Looking back over all of it, it was kind of depressing. I remembered each one. I remembered how excited I got about the prospect of *finally* finding something that might work. I remember how motivated I was and how awesome it was to lose those 10 or 15 pounds that inevitably fall off when you are morbidly obese and change your eating habits (even if only slightly).
Then, there would be a week hiatus when there was no weight loss. Which would turn into two weeks. A "plateau" they would say, to keep me encouraged. "Stay the course," they would insist. But when you need to lose over 100 pounds, and you lose 10 or 15 and then nothing? Staying the course doesn't happen, especially if you are a binge eater.
Because after two weeks of losing nothing, you lose the reason why you were making this change in the first place. The thought that you were actually going to be doing this "diet" (no matter what it was) for the rest of your life was never *really* the plan. The plan was to stay on the plan until the weight was lost and then go back to life as normal. When you don't continue to lose any weight, the plan goes right straight out the window.
"If I am not going to lose any weight anyhow, I am going to have pizza and go back to being happy." The fact that pizza makes me happy, probably should have been my first sign something was awry. But pizza makes a lot of people happy... even people who aren't obese... even people who don't binge on food or use it as a coping mechanism. But I do.
Although my husband's list of diets over the course of his life was shorter, mine was a long laundry list of all the things I had tried in desperation to not be the fat girl anymore. Weight Watchers, Dexatrim, Nutri-System, eating only rice cakes, the cabbage soup diet, Slim-Fast, Jenny Craig, low fat, low carb, low calorie, vegetarian, HCG, Diets-To-Go, lemon water fasts, working out 7 days a week, "healthy eating", periodic fasting, vegan, juicing, protein shakes; you name it, I have tried it. I know this isn't even a comprehensive list of all of the crazy shit I did.
Some diets I lost no weight. I could usually lose at least 10 pounds. Some diets I lost a significant amount. I lost 40 pounds once, 80 pounds once, and a variety of pounds lost and gained in between. The one thing that all of these diets had in common was that I always thought of them as a means to an end. Because I spent the majority of my life thinking that life would start and be better if I was just a normal size.
I think a lot of people do this with a lot of different "goals". You can insert a lot of things into the framework of this statement: "When (this thing happens), I will be happy." When I am thinner, when I get out of college, when I have a better job, when I am married, when I have kids, when I can buy a house, when I move to a better city, when I have more money, when my kids are grown, etc. People do this throughout their lives until the statement starts with "when I am retired".
The thing is, it doesn't really matter how this statement starts. The fact of the matter is that we spend the vast majority of our lives not in the latter part of the statement: "I will be happy." I legitimately thought that I would need to be a normal weight to find the person I would marry and obtain a personal level of happiness within a relationship. Ironically, the man I met and dated right after losing 80 pounds and was the smallest I had been (to that point in my life), was probably the most destructive to my well being and my self esteem.
The man I met and married, I met as a fat girl (and he was a fat guy). If anything, we relate to each other in a way that any person who has never been obese will never understand. Even though our food story (and struggles) are different, he gets it. He knows what it is like to be ridiculed, and made to feel worthless and unlovable because of the number on the scale. He knows what it feels like to be immediately ruled out of the majority of the dating pool because you aren't height-weight proportionate. Trading stories about our childhoods and past relationships was a lot of back and forth of self-recognition in the other's life.
And even after we got married and were blissfully happy with each other, that statement still swirled around in the backs of both of our minds... "when I am thinner, I will be happy." Having a true love who completely gets you is fulfilling in ways I cannot explain. But being capable of loving someone else to this exponential degree does not necessarily mean that you have suddenly fallen in love with yourself. If anything we were in a love affair with each other and food.
Weight loss surgery was one of those things that I talked about for 20 years as an option to fix this life time battle with my body. I think I was probably 16 the first time nana mentioned it. But we talked about it with the understanding that they couldn't afford to pay $20,000 for it, and it wasn't something that insurance covered at the time. But in the back of my mind, it was always kind of thought of as the fall back plan. When I found out that my husband and I could do it together, and it would be a covered benefit, it was the only path either of us could see.
Interestingly enough, I convinced myself that it was going to be like any other diet. It would be an awesome tool for me to lose weight. Then once I was at my goal weight, I would just stretch my stomach back out so that I could eat "normally". It is amazing what one's mind can convince oneself of. Don't get me wrong, you can totally stretch your stomach back out. The part I don't think I allowed myself to comprehend at the time is that I cannot be trusted with a normal sized stomach. I will always choose food over my own health, and apparently my own happiness.
I have learned that to the fullest extent over the course of the past 9 months. September 27th is the 9-month anniversary of the day I almost died. November 1st, I will have surgery to finally reverse the major remnant of that experience (the shit bag). Almost a year spent feeling like my life was on hold and eating my feelings about it.
I know that there is a reason that I have sought out help for this problem at this part of my journey. I still have another surgery to go through as well as that recovery. Prior to all of this happening, I would have told you I was at the healthiest I had ever been. I was working on the project house, doing yoga, walking every day with my husband, not binging, and in general, taking care of myself in a way that I had never done before in my life.
I feel like all of that reverted December 27, 2016. I didn't have the strength or energy to do any of the things I was doing before. My doctor told me no ab exercising until after the reversal (so no yoga). I couldn't keep pace with my husband or go as far on the walk when I tried to get back to it, so I quit, despite his encouragement. And I have been working from home about 10 feet from the kitchen... and eating all day.
I want to help myself work through the issues with the food because I want to go back to being my best and healthiest self. I know that even before everything happened in December, my issues with food and *wanting* to binge all the time were unresolved. I was just too busy doing all of these other things in life to focus on food or my thoughts about it. I now realize that until I address the core of it, I am never really going to be my best self.
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