Discipline! Consistency! New Habits!

Discpline.  Consistency. New Habits.  These are three things that I have GOT to work on, not just in the way I eat, but in all areas of my life.  Like this blog, for example!  I want this blog to be a record of this life-saving (life-changing) journey that I'm on, yet if I don't blog, there's no record.

Discipline.  This is something that I'm really coming up short on.  I keep losing sight of what I want most, and going for what I want right now.  Whether it's something I buy, or something I eat, or something I do, I am very habituated to instant-gratification.  I have bursts of self-discipline, but they rarely last longer than a few weeks or months. 

I absolutely HAVE to practice this...it's not something that comes naturally to me, so I have to keep doing it, daily, and it will become more and more natural to me. I'm so self-indulgent, and that self-indulgence has gotten me to this point...where I am willing to let them remove over 80% of my stomach so that I can finally lose the weight.   I must keep in the forefront of my mind what I want most. I will weigh every decision I make, everything I put in my mouth, against what I want MOST.  Do I want that (fill in the blank) right now, even MORE than I want to be a normal size, healthy and active and enjoying being in my own body? 

I commit right now, that before I eat anything that isn't part of my plan I will ask myself if I want that more than what I want most.  

Consistency.  I need to be consistent in blogging. It not only helps keep me motivated in this journey, but it helps me to put my thoughts down...to see where my head is going...and to have a record of this process. 

I have only blogged twice so far this year, and one of those times was simply copying a wonderful post from a Bariactric FB group!  I need to be consistent in my blogging...make it a habit to blog at LEAST once a week...ideally more often than that.  There is so much that happened since I last blogged a month ago that I haven't blogged about.  My new PCP, my continuing therapy with Janys, the acupuncture I've been getting, the experience with my feet and trying to get that resolved.  My new SUV!  Refinancing my mortgage. The monster boss at work.  SO many things that have been happening that I haven't written about.  I really regret that.  And I don't want to live a life with regrets. 

So right now...right here....I am committing to blogging at least ONCE A WEEK.

New Habits.  My old habits haven't worked very good for me, obviously.  I need to develop new habits BEFORE I have my surgery.  I need to make it a habit to eat every 2.5 to 3 hours.  And to eat only what I have planned to eat. I need to BREAK the habit of night-time grazing. I need to make it a habit to eat slowly and mindfully.  To actually experience every bite, and to chew each bite at least 10-15 times.  I still eat very fast, and am barely conscious when I do it. I still look at my plate in surprise when I've finished, because I eat so fast, and without even thinking about the bite in my mouth.  Also, I need to make it a habit to move more every day. Right now it's difficult because of my issues with my feet (Plantar Faciitis and tendinitis) but I am seeing a foot doctor (who is GORGEOUS, btw) and I really believe that I am improving and will be back on the treadmill every morning very soon!  I also want to start kettlebell training again.  Kettlebells will be a huge part of this journey, and of my overall health. 

Right now, I am committing to eating slower and more mindfully, and to start moving more, as my feet allow. 

In my last session with Janys, she told me to work on finding other ways to soothe myself, rather than using food to do it.  I have been soothing myself with food this past week or so. Worrying about Max having cancer, stressing over the work situation...but I'm using it as an excuse.  I will find other ways to soothe my soul, other than eating. 

Til next time....Discipline!  Consistency!  New habits!

Let's Talk About Expectations

This was posted in one of my FB Bariatric groups...and I loved it so much that I want to preserve it here so I can come back to it when I need to.  

TODAY, LET’S TALK ABOUT EXPECTATIONS.

Mainly unrealistic expectations. We have spent years, decades even, being overweight and eventually morbidly obese. The swollen knees, painful joints, high blood pressure, high cholesterol have taken its toll.

We choose bariatric surgery to help us to make permanent changes to the way we live and the way we eat. This will finally be the answer we need for our multitudes of problems. Our date has arrived; now our surgery has happened. We’re sipping, we’re walking, we’re chugging down protein. Now, here comes the expectations part.

