Weighty Matters

A friend of mine is visiting the Keys this week.  She had gastric bypass surgery in October.  ( *waving*  Hi, S!)  She’s lost a good chunk of weight and sounds like she’s doing great with the recovery/food/eating  issues.

We had a nice chat this afternoon and got a bit into sharing how good it is to experience some of the things that are easier now that we’ve dropped weight.  Airplane travel, for one, which I’ve blogged about here.  Being able to feel our shoulder bones.   Fitting into plastic arm chairs and not worrying about them breaking beneath our weight.

These things, and other improvements made me think about how much losing weight reduces not only physical stress on our bodies, but also emotional and mental stress.   How much time did I spend in varying degrees of anxiety and stress while I worried about whether available chairs would hold my weight, whether I’d be able to get a seat belt extension on the plane, whether the seat belt in the rental car would fit around my winter coat-clad body, whether I’d be able to walk as far as I needed to?  How many things did I stop doing because I feared whatever negative impact my oversize body would make on the experience?

Looking back, I’m surprised that my head didn’t explode with the stress.  I’m also amazed that I didn’t always consciously feel the overwhelming stress.  Just goes to show that excessive amounts of food really can numb our emotions.

It’s only in looking back that I connect with the stress by virtue of experiencing it’s near-absence.  What a contrast!

I’ll be on a cruise in Hawaii in less than a month.  (I love saying that!)  The last time I was on a cruise ship was in May 2011 when my friend and I went to Alaska.  I had a marvelous time, but it was not without physical difficulty.  I paid a lot more for my plane ticket to the West Coast because I couldn’t stand the thought of a transcontinental flight in coach.  The ship was great, but my butt was too big to fit in the theater’s seats.  I did every excursion that I wanted to, but walking around the town in one port was excruciatingly difficult.

I don’t have any of those concerns or fears around my upcoming trip.  The flight is twice as long but my friend and I have the two seats next to each other on one side of the plane and we’ll be just fine.  I know that I’ll be able to settle in and enjoy the show without the physical discomfort of hard seats jabbing into my body.  I’m ready to snorkel, hike, and, yes, I believe that I have lost enough weight to zipline if we can fit that into our schedule in port!

Tonight, I can really feel, and celebrate, how much lighter I am in my spirit as well as my body.  It feels terrific.

I think I’m quickly reaching the point where I don’t want the most prominent thing about my life to be my weight loss.  Maybe it’s just because I’ve come off of a couple of weeks where I’ve seen people for the first time since losing weight, but lately I feel like it’s all that a lot of people focus on.  There’s more to me than the fact that I’ve lost 135 pounds.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or unexcited.  This really is a big deal for me.  It just isn’t the only deal.   Does this make me sound like a brat?

I think I’m living up to the “quite contrary” part of the old nursery rhyme.  Last week I posted a photo of me from October.  I think it’s one that I posted here when I was all dressed up for a fundraising event.  To someone who hasn’t really seen a photo of me, or seen me in person, the weight loss is really obvious — right down to my noticeable collar bones.  The amount of praise and compliments this created was staggering and wonderful and made me feel really, really great.   Clearly, I liked the reaction and derived great positive reinforcement.  So, I’m not sure why other situations or circumstances make me sigh on the inside even while I smile and thank people.

I’m really fortunate that, to most of the people I work with, it’s become much more matter-of-fact.  They might bring it up occasionally but it’s no longer a daily thing.  I love that it feels much more normal.  They were very sweet for my birthday.  Usually we mark someone’s birthday by ordering in from a local restaurant and eating together — something we rarely get to do otherwise.  My boss was frank and respectful when she came right out and asked me what I wanted to do and if this practice would fit with my food plan.  I so appreciated that consideration.  We had a really nice time out on the porch sharing the meal.  One of my closest friends at work then surprised me with a thoughtful, and yummy, dessert.  Instead of a big, calorie laden birthday cake, she researched a healthy chocolate treat and then made it.  I need to get the recipe but basically it was fake fudge made with mashed bananas, cocoa powder and a peanut product called PB2.  (Dehydrated peanut powder.  You can reconstitute it with water to make it sort of peanut buttery.  It’s tasty but drastically reduced in fat.)  The fake fudge was delicious.  We still have it in the freezer at work so we can get a treat in the afternoon if we want.

