surgery. It won't be hard; being married to a man who doesn't like the taste of alcohol means I rarely drink at home anyway. But it'll be hard, turning down a perfect Cosmopolitan while out with my girlfriends. Of course, it'll be nice to be the one who remembers everything.

Mother figure

2006-08-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has been floating around in my head (and causing more than a little emotional distress) is how I'm going to tell people that I'm having the surgery. My husband is the one I talk to the most, of course. He's been fantastic about it...supportive yet concerned, totally willing to come to the informational seminars with me next month, already helping me find the humor in amongst the scary (like when I pointed out that I would probably lose some hair, he asked if we were going to have to do wig shopping) and listening endlessly to my random commentary as I spend an evening reading profile after profile on Obesity Help.

And I've told one of my closest friends, mostly because A) she's thought about it herself and B) her mother had the surgery 10 years ago so I'm going to be using her as one of my fonts of information. She's been really supportive too, and I know that she'll be there to hold my hand as needed. And I'm going to tell a couple of my other close friends that I know will be cheerleaders for me, especially my best friend. She's been there for me for over 20 years, she'll be there for me now.

But when I think about telling my mom...oh, my. Don't get me wrong, my mother is awesome. Everyone loves my mom, no one more than I do. We're very close, and I'm lucky enough to count her as a friend now that I'm an adult. And she never let me feel guilty about being overweight and in fact helped me end up with a rather well developed level of self confidence. My mother has been severely overweight and/or morbidly obese for her entire life. She suffered through diet after diet as a child, getting mixed messages to be thin but to always eat everything on her plate, and she did her best to make sure I never received those same mixed messages, but she gave me a whole set of my own.

I had to eat my vegetables, always...but I could eat them slathered in mayonnaise.

I couldn't have kid's cereals like Fruit Loops...but it was okay for me to dump sugar on my Raisin Bran.

And portion control? What's portion control?

I watch the way my mom eats now and I see myself in her. A mindless eater, a comfort eater, a carb addict who loves baked goods. And I see what that eating behavior has done to her after a lifetime of it.

Bad knees, fractured feet, bad back, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, wheezing. More than once, gastric bypass has been suggested to her and more than once she has turned it down. She once knew someone who had the surgery and later died of complications, and that has colored her opinion ever since. She is, quite frankly, scared to do the surgery instead of keep living with the pain and the pills and the limited activity. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. And while I know she will support me in the end, at the beginning she will disapprove, because for some reason she disapproves of people who decide to pursue this.

I've decided to tell her after I have gone to the seminars and picked a surgeon and scheduled a consult. I want to be able to tell her everything I've learned and show her why I'm doing this. Somehow I need to do it without telling her that I'm trying not to end up like her because I don't want her feelings to get hurt over it. Because even though she's an example I *don't* want to follow, she is not the reason I'm doing it. I am the reason I'm doing this.

I just hope she understands that.

Insurance clarity

2006-08-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

So today I finally got around to calling my insurance and it looks like it really is as straightforward as it sounds. Prequalification involves doing a medically supervised weight loss & exercise program, which I think will be as easy as joining a plan like Weight Watchers and then just checking in with either the surgeon or my PCP on a monthly basis so they can track the changes. Maybe it'll work a little better for me if I see it as prepping myself for surgery. The best part is that even though I'd have to complete six months of the program before the surgery, I can get approved after only 3 months.

I really have no problem with waiting that long, I realized today. It would give me time to do some product testing (protein shakes, etc, things I'll be surviving on afterwards), some time to exercise and some time to get everyone around me used to the idea. Plus, this way it won't end up interfering with A) the holidays or B) my company's crazy time of year, which is February. By my calculations, I think an April/May time frame will be when it happens. Just in time to get some weight off before the heat hits!

I discovered another bariatric group here in San Diego that looks like it would be a good choice; 98% of their surgeries are laproscopic, which is super important for me. I know it's MAJOR surgery so it's going to hurt regardless, but the laproscopic has a lower chance of complications and a faster recovery time. We're going to go to informational seminars for both groups next month (my husband is coming with me, of course...he's being amazingly supportive of me), and I'll probably go ahead and schedule consultations with both of the doctors I'm considering so I can see which progam/office feels right. Aftercare is huge for me. I really want to make sure I have a good network to lean on for nutritional support, emotional support, etc. I do NOT want to be one of the people who goes through all of this only to go back to my old habits and gain the weight back.

It's so crazy. I've got these HUGE butterflies in my stomach all of a sudden when I think about this. I've spent a ton of time on Obesity Help just reading stories of people who ahve been through this and I'm both nervous and excited because that will be me someday. I am so very lucky to have the insurance coverage that I do. I cannot imagine how frustrating it would be to be facing a journey of a year or more at this point.

Thinking, thinking, always thinking

2006-08-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was thinking a lot today about how drastically the way I eat will have to change once I have the surgery done. And there's a part of me that wonders if I will really be able to do what I need to do. The cynical side of me is screeching that if I can't control myself around my trigger foods now, what makes me think I'll be able to control myself after the surgery? What makes me think that the surgery will magically make me eager to exercise?

