Day 20 post op

I have had a lot of downs and some ups. This turned out to be much more of a challenge than I originally thought.

Wednesday - weight loss stall broken

I haven't been posting, I know. Most of what I would have posted would have been negative. I've been negative for too long. Plus I've had this block when it comes to writing. I know when I am able to write I write well but something is holding me back. It's been that way a long time now.

I hit a weight loss stall recently and I let it depress me. I keep going back to the negative instead of believing it would pass. This all is a major transition for me, I let that negativity infect me, my body and my life. I still have a ways to go with that.

I have had many days where I couldn't get off the couch because I was so weak. Now that feeling lasts from the time I get up to around 2pm. So, I know it will get even better and I won't be tired hardly ever. I'm looking forward to the energy returning. My appetite is slowing coming back and I'm getting in more fluids and protein.

328.8lbs  this morning. I'm hoping for 320 by November 25th. My next goal is 299 by Christmas.

I return to work on November 18. I'm looking forward to doing something constructive with my time.

Liquid Diet Day 9

I know I haven't updated in a while but it's day 9, I am not hungry all the time anymore but when I am I can tell and I drink my protein and then I'm full. No clue how that happens. Met with surgeon yesterday afternoon and all went well. OK'd for surgery and I have a good feeling about this. I keep getting inspiration to stick to it, keep going, like everything leading up to this was necessary to get to a really good place later.

I'm cranky alot, getting tired of protein shakes, ready for the first 2 tbsp of yogurt and cream soup that comes with day 3 after surgery.  No more celebrating with food, less gathering with friends and family with food only. Gonna get out there and work my ass off literally.

Going to make you all and myself proud of me.

Surgery, heal, eat better, walk, bike.........I'm on it.

Whoever disagrees with this decision, tough shit. It's happening. Deal with it.

Approval and date of surgery

So I finally got my approval from insurance and also a surgery date of October 8th.

I start my liquid diet on September 24th. Before I decided to have this surgery, I would not do it specifically because I knew I couldn't handle the liquid diet. My head is screaming to me that there is absolutely no way I can handle it or get through it. But there's this other feeling, deep but accessible. It's saying that I can do this, it will be very difficult and it will feel like I'm breaking in two and that my life is falling apart but I will be a different person, a healthier me.

Someone in my 12 step program mentioned that maybe all this illness, back pain and nausea is my body going through a transition and must experience this transition in order to be free of the weight, the pain and the constant fatigue.

Whatever happens, I will be alive to experience it.

Helplessness

I thought things were getting better for me then today right before my meeting, a setback. I didn't overeat but I got close, it felt more like compulsive eating than anything else. I felt repulsed after and just wanted to curl into a ball. I drug my ass to the meeting anyway.

I'm glad I did. I started step 5 Sunday even though I had a splitting headache that made me sick. I still have it today and now I also pulled a muscle in my back which is causing a lot of pain, AGAIN.

It felt like I was trying to eat away the pain. But of course that didn't help. I must figure out something healthy to do for dinner on meeting nights. Difficult to plan ahead when I have a major migraine.

I feel lost but I also feel like this was another step up in the right direction, sometimes we have to take a step back to take a big step forward.

Impatience

I have always been impatient. Since I can remember, whenever I get something new, I almost always have to open it in the car before I get home. There is no rhyme or reason.

Well, this whole surgery process is making it extremely difficult for me to be patient. I keep getting emails, give it 5 more days, give us info about your psych eval - dates and times. Uhhhhh---you FING work there, aren't you supposed to know what the hell is going on????!!?!?!?

Anyway, I am barely holding on to my patience. With this relentless impatience, I am having some pretty major food cravings, all emotional of course. So if I indulge....doesn;t that mean I am not ready for this surgery? I have to completely change my life once this happens. Food habits, eating habits, emotional issues, patience issues.

So, just heard back from coordinator, I have to see the psych doc one more time before my paperwork can be resubmitted for approval. I have to say, that that is really depressing.

Wednesday

Today is my final appointment with the dietitian who will go over how things have been food plan wise and weigh me again. I believe that they will be sending off my packet to UHC insurance this Friday and I am hoping for an approval by August 30th. If so, then I plan on scheduling the surgery for sometime mid September. 

If you would have asked me that I would be doing this surgery, I would have told you no fucking way. I considered it cheating and the easy way out. Well, from what I am hearing, this is definitely not the easy way. It will be difficult but I will persevere. 

They will put me on some form of a 2 week all liquid diet prior to the surgery. Apparently, the all liquid diet will shrink my live enough so that the surgery is successful. I have been following the dietitians advice and I have been not drinking 30/60 mins after I eat. At first that was extremely difficult but now it's getting easier and easier.

Something I am noticing more and more often, I am not the social butterfly I used to be when I was younger. I could blame my husband for that as he is an introvert and I have lived with him since 2001, but I cannot. I allowed myself to become this way. I developed this philosophy that if someone didn't talk to me it was because they weren't interested in what I had to say. I never ever realized that some people either didn't talk to me or look at me because of my weight. Now that I pay attention, it's true. Most people cannot even look me in the face, which I think is funny.

Because they're afraid of what could happen to them? They might have to talk to me about what it's like to eat a double whopper? I really have no clue. I guess I will just stare them down until they either ask me what my problem is or turn the other way.

Morbid Obesity

For any of you who do not know what this is:
According to Wikipedia "Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems.^[1][2] People are considered obese when their body mass index(BMI), a measurement obtained by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of the person's height in metres, exceeds 30 kg/m²."

My current BMI is 57.5, which is morbidly obese.

The first time I saw this word, it was on my physician's notepad. It was written down and it was referring to me. Yes...to me. Even though I saw this on her sheet, I never identified with that term, even though it really is true. I could not believe that that could ever describe anything about me. This was back around 2002 or so. Whenever I saw myself in a mirror, even though I inadvertently was dodging them, I was mostly disgusted and other times satisfied.

Over time, I allowed myself to be blind to the things I was doing to myself and I heard the people around me say that they were worried and I still did nothing most of the time. Yes, I tried various diets and most of them didn't work, other times they would work but only for a short time mostly because I believed that I physically could not do it. I'll repeat myself, I actually believed that no matter what I did, I could not be successful. Where did I pickup this philosophy? I couldn't tell you.

The past few years, my health has been declining rapidly. I experienced pain almost non-stop daily for quite a few months. I believe that more than anything is what caused my subsequent depression. I never thought I would ever have experienced depression. The best way I can describe this depression is: it was a deep dark hole with no doors, no light and no one could find me because I isolated myself from almost everyone.

I was literally eating myself to death. I would sit in front of the TV for hours, home from work I would immediately sit on the couch, eat crap and stay there till bedtime.

Then, my friend's sister, mentioned a 12-step program called Overeaters Anonymous. I still wasn't ready but I had started to talk to people about what I was experiencing and then another person mentioned OA. She was my husbands colleague, she had no clue what I had been going through but that felt like a sign to me. Something was nudging me toward healing, a new sense of self.

It was just before I started OA that I made the decision to pursue Weight Loss Surgery. Yes, i went through all the pros and cons and i saw that the list of pros far outweighed the cons. So, I started the process and now I am getting close to a surgery date and I am hoping to the beginning of a new and healthy life.

Here is my before pic. This was taken about a month ago. I will post my progress pics, along with measurements etc.

Tuesday

I got the idea from Mr. Jonas to come back to blogging. Especially since I have started a new kind of experience. A long more detailed post to come with a description about how I got to this decision and where it has taken me so far. Stay tuned....