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June 19, 2004

Fat and Fit?

"I began to want to lose weight to be healthy. "

This is an excerpt from the last post I made. What to me is a healthy weight? When can I be happy with my weight? I don't know. I believe that it is 100% possible to be fat and fit. Generally people who are fat and fit aren't people in need of weight loss surgery. A few may be, but I have never run across a morbidly obese person who was fit.

When I first had surgery, I would have been happy with any weight under 200. In fact, I celebrated when I weighed 200 lbs. The weight kept coming off, and coming off. I got to 140-145 lbs and stabalized. I was happy. I was less than half of what I started. Then my ex-husband and I seperated and divorced, and I was taking a medication that kills the appetite. I got down to 123 lbs. I was skeletal, but I was tiny. Being able to wear a size 6 was amazing. I rushed out and bought tons of little jeans. Jeans that 145 lbs I can't get up over my big thighs. I'm sure I'd be much happier if I just threw those jeans away, but I can't.

I live in constant fear of weight gain. I got to be 300+ lbs because each time I went up a size I accepted it and promised never to gain weight. Whenever the scale went up 5 lbs, I attributed it to water weight, and promised myself that it wouldn't go up again. And that I'd cut back a little to loose the extra 5 lbs. The result was that I gained and gained and gained over a period of 20 years.

What weight is my healthy weight? I'm sure I'd still be happy (and healthy) at 150 lbs, 175 lbs, but I want to do my best not to get there. Because I fear that soon after it will be 200 lbs, and then 225 lbs. But here's the glitch. I can diet, count fat, carbs, calories, protein, limit sugar, EVERYTHING and get down to 135 lbs. It takes constant diligence. It's a full time job. OR I can eat what I want, in moderation of course, and be 145 lbs. Is the 10 lbs worth the constant battle? Personally, I don't think so. Remember, my goal was/is to be healthy.

Which is probably why I haven't looked into plastic surgery until recently. It's been close to 4 years since I had surgery. I have an estimated 10-12 lbs of extra skin on my body(see I really am 130ish) and it really hasn't bothered me. I don't wear short sleeved shirts often because the skin hangs down pretty low. I wear 3/4 length sleeves. The pannus (hanging stomach) is really starting to bother me. I have my first appointment in FL at the end of July. Depending on how that goes, it'll be a big part of this diary. If I don't get plastic surgery, I'll continue to live my life. Is the pain and recovery worth it? I don't know.

Now, if you're thinking about having weight loss surgery, and the thought of skin is keeping you from doing it, then weight loss surgery isn't for you. Period. At the very least, you aren't ready because you're looking for excuses not to have it done. I get tons and tons of emails from people who don't want to have surgery because they don't want to deal with the skin afterwards. I have little patience for these people, and tell them so. I don't suffer fools. The skin is there now anyway, it's just stretched over fat. The skin isn't going to give you diabetes, or heart disease. It doesn't, as far as I know, increase your risk for cancer. It doesn't keep you from being able to cross your legs, or to bend over to tie your shoes. It doesn't make you piss your pants when you laugh, sneeze, or cough. It can be a little painful (mine sometimes get a tingling sensation, like it's falling "asleep"), but nothing compared to carrying around what is equivalent to an extra human being. And you can hide your skin with clothes. Sure, I won't wear a bathing suit in public, and I can't wear short shorts and cute short sleeved shirts, but at I can shop in the misses and juniors section of NORMAL stores and not at Layne Bryant or Catherine's.

I've been trying to think about things to blog about. The unique perspective that I can offer is that I had surgery a few years ago, when not a lot of people were having it done. People wonder about life 1,3,5,10 years later. I'm not that far out, but I'm getting there. Perhaps the best hope I can offer is that I am normal now. I still consider myself an obese person. In my mental picture, I am still fat. I don't know if that'll go away. Perhaps after plastic surgery? I don't know. If I want a piece of birthday cake at a party, I'll have a piece. Being able to leave food on my plate, and not to have the compulsion to "clean the plate" has been liberating. My tastes have changed. I now like vegetables, and if there is something that I particularly don't care for, I don't eat it. Pre-op I would've eaten anything edible just because it was put in front of me. I enjoy cooking now, before I just prepared and ate food. I look at food totally different now. No longer is it an addiction or compulsion, but it's a pleasure, something to be enjoyed.