Suddenly, we believe that the years of weight we have layered on will magically disappear like a thief in the night. The day after surgery we are disappointed because we’re heavier than we were before we went in. We forget that we were pumped up full of fluids during the procedure.

Things snowball and you begin to question why you even had surgery.

Three weeks have gone by and you’ve only lost 17 pounds; you haven’t lost anything in three whole days! What’s wrong here? Why am I not losing? What’s wrong with my band? What’s wrong with my pouch? What’s wrong with my sleeve?

Answer: Absolutely nothing. What’s wrong is our thinking. Why is there the need to put unnecessary pressure on ourselves to drop a massive amount of weight in a short amount of time?

Why do we constantly compare our losses to other folks and think of ourselves as failures when our losses are slower? We never compared our weight gains with others and become depressed when we found out that Robin gained less than I did last month.

Who determines what is “fast” and what is “slow”?

When is the last time we lost pounds in the double digits in two weeks?

Why are we putting ourselves on a timeline?

What’s the hurry – where are we going?

What happens when we get there?

Here’s the thing… our doctors guaranteed that our surgery would result in weight loss as long as we followed the guidelines.

What no doctor can guarantee is the rate of speed it comes off, how your body looks afterwards, how your family and friends treat you afterwards, if your relationship survives, or whether you’ll have complications.

Remember, this is a journey, not a sprint. You won’t win a prize for losing weight the fastest, nor will you be burned at the stake for losing weight at a rate that you consider slow. Your journey (just like you) is unique.

Follow your plan, make great nutrition choices, walk, and enjoy the ride. If your best friend came to you and told you that he or she lost “only 12 pounds in two weeks”, would you congratulate them for doing such an excellent job with their weight loss or would you shake your finger at them and say “THAT’S TERRIBLY SLOW”?

Why can’t we give ourselves that same encouragement? Think about it!

So 2018 is Starting to Turn Around

2018 is going to be MY year. I'm claiming it, and it's going to be the year of my rebirth!
 

I had my second appointment with my new therapist on the 5th. I'm confident that we are a good fit and that she is going to help me work through all my issues so that I will succeed beyond what I even dare imagine.  I see her again on the 19th and I am really looking forward to it! The report from my psych eval came back...8 pages!  But it appears that I'm very motivated and an ideal candidate for WLS...with the caveat of getting a therapist to work through the self-soothing I do with food.  Ha...I had already seen my therapist twice before the report even came out! 

I see my new primary care doc on the 17th...I hope he is supportive about the WLS.  If he isn't, I'll just keep shopping until I find one who is. I wish I could stay with Amber, but she's not on my insurance plan, so if I do see her it will all be out of my pocket. Still, it may be worth it, just for the support of this journey I'm on.  We'll see how it goes when I meet Dr. Katz. One thing I am really excited about is that he's an osteopath and does the osteopathic manipulations, so that will be a great way to keep my back, hips, etc. functioning. 

I'm also seeing an acupuncturist next week. Hopefully get some help with my foot, though it's doing sooooo much better already, with the weight that I've dropped just since the 1st of the year.

I joined a 30 Day Sugar-Free challenge that started on the 1st...it cost like $40, but I really think it was the jump start that I was so in need of. It also comes with a lifetime membership in the private Facebook group, which seems to be uber-supportive.  I've been tracking all my food in SparkPeople, and I have dropped 16 POUNDS between Jan 1st and today, January 12th. 

Yeah, I know how to eat well.  I know how to diet.  But very soon my body is going to realize what's happening and it will come screeching to a halt. I'm going to hide my scale when that happens so it doesn't play those awful head games with me.

I saw the nutritionist on Wednesday. She was very pleased with my tracking and my loss...not going to change anything that I'm doing yet...

Ending a Lousy Year in a Lousy Way

I am going to be SO glad to see 2017 end.  This was the year I've gotten fatter than I've ever been in my life, and that my body started seriously objecting to the blubber that I'm forcing it to pack around.  And I'm ending it back on the damn crutches, unable to walk without them.

