A few years ago, my sister-in-law asked me if I’d ever consider weight loss surgery. I can’t say that I’d never thought of it, but every time it crossed my mind, I immediately rejected the idea. At the time I knew only about lap-band surgery and the gastric bypass. I had no faith that I wouldn’t end up eating around the lap band and I feared the more drastic bypass surgery and the effects I’d heard of with malabsorption of vitamins and the altered digestion process.
I held onto that fear with a nearly unbreakable grip. I honestly cannot say why I was more afraid of the surgery than I was of my super obesity killing me.
As much as I hate how much fatter I got in recent years and the negative impact on my body and emotional well-being, I’m really glad that I reached the point of my own personal wake-up call last summer. My physical condition had steadily decreased for quite some time. There were things I’d once enjoyed that I couldn’t any longer. I felt like crap all of the time. The day that I couldn’t pull myself up the ladder of my boat to get out of the water was the last straw. In that moment I knew that I needed to stop damaging myself and get myself on the road to healing. I was done resisting and began researching gastric bypass surgery. Even though I still feared it, I planned to go ahead despite the fear.
After I made the decision to pursue weight loss surgery, I could view my attitude and fears with a different perspective. I began to see that my resistance was very similar to the way my mom had resisted going to rehab for her alcoholism. Her refusal was the strongest when she was in the worst grip of relapse. Thank God she always reached the point where her walls would break down and she would agree to go.
Mom’s post-rehab recoveries were never perfect, but God love her, she did her best to fight her disease. In her later years, her periods of sobriety were longer and her relapses shorter.
Once I committed to having surgery and then discovered that there was a newer procedure called the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy, I got pretty gung-ho about the whole thing. I made the decision and, from that point, everything in me focused on making it happen. Now here I am, ten weeks post-op, and I can’t help but look back and wonder why I resisted for so long.
What is it in us that makes us continue to choose destructive, harmful behavior over healthy behaviors that make us well or keep us well? Even with therapy, I don’t understand why I took refuge in overeating instead of facing things without food. The best I can do is that it fulfilled a need and had a purpose. I think at this stage of my life it was also what I knew. The habits of a lifetime were so ingrained that I didn’t know anything else. The devil I knew was somehow more reassuring and it fed my resistance.
I know now that overeating no longer serves a purpose that is in anyway positive. I’m willing to give up the comfortable numbing and dare to face whatever might come at me without the food.
When I was a kid, if someone dared me to do something, I never said no. I temporarily lost that spirt for too many years. Today, I’m daring myself to keep changing. I’m daring myself to get better.
Weighty Matters 
I dare you to be awesome. Oh wait, you’re already awesome! 😉
Awww, thanks, Hoper! You’re awesome, too!
Daring to get better… there’s so much in that, isn’t there? You are a huge inspiration!