I guess the short version is that as a "thinner" person, I have to still learn to be comfortable with my weight without being too comfortable so as to not risk becoming obese again. I am healthier since having a gastric bypass, and have probably added 20 years to my life and an unmeasurable amount of quality to my life. But there are certainly things I could do to even make myself more healthy. Like exercise. I was more healthy at 200 lbs than I am now, because at 200 lbs, I went to the gym everyday. But I do have a gym membership, I just never go.

If you have any specific questions, please let me know. There is such a variety of things that I'd like to talk about. There's the change in yourself after surgery, not only physically, but mentally. The change in the way people treat you. Society treats you better, but family and friends sometimes treat you like an alien and can't, or struggle, to accept the change in you. I'll get to these all eventually, but if there's something you're itching to know about, let me know. I'll answer anything, and if I don't know the answer, I know about 50 people who are also WLS patients, so I'm sure we could come up with one.

Posted by Manda at 07:31 AM | Comments (4)

June 18, 2004

The Fat Kid, Teenager, and Adult

I didn't decide to have weight loss surgery because I didn't want to be fat anymore. I decided to have weight loss surgery because I didn't want to die. I call it my "mid life crisis". The day when you wake up and realize that you aren't happy, that you're miserable, lonely, afraid, ignored, useless. Of course it was a sudden onset thing. I had been a fat kid, a fat teenager, and now a fat adult. I survived being called names in grammar school when I was only 10-20 lbs heavier than everyone else. In middle school, I was the least popular in class, and constantly made fun of, when I was 30-40 lbs heavier than everyone else. In high school, at a board military school, packed full of insensitve boys, I survived being voted Homecoming Maid in the 10th grade as a joke, and 4 years of ridicule. My car was known as the "fat wagon". By then I was a 100 lbs heavier than everyone else. In college, I went to an all girl's school, so weight wasn't an issue. I became comfortable and gained another 40 lbs. It was an important time for me, because I came to love myself, for myself. Losing weight to make other's like me more was no longer an issue. Losing weight to fit in, or to not feel ashamed of myself was no longer an issue. I think all overweight people come to a point where they become comfortable with who they are. It's the "love me the way I am" thing. I began to want to lose weight to be healthy.

When I graduated from college I weighed 270 lbs. I married the first guy that asked me because I didn't know if/when I would ever be asked again. Walking down the ailse, the only thought in my head was "what the F*** am I doing". I settled. I was miserable. My ex-husband is a fine, kind, loving man. There was just no chemistry between us. And I probably would have stayed with him the rest of my life, had he not needed a fat woman to feel better about himself, to feel attractive, and to be attracted to.

But this isn't about him, it's about my midlife crisis. I've only admitted to one person that for about a year that I had considered ending my life I was so miserable. But I did. I can recall the effort it took to just be alive. Fat people aren't lazy, contrary to popular belief. To this day, I'm still sensitive about being called lazy. Walking up a flight of stairs, getting into bed, getting into and out of chairs, walking, all takes an extreme amount of effort. Positioning myself as to not have back/knee/leg pain was difficult. Even sitting down oftentimes hurt. Not to mention the time spent hating yourself because you believe you are as worthless as society wants you to believe. And it's easy to get into such a depressing mental state, because physically, you always feel drained. I have to think hard about exactly what it was like, and I'm grateful. You know that we don't have the capability to recall pain. We can remember that something hurt, but to recall the exact pain, is impossible. And that's fortunate. My last few years as a fat person were nothing but pain. I knew that if I didn't do something to change my life, that I would die. Living to 50 would be a miracle. Suppose I made it to 50? What quality of life would I have? Life at 23 was difficult enough. I was quickly approaching diabetes and heart disease. I was still gaining weight. In the three years since college, after being married, I had gained 30 lbs. I averaged about 10-15 lbs a year. At 30, I was looking at 400+ lbs.

