Bariatric Foodie Play with your food
They say when you have weight loss surgery, they operate on your stomach and not your head. Most of the time when I hear this said it’s pertaining to hunger, appetite and eating.
But it’s true in so many ways.
I don’t know about you guys, but there were ways I was much more balanced as an obese person than I am as a person “in the struggle.” (Because I am…forever…perpetually…in a struggle with my weight!)
But this year as I celebrated the 8th anniversary of my RNY gastric bypass, I find that I’m a bit more centered than I was in years past. Definitely more centered that I was my first two years.
I think it’s because over the past year I’ve been forced to accept some hard truths. I share them with you here in case any of them help you to put your experience in perspective.
Obesity is a disease and WLS is part of my treatment plan
This is a big one. I thought of WLS as “the end of the road.” As such, I thought if I didn’t lose the weight – and keep it off – that I had failed and that there was no hope for me.
And yet in 2013 the American Medical Association declared obesity a disease – and a chronic one at that. A chronic disease means that obesity isn’t a disease where you can just take a pill or get a shot and it’s gone. Its effects can linger, sometimes for long periods of time and sometimes forever.
When I finally embraced that obesity is a disease I have and that my weight loss surgery is part of my treatment plan (not the entire plan) I began to realize that, yes, I do still have to stay active in managing my weight for the remainder of my life. This may depress you, but consider this. To maintain your dental health you have to remember to brush your teeth multiple times a day. To maintain good hygiene you have to maintain a regimen of washing yourself. To maintain overall good health you have to commit to going to sleep every single day. We have a million and two routines that we do every single day for our overall health and we do them. Managing my obesity is no different!
There is no “one-size-fits-all” WLS journey
This drove me CRAZY in the beginning of my post-op life. I wasn’t losing as fast as this person. I was able to eat more than that person. This person eats everything and still loses weight. That person maintains without ever having to exercise.
You know what these folks all have in common?
NONE of them is me!
My body is different from anybody else’s. While my body can work similarly to someone else’s in some fashions, there are countless ways it doesn’t. That had two big implications on how I live my life.
#1 – I don’t compare myself, my body, my eating, my routine, my exercise or my progress to anybody else. I know that’s hard for folks to actually practice. Sometimes you have to manually force yourself to stop doing it. But I’ve finally arrived at a place where the only person I compare myself to is myself.
#2 – I hold fast to MY rules. Just because this other post-op doesn’t have to do x, y and z doesn’t mean that I should stop doing it. It’s taken a long time but I have a good working understanding of MY body and how it reacts. I have an even better understanding of my mind and spirit and how they both play into how I think and behave. Most of the time I am practicing my process in ways folks will never notice. But I don’t give myself “a pass” because someone else can “get away” with doing things that I know I can’t.
I may never be 100% satisfied with the way I look
I mean generally, I have a healthy sense of self-esteem (folks on my Facebook friends list know this about me by virtue of the amount of selfies I take) but in reality we all have this vision of “skinny” in our heads. And I probably will never be that.
The reason I point this out is because I see a lot of folks discrediting their progress because of loose skin or other features they don’t like. (Stop that, by the way, you’re awesome!)
For me, plastic surgery is kind of out of reach. I’m a single mom of two kids, I just bought a house, my oldest goes to college next year and the youngest isn’t that far behind. Add to that the fact that my insurance won’t cover any of it and…yeah…it’ll be some years before I could even think of getting plastics.
But I’ve worked hard to appreciate my body. I love my body. But no…I’m not 100% satisfied with how it looks all the time. And that’s ok. I live in that space of dissatisfaction quite well these days. I recognize there’s a place I want to be, but I appreciate the place I’m in now because I remember where I came from.
There was a time, however, when I was working toward total satisfaction with myself. And I always came up short.
Food is not the enemy, and torturing myself with it is not the answer
Ohhhh but doesn’t it seem like it should be?
But it isn’t! I’ve learned that food (by itself) did not make me obese. Food didn’t single-handedly cause my unhappiness with myself. Food didn’t cause my regain after WLS, and food isn’t the reason I’m steadily losing that regain.
It all comes back to me.
To choosing myself, each and every day. To acknowledging what’s healthy in my life and what’s not. That includes acknowledging that in my life, there has to be room for indulgence or else I will go completely off the rails. I can’t live restrictively. And I also can’t live in environments where people don’t support my healthy goals.
Sure, when I started to regain, I tried to severely restrict my food intake. And sure over the past 8 years I have done all liquids, all protein, and many other miserable things. But in the end I had to ask myself, “Am I happy right now? Do I feel fulfilled right now?” My mother’s death in 2012 brought home to me that time is finite. Once you spend it you do not get it back. Now I’m committed to enjoying as many moments of my life as I can. And if I can’t enjoy a moment, I endeavor to learn from it.