So, my birthday lunch was great because it was totally normal — just like anyone else’s birthday.

Come to think of it, my fellow students at Tai Chi don’t constantly comment about my weight loss either.  When they hadn’t seen me for a couple of weeks, they noticed change but we pretty much moved right into practicing the  set.

Maybe that’s the difference.  People I see all of the time have adjusted to my new normal.   It’s no longer a main topic of interest so we can go about the other aspects of our lives.   To people who don’t see me as often, it stands to reason that the changes are going to be more drastic to them and spark more conversation.  You know what?  When all is said and done, I can deal with those times.  I think it’s possible I was being too sensitive.  In my heart I know that my friends and acquaintances know there’s more to me than my weight loss.

Does this read like I pulled a 180?  I guess I did, but that’s the benefit of working these things out on the blog.  Thanks for listening! 🙂

Has anyone else watched the beginning episodes of this season’s Biggest Loser?  I could never have tried out for that show.  For all that I am committed to publicly sharing about my weight loss journey, I do it to process my issues, hold myself accountable, and work my way through every step.  I don’t think I could have gone on to a television show to lose weight with such incredible guerilla tactics and play out all of the drama and effort with a camera and crew always in my face.

I also would have cried the first time that a trainer yelled at me.   Physically, if I’d gone on the show at 386 pounds, I doubt my right knee would have lasted through the first week.

I watched the first two episodes and during the introductory weigh-ins, saw some contestants who weighed much more than I did before my surgery as well as some who are about the weight that I am now, give or take 10 or 20 pounds.  On the first night, which represented their first week at the ranch, I didn’t see anybody that breezed through the initial two and a half hour workout.  I couldn’t have run on a treadmill at 5 mph the first time out.  Hell, last year I could barely walk a couple of blocks without breathing heavy.  Any faster and I gasped to suck in air.

I realized that right now, I’m more fit than even the ones who weigh less than I do.  It makes me really glad that I started increasing my exercise as soon as I physically could after the surgery.  I also know that these brave contestants are going to blow right by me on the fitness level in a very short period of time.  They devote hours each day to their workouts.  The results are going to show.  When I tune in next week, I need to be really careful not to compare where I am to where those contestants have brought themselves.

Each of us is different.  Our bodies have a different history; we have different metabolisms.  Gender, age and a wealth of other factors affect the rate of our weight loss.

If you read the comments on my previous post, you’ll see that Pink Pelican has lost 210 pounds!  That is phenomenal.  If I remember right, she had the same surgical procedure as I did but about six months before me.  I have to say that my second reaction, after cheering for her, was to compare where I am now with where she might have been six months ago.   I want to see if, six months from now, I could actually have lost the rest of the weight that I want to take off.

Here’s the bottom line.  The answer is, “Maybe”.  Like I said two paragraphs ago, we’re all different.  Comparing ourselves to others doesn’t really accomplish anything.  I shouldn’t measure my success against someone else’s.  I also need to remember that the numbers are out of my control.  I could be absolutely perfect on my food plan and do my exercise five times a week but only see the number on the scale go down a little, or even not at all for a week or two.  My body might decide to jam on the breaks for whatever reason and a stall will set in.

Comparisons lead to frustrations, in my personal opinion.  Given that my eating disorder sometimes infects me with messed-up thinking, if I constantly compared myself to someone else who was losing at a faster rate, it could screw with my emotions.  Then I’d feel bad and might, possibly want to run to food to anesthesize the bad feelings.

So, for today, I’m reminding myself to make no comparisons.  I am me, and I’m the only one I need to worry about.  One day at a time, I only need to focus on my food plan and exercise strategies.  As long as I do that, I will get to my goal.  The amount of time it takes doesn’t matter in the least.