Diet and exercise doesn't work. People argue that it can, and does, but statistically speaking, it doesn't work. Obese people who manage to loose weight using diet and exercise gain it back. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's staggering. In my case, and I suspect the case of many others, futility kept me fat. I'd diet like crazy for a few months, lose enough weight to be able to do a little bit of exercise, and then spend a week in bed because the exercise was just too much. I'd look at the 100 lbs I still needed to lose, and the little results that I had gotten for so much hard work, and give up.

The first step in my Weight Loss journey was accepting responsibility for my fat. My entire life, I had blamed my parents. I had blamed them for not teaching me to eat right. For begging me to diet, grounding me into dieting, but never really providing the example, or the information to be successful. Just do it was about as far as I got. At a very young age, I believed that my parents would love me more if I was thin. There was just enough to make me hate myself, and allow me to blame them. But at 23 years old, I could continue to blame them and get fatter, or accept responsibility and find a way to get healthy. I decided to get healthy, and to love myself enough to want to get healthy.

Posted by Manda at 08:06 AM

June 14, 2004

This was me, three

This was me, three years ago before I had weight loss surgery. I weighed about 300 lbs, give or take a few. I wore a size 28. I had never in my life been able to cross my legs. I avoided stairs at all costs. I had constant back and knee pain. I got winded doing the smallest tasks. I could not see my feet or bend to tie my shoes. I was incontinent. When I laughed hard or sneezed, there was a good chance that I may wet my pants. I was miserable, and had been for about 10 years.

As a child, I heard a sermon about faith. The preacher said that if we had faith the size of a grain of sand that our prayer could move mountains. Every night I went to bed with the faith that the next morning I would wake up thin. It didn't happen, until 2 years ago. I had surgery March 12, 2001. The surgery I chose was not a common one. It's called the Mini Gastric Bypass, and is very controversial. Three and a half years later, I have had no problems. My surgery took 31 minutes. I left the hospital the next morning and went to work the following Monday. My recovery was unremarkable. My weight loss was slow. I lost about 10 lbs a month for 18 months, for a total loss of 175 lbs. My lowest weight was 123 lbs. One day, I woke up thin.

I now weigh about 145 lbs. I struggle every day to lose weight, or to maintain my current weight. Weight loss surgery brought me to a healthy weight. In time, I believe that my intestines have adapted, and my stomach has stretched. My surgery was laporoscopic, so the surgery was done using little cameras, not open. The surgeon could only guestimate how large my pouch was being made. Shortly after surgery I was able to eat large portions. The expected 4 to 6 oz was never the case for me. I could eat a salad and a 10 oz steak with no problem just a few months after surgery. I can easily over eat and gain weight. Right after WLS, if you choose to have an intestinal bypass, sugar is out of the question. It will make you sick. It will give you something called dumping syndrome. I no longer have this problem. I can eat all the sugar I want, every day.

So, I'm a normal woman in her late 20's. Except that I was once morbidly obese. I am happy to have the struggle to lose 10 lbs. When my jeans are a little tight, and I'm being exceptionally hard on myself, I remember the size 28's. I no longer have 170 lbs to lose. But I do have to make choices. I have to choose not to eat the candy bar, or the bag of skittles. I have to choose to exercise. I have to choose not to overeat.

So, what kind of diet do I follow? Not a very good one. I work the late shift, so I eat dinner about 11:30 at night, and go to bed about 1. Not the best case scenario, but I do the best I can. During the day, I snack. I eat popcorn, pepporoni, eggs, carrots, and breakfast bars. I'm using this diary as an excuse to start a new diet. As I type, I'm drinking a protein shake. For the next week, I'm going to go on a "protein fast". Many people who are veteran weight loss surgery patients use it to jump start weight loss.

The number one question I get from people who view my photographs at MGB Friends concerns extra skin. Yup, I've got it, about 10 lbs of it. I doesn't bother me that much because it was better than the weight I was carrying around. It doesn't keep me from tying my shoes, or walking up stairs, or crossing my legs, or from exercising. I can hide it in clothes, so it doesn't keep me a prisoner of my own home. When I was fat, I stayed at home. I did my grocery shopping at night. I didn't go into public. The skin is no big deal. Many people who have had surgery the same time as me have already had extensive plastic surgery. I've just begun to look into it. My first appointment is at the end of July. I won't have anything that my insurance won't pay for. Everything else I have will come as I can pay for it.

Posted by Manda at 06:29 AM