In keeping with that, when folks ask me what I eat/don’t eat. I eat what I want. What I want happens to be pretty healthy, but if I want a cookie, I eat a cookie. If I want some chocolate, I eat some chocolate. Food is not the enemy. And torturing myself with it is not the answer!
Nikki this was very well written as is everything you write. Now here is the thing. In my head I know everything you are saying is true but practicing it consistently is the big huge challenge I have. I would venture to say a lot of us face the same trapings. There are a lot of emotional feelings that play into the way some of us eat and I for one have not conquered all those demons living in my head. I go on fine for a while while I am feeling important enough to take care of ME but then someone else asks for help or I see they need help and there goes the ME time. I am not blaming anyone else for any of this. I know it is something I need to ALWAYS work on and remember that I am WORTH IT even though all my life I was never shown how that all worked. I will continue to try though because sitting on my butt doing nothing and eating anything in sight is not a good feeling at all. I don’t want to commit slow suicide. Death by eating is not how I want to go HOME!
Here’s what I find scary. The whole world of “bariatric” has exploded recently in lineups for surgery to equipment to blogs, to books, to Facebook Groups etc – you get the message. I read and belong to a few of these Groups. I know I need support in this journey I have embarked upon. The posts and pictures etc are mostly being done, it seems, by young females who seem to be obsessed with their looks. Lots of selfies under a variety of names BUT, and here is the crux of my comment – at last. No one is talking about tomorrow or next year or ten years down the road. All that weight will come back on UNLESS one’s attitude or relationship with food drastically changes. The immediacy of a changed shape, although exciting, is only the beginning of this life long journey we all face. No one seems to be mentioning what is being done to provide some sort of sustainability. I am a seventy year old female who in 2015 lost 75 lbs through a Bariatric Non-Surgical Program, who cannot exercise due to damaged lungs. So far in 2016, I have lost another 15 lbs. As you can, things have slowed down in my weight loss journey. I have been forced into an attitude change and have put in place many personal cues to remind myself not to over-indulge. When I choose to ignore those cues, I pay the price in either more pain than I care to talk about or weight gain or another round of beating myself up. Be careful young people to not get so caught up in the new clothes you can now wear, how you look in the mirror today and start focusing on sustainability. Some do mention exercise programs and healthy activities, but there seems to more focus on the “skinny” figure. Just sayin:))
Hi Diane,
While I haven’t been privy to the wave of selfies and posts to which you refer, I will say this.
Folks come at this experience for their own reasons. I believe when folks are new at this process, their minds are in fact on the weight loss and self-image component of all this. I think that’s ok. Being 8 years out, I can say I went through a vanity phase! But it was just that. A phase. A phase in my development as a person exiting obesity. Just as children go through phases as they become mature adults, I think weight loss surgery patients go through phases in becoming a person whose obesity is in remission. For many of us, we missed out on clothing fads and didn’t like to look in the mirror or take pictures, and doing so (even ad nauseum) helps us to form an updated sense of self and self-esteem.
For my part, I try to talk a lot about what makes this process sustainable. If you look through the blog there’s a lot on how I’ve decided that I shouldn’t do exercise I hate (there’s exercise I love but there’s some I hate that I did because I thought I needed to for various reasons). There’s a need to find balance in eating so you feel neither severely deprived nor sick. There’s a need to do self examination throughout this process to make sure you are thinking in ways that promote your continued and sustained health. And most of all, I promote the fact that you never, ever graduate from obesity. You need to work at keeping it at bay for the rest of your life.
So…if those are the kinds of conversations you are looking for, you’ve found the right place! I encourage you to check out the BF Facebook page if you’ve not already (www.facebook.com/bariatricfoodie) where we discuss these things and a lot more.
Some of your comments remind me of Michelle May. I mean this as a compliment. You sound like you love what you eat and eat what you love. You”ve worked on that infamous cycle of eat, repent, repeat.
I enjoyed reading this article! I’m 5 weeks lost op from the Gastric Sleeve. Your words give me a “real life” idea of months/years to come. I’m writing this and leaving it in my nightstand so I reflect back during times of struggle and success. Best wishes on your continued journey!
Very well written, and is very helpful way to look at what I’m going thru, I’m 4 months out , and starting to look and see some of the things you mentioned! Thank you for this article!
I so identify with this article! I am 65 years old and am still waiting to be happy with myself. I have been overweight all my life everyone I was molested as a child. I want to be happy with me whatever I discover that means to me.
Hey there Ann,
I’m so glad to hear that you are committed to finding self-happiness. Just know that I’m rooting for you! And if I can ever help, hit me up at nikki@bariatricfoodie.com!