And then I remember the whole reason I want this is because the surgery will help prevent me from doing what I do now. If my body is unable to process the fatty, sugary food that is my weakness, then I will not be able to keep eating it. It's like....if you're deathly allergic to peanuts, you don't eat peanut butter no matter how much you want it. If I know that lovely, perfectly frosted, decadently rich chocolate cupcake is going to leave me huddle in the bathroom either throwing up or pooping unendingly, then I'm not going to eat it. Because I will essentially be allergic to the foods that make me weak in the knees, I will finally be able to say no to them.

As for the exercise...well, it will be part of my rehab. Major surgery will require rehab after it, and the exercise will be part of that rehab. Here's the thing...right now, I have this very limited amount of time after work to get home, make dinner, clean up after dinner and then do a few things like pay bills, etc. After the surgery, that whole cooking dinner thing won't be such a bog deal because hello, protein shakes! My husband will have to fend for himself for awhile as far as dinner goes, while I'm out taking a nice long walk.

Today we went out to brunch with my father in law and his wife, and I caught myself practicing my super-chewing that is going to be part of my life afterwards. The chewing and the sipping of water (rather than the gulping I do these days) are the two things that will probably be the weirdest changes for me.

It's sort of amazing to me, the way I have completely committed myself to this idea. I do not think about it as "If I have surgery...", I think of it as "When I have the surgery..." I've researched surgeons and picked out the ones I want to go to, and this week I'll be contacting my insurance to get the ball rolling. From what I've read, they seem to be relatively good about approving people on the first application but since my plan is actually company paid but adminstered by InsuranceCo. who knows what the requirements might actually be. On the good side, I have a PPO so I don't think I have to get any referrals from my PCP. Either it'll take me a year or more to get a surgery date or it'll take me a matter of months. We'll see.

A baby elephant!

2006-08-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

I have no idea how much I weigh right now. I'm assuming I'm back where I started back in 2004 when I started Weight Watchers, at the very least. 308.

That number stuns me every time I admit it to myself. 308. we have a membership at the San Diego Zoo, and we try to go at least once every few months. I have a secret game that I play with myself when we're walking around looking at the different animals. I read the signs or listen to the keepers and I make a mental note about which animals weigh less than I do. So far, I weigh more than adult giant panda, and more than a giant anteater. Seriously, how big of an ego blow is that? I weigh more than two animals with the word "giant" in their name!! But here's something even worse. If I remember correctly, I believe I weigh as much if not more than a baby elephant. Let me repeat that: I am pretty sure that I weigh more than a baby elephant.

I need to lose about 150 pounds to be in what's considered a healthy range for my height. That's a whole other person! It's rather stunning and overwhelming when I think about it that way, and quite frankly, it depresses me so I don't think about it all that often.

I've decided I need to start listing the reasons I want, need to have this surgery. I''m sure this is a list that will be added to repeatedly.

I want to be able to go back to Tango Mar and not worry about fitting into the chairs at the restaurant.
I want to run up the stairs at work and not be out of breath.
I want to be able to spend a day on my feet without my knees hurting.
I want to have a cholesterol level that makes my doctor smile.
I don't want to suffer from bone spurs in my feet, arthritis in my knees and severe pain in my back the way my mother does.
I don't want to have to budget for a dozen different medications to counteract the blood pressure and choleseterol and diabetes and pain that this weight will cause me.
I want to sit on my husband's lap without hurting him.
I want to run a half marathon with my best friend.
I want to stop having acid reflux problems every time I eat something.
I want to finally conquer my addiction to sugar and white flour.

Today's taste of irony: The entire time I was cruising Obesity Help this evening, I was thinking about the pint of ice cream in the fridge.

Even more ironic: As soon as I post this, I'm going to go have some.

The first entry's always the hardest

2006-08-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Sometime at the end of the year last year, I admitted to my husband that WLS was occupying a corner of my mind. I'd always said that that I would do it on my own, that I could get my ass in gear and I would exercise and eat the right foods and I'd change my life forever.

I spent a year and a half attending Weight Watchers and tracking Points and for the first 9 months, things went great. I lost 30 pounds, 10 % of my body weight. And then I promptly started putting it back on. Eight months later I had gained back 10 of the 30 pounds and then I quit to finish planning my wedding.

My wedding was a beautiful day. I looked and felt gorgeous, my husband thought I was beautiful, and I have never felt so loved. After the wedding, I slacked off immensely, until I finally got fed up and went back to Weight Watchers. Once I got back there, I discovered I'd gained back another 10 pounds. It took me 6 weeks to lose 5 pounds.

And then one Sunday morning, sitting in my meeting (which I reall did like...good people, great leader) after having gained back 4 of those 5 pounds because of some serious stress eating, I found myself so miserable that I promptly came home and told my husband I was not dieting ny more because it makes me miserable.

And it does. Dieting makes me miserable because I'm bad at it. I know what I'm supposed to eat, I know how much I'm supposed to eat. But I'll eat the good stuf AND the bad stuff, and I have no off switch. I can gorge myself on pasta or toast or cereal or fruit or whatever it is that peaks my interest, and even when I fill sick to my stomach, I will eat that one last bite. Or five.

So this month I realized that it's time for a new tool. I need something that is going to be my off switch, something drastic. Something that will keep me from ending up in the same situation as mt mom....57 with joint problems, heart problems, cholesterol problems, blood pressure problems, etc. And so I'm going to pursue weight loss surgery, a laprascopic Roux-en-Y to be exact.

This is my story. This is my journey as I turn my life (and my guts!) inside out and upside down and make it all work better.