It probably seems this way mostly because I don't feel like my weight loss journey was a success or that it is even over. I lost the most weight in the first seven months post-op. I remember specifically that when my brother got married in October of that year, I weighed 193 pounds. It was the first time in my adult life that my weight had started with a 1. I was just a matron of honor in a wedding, not the fat matron of honor in a wedding. It was definitely my lowest adult weight and I hadn't been at that weight since probably the age of 16.
During that first two and half years after surgery, my weight settled in around 205 pounds. At the time, I was working on the project house and super strong. I felt like I wasn't doing everything I could possibly do to continue losing weight, but I was also pretty satisfied with my progress so far. I definitely did not feel like a success story because I still fell into the "obese" category on the BMI chart. I realize that is a really arbitrary unit of measure, however it was the one my weight loss surgeon drilled into my head. I would have to weigh 150 pounds to be "normal". After having surgery, losing 100 pounds, gaining a lot of strength and muscle, getting off of most medications, and being able to physically do most anything I wanted... I was still not "normal".
Of course, in December of 2016, all of that changed. When I got really sick and almost died, I lost a lot of weight pretty much over the course of 6 days (26 pounds). When I left the hospital, I looked ill (because I was). During the first visit with my home health nurse at my mom's house she took my weight. It was 179 pounds. I remember walking back to my mom's scale after the nurse left because I assumed something must have been wrong with hers. It was accurate and I was shocked. The first time I got to take a shower, I remember it took every ounce of energy I had at the time just to make it through. My mom (thankfully) had a seat I could use so I didn't have to stand up the whole time or I wouldn't have been able to do it.
It is a crazy place to be when you are 40 and at the healthiest and strongest you have ever been in your life, to then be instantly so sick you can't stand up for a few minutes. I caught a glimpse of my naked body in her very large bathroom mirror. I looked like I was 80 years old, just skin hanging on bones. I had never thought that I looked too thin in my life until that moment.
For the first time ever, I had a doctor asking if I was eating enough. I realize in hindsight that he and his team needed to make sure that I was getting enough nutrition to help my very sick body heal from all of that trauma. He had removed part of my intestines, my abdomen was full of abscesses, I was fighting off system-wide infection, I had a huge incision, and a brand new shit bag. There was a lot that needed to heal, and I had a tiny tummy. Him asking to make sure I was eating enough was just an inquiry into nutrition, but I took it as a green light to eat whatever I wanted for the first time in a long time.
2017 was a really hard year for me. Of course, for the first two months, I was staying at my mom's house to recover (particularly because I was on IV antibiotics). When I returned home and started back to work, I was working from home. I was very thankful that my bosses allowed me to do that because having a shit bag was not super conducive to being out in public, not less in an office environment. I realize that there are plenty of people who have a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives, I am just really glad I am not one of them. It makes fart noises whenever it likes (you have no control over that). I could smell poop pretty much all the time (although everyone else around me claimed they couldn't). The clothes you wear are completely dependent on whether the bag is accommodated or not. And if you got any of the chemicals from the bag on your clothes they were ruined (it acted like bleach).
But working from home when I was incredibly depressed and suffering from PTSD was not the best situation for my eating. I pretty much binged on food for the entire 325 days I had the shit bag. I would skip out on drinking water and keeping hydrated just so I could eat more food (I mean, there's only so much room in a tiny tummy, and I was reserving that room for chips and ice cream). I sought out a therapist in the late summer of 2017 because my husband was worried about my behaviors. I had started to try to drink more water just so I would be ready for the colostomy bag reversal surgery, but 11 months of eating this way resulted in me gaining 40 pounds (back up to 225).
I knew I needed to make a drastic change to get me back on track, so when I returned to working in the office in January of 2018, I did strict keto for 10 weeks to detox from sugar and carbs and lose the weight I had gained. I ended up around 200 pounds when I was finished with the keto. Since then, I have been doing low (ish) carb to maintain that. I have continued my treatment for binge eating disorder and although the progress on that front is slow, I do see differences in how I think about the food I eat and the choices I make. It is a lot of work to unravel a lifetime of using food for more than just nutrition.
But small victories add up over time. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to the zoo. It rained a little in the afternoon so most everybody left. We were in the petting zoo area and there is this statue of a cow in there for kids to climb on for photos. Since there wasn't really anybody there, I wanted to get on the cow and take a picture. My eating disorder was loudly shouting that I couldn't get on the cow because I am a cow... that I am fat and would look ridiculous. I quieted those thoughts long enough to fucking climb up on that cow and take a fucking picture. When I told my husband what I was thinking after the fact, he noted that he thought I looked cute with my flower tucked behind my ear, and that I appeared really happy when I was up there. I was happy... more so because I won that internal battle and got on the cow. As a bonus, I can look at that photo and see that I *am* happy, and I am not judging whether or not I look fat.
But am I a success story? I am a member of a few Facebook groups for people who are post bariatric surgery. Overall, there is the full gamut of people within them. People who have had the sleeve like me, bypass, lap-band, and a couple of other less common procedures. People who have reached goal (BMI chart goal) and had the full range of plastic surgery to "fix" everything (arms, thighs, stomach, boobs, neck, face, you name it - one even had a calf lift). People who never lost the weight they were expected to lose. People who lost a lot of weight and regained a lot of weight. People who lost, regained, and lost again. People who count macros, calories, carbs, fat grams... and people who don't track anything.
A lot of people would call me a success story because I am 5 years out from surgery and still maintaining a 100 pound loss. A lot of people would say that I am not a success story because I never made it to my surgeon's goal of 150 pounds. Some people would say I am a success story because I am in treatment for binge eating disorder and am starting to win that battle more days than not. Some would say I am not a success story because I still have days where I binge on food.
But what do I say? Every day is different. Am I a success story because I haven't gone off the rails binging on food in several days (and for the most part just one incident in the past few weeks)? Am I a success story because of what the scale said this morning? Am I a success story because I am none of the places I have been before?
There is a part of me that still feels like I haven't done enough. There is a voice in my head that says I am never going to be good enough because I am never going to weigh 150 pounds like a "normal" person. The ironic part is that at this point, I have seen what my body looked like at 179 pounds and I hated it. So 150 pounds isn't even a goal that I logically want for myself anymore. But there is still this voice that says 202 is too much, and that I have failed on the weight loss surgery journey because I never made it to goal.
I don't see myself as I was before my husband and I started this process. In my mind, the photo below is not the image I picture in my mind of either of us, and of course it isn't the image I see in the mirror anymore.
But whatever ideas I have about my self-worth or self-identification are 100% attached to the image above, even if the image below is the reality I am living in. If I refer to myself as the fat girl, or my eating disorder is yelling about me being a cow, or any number of behaviors I identify as being a part of "fat girl syndrome" come out (from being a people pleaser, to being the comedian, to not being able to say no, take your pick, etc, etc, etc)... it derives from living in the body in the image above for the majority of my life. Being in the body in the image below does not make me a success story. Taking care of myself because I feel like I am worth it and deserve to feel positive about my body (no matter what it weighs) is 100% the criteria for identifying myself as a success. I don't think I am at that place, but every day I feel like I might be a little bit closer.