Yesterday morning I felt amazing...absolutely no pain in my foot, no trouble walking...I had beaten back the inflammatory tendinitis again (this was the THIRD attack since October!) and I was going to start back on my treadmill again this morning.  Then in the afternoon, I stepped on Sophie's bed as I was going to the hallway...and as I bore down on the bum foot I felt what I can only call a snap, or a bubble bursting...then the most excruciating pain to-date.  I don't know if I ruptured a ligament or what, but I can not walk on it at all without the help of crutches.

So here I sit, in my bedroom, with my laptop, doped up with Aleve and oxy (which barely dents it,) wishing I were down in the kitchen doing food and meal prep for my fresh start for the new year tomorrow.  Grrrrrrr.  What a shitty way to end the year. And it's all self-inflicted, I'm positive of that.  A body is not designed to lug around 150 extra pounds 24/7.  Mine is objecting big time.

I joined a "30 Days Sugar Free" online challenge that I'm really excited about. It was $50 to join it (that's half-price) but I have access to the website and the secret Facebook group for life. The people in the Facebook group are AMAZING.  Some have been sugar free for years, and offer incredible support and compassion.

I also received a pdf of the book that inspired this: "I Love Me More Than Sugar".  The author Barry Friedman is an active member of the group as well!  This is going to give me a great jump start on the pre-surgery weight loss and post-surgery lifestyle.

I bought the Kindle edition of the book...I don't really want to download the pdf version to every device I might be using. I'll be sharing lots of snippets and quotes from the book...what tiny bit I've read so far is really making so much sense:

"Reptilian Brain" is the oldest part of the human brain that is associated with the following traits: protection, aggression, dominance, obsessiveness, compulsiveness, fear and greed. That part of the brain, in our modern society, considers sugar as a survival need.

"That part of your brain (Reptilian Brain) is fed by you giving in - sugar, TV, sex, drugs - or just about anything else that will deliver a temporary dopamine surge and make sure you stay right where you are."   (From "I Love Me More Than Sugar" by Barry Friedman)

Nancy came over yesterday so we could go out to lunch....that last burger / fries. I also had a beer. It was good...and surprisingly, I didn't feel as though I was having last rites. I know that eventually I'll be able to have a burger again...or at least a few bites of one, and it was just eh.  Though the fried pickles and twister fries were AH-MAZING.  LOL

We also took the opportunity to get Nancy's before pics, and also our "Sleeve Sisters" before pic.  I shudder when I see what I look like...but I know that a year from now it's going to be a very, very different story!

This is such an amazing thing, that Nancy and I are doing this together. We have the same bariatric team and will be going to our nutrition appts together, and we'll also (hopefully) get sleeved on the same day!

I am just so glad that when I asked her back in November if she wanted to attend a WLS seminar with me, that her response was a very emphatic "OH HELL YES!" Here's to a brand new US in 2018!

Loading the Tool Box

I had my first appoint with Nancy the Nutritionist at the Center yesterday. I like her a lot, and I think we'll be able to make some serious progress between now and May 8.  Yes, May 8 is my last appointment with her and that is when they'll submit to the insurance for approval for the sleeve surgery!   She gave me a diet plan - "Mediterranean/Whole Foods Minimal Processing & Highest Nutrient Content and told me how many exchanges (servings) of each group she wants me to have.  I am going to convert some of my favorite Whole 30 / Paleo type recipes to exchanges. Good project for me over this upcoming 3-day weekend.

Today I had my first appointment with Janys, my new therapist. I REALLY like her.  I think we really connected and that I'm going to be able to work really well with her, getting to the root of my issues with food and being able to learn to eat to nurture myself, not to indulge my addictions. We covered a lot in that first hour...and she called me "resilient".  I'm going to really try to recognize what I'm actually doing when I eat in a disordered way...am I soothing myself? Am I rebelling? Am I punishing myself?  I want to understand what it is that gives me that unquenchable craving for the highly-processed, high-fat, full-of-sugar crap food, and why do I give in to it so completely.

I'm going to OFFICIALLY start this journey on January 1st...go through the sugar/processed food detox, and get serious. Between now and then, I'm being more mindful of what I'm eating, but I'm still eating some crap. Cookies. Chips. It's like I'm saying farewell to some of my favorites that I won't be having for quite some time.  I've been wanting fish and chips so I had halibut fish and chips from Tug's tonight. And it was SO freaking good!  Saturday Nancy and I are going out for our last hamburger and fries for a lonnnnnng time.  I definitely want to do that at Oly Underground.

I am NOT going to fail at this. There is NO way I'm going to have 80% of my stomach removed, only to fail at losing the excess weight. I am officially the fattest I have EVER been in my life, and I'm tired of dealing with the immobility, the pain, the self-consciousness and humiliation, along with everything else that comes with being 301 lbs.  That's right...I'm actually putting it out there and owning it.  I weigh 301 lbs.  And THIS is what 301 lbs looks like on me.

Psych Eval - Check! Ending year on HIGH note!

I had my bariatric surgery psych eval on Monday and I actually enjoyed it.  I did a lot of talking, and 2 hours simply flew by.  I told her a lot about my earliest memories of food-shaming by my mother, grandmother, etc. as well as the issues my own mother had...my very skinny cousin who my mother put me in "competition" with all my life, the obesity in my own family, on maternal and paternal side, my marriages, including the horrible first marriage that I stayed in for about 12 1/2 years too long. It started out that she would ask me questions and I'd respond, but I did so much talking that I covered just about every question she had planned on asking before I even stopped for breath. LOL  I also had a 344 question assessment that I completed online.  The therapist said results would probably be in a week or two, but that she is sure I'm a good candidate for WLS as I am aware of my disordered eating, and have a plan (therapy) to deal with it while I'm preparing for the surgery. 

And I DO have a plan!  I found a therapist here in town who  specializes in eating disorders and is in my insurance network.  Her website stated that she wasn't accepting new patients and to check in again after the first of the year, but I sent her an email, telling her what I'm doing (preparing for surgery) and to please let me know if she will be accepting new patients so I can make an appointment.  She emailed me back, and I am seeing her for the first time on the 27th!  I'm really looking forward to it. I hope that we connect and that she is the person I can work through my myriad issues with.

So I'm getting my pre-surgery physical on the 21st, my first appointment with the bariatric center nutritionist on the 26th, and my first appointment with who I HOPE will my my therapist throughout this journey on the 27th.  What a great way to end out the year!

Time For the Psych Eval

So tomorrow after work I'll be going to get my psychological evaluation. Pretty much anyone who is having bariatric surgery and is going through their health insurance is required to get this. Very few people fail, so I'm not worried about it. 

Though some of the people I've seen in the online communities I've been lurking at SHOULD have failed...I mean, we're talking quack-a-doodle-do!

I am wondering if one psych eval is enough...and thinking that I probably need to consider getting some serious therapy to help deal with the issues that brought me to this point where I'm willing to let them cut out 85% of my stomach to help me finally lose this weight and be a normal-sized person.

Why is food my comfort? Why is food my one main pleasure in life? Why do I have such a twisted relationship with it? Since my earliest memories I've had this real obsession with food. Why have I, more than a few times, eaten to the point of pain, and then while waiting for the pain to subside, plan on what I'm going to eat next?  When I can physically only eat a few bites, will that help me overcome my volume eating tendencies? The first bite is always the best...so can I learn to only desire that first bite, then be satisfied?

This surgery isn't going to sleeve my brain. It's not going to solve the issues that I have, the reasons that I have such a disordered way of relating to food, so I really need to try to figure it out. The surgery will help me to finally become a normal-sized person, but it's going to be all on me to stay that way and develop a normal-sized person's attitude towards food.