I’m sorry. I know I promised 12 reasons why I should have gotten bariatric surgery sooner rather than later, but I lost interest in the project half-way through. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again later.
But today I wrote a piece of my mind to a young woman considering bariatric surgery and I’d like to share that with you. Kind of sums the whole thing up. She asked if I (as she does) ever felt, by getting bariatric surgery, I took the lazy way out, cheating as it were. Here’s my answer:
Oh hell, yeah. And I come with decades of baggage. I was 58 when I had my Roux-en-y and I felt like such a lazy loser. But look at what I’d done before resorting to my last option:
1. Yo-yo dieted for literally five decades. My earliest memory is of my diaper falling off while my parents taught me to suck in my toddler-tummy. I lost and gained the same twenty pounds at least a hundred times over the years and you know what that taught my body? That starvation is periodic and to be expected, so stock up on those extra calories and store them in fat cells.
2. I would go through periods of terrible self-loathing. I needed to so that I’d deny myself the substances my body demanded to maintain itself. Dieting hurts (I’m sure you know this) and to make myself succeed I’d have to call myself horrible names, expect failure to force success, and other unutterable abuses I’d NEVER take from someone else.
3. Taught myself that I was only worthwhile when small, i.e. thin. Crapola to that. I was worthwhile every minute of my life and spent way too much time in trying to satisfy my own (and society’s, so-called friends, co-workers, and stranger’s) idealized images. So what if I took up more space than others? I was worth it.
4. Spent too much time in my head, hating others, hating the times we live in, hating anyone who judged me as wanting, hating, hating, hating.
So, young woman, you’re not alone. Yes, I felt I was cheating, but you know what? I didn’t. I chose a medical procedure that has been working for me for the last two and a half years instead of expecting something that failed me (dieting) to suddenly work when it never had before.
Do what you need to do to be the best YOU you can be. If that’s surgery (as it was for me) then embrace it, learn everything you need to do to be successful, and work it just as hard as any diet you’ve ever been on. It’s not easy choosing to amputate a part of your body and have your pipelines rewired, trust me.
You ain’t lazy, girlfriend, and you sure aren’t cheating. Trust me, it’s a challenge every day not to lapse back into bad habits. But if you’ve ever lost 20 pounds or more, you’ve got this.
By the way – if you’ve been following my blog via the http://www.gentasebastian-author.com link (since the creepy weight-loss schleps stole the first one), it has expired. I’m now http://www.GentaSebastian.Net
You might want to update your links, or chance losing contact with me forever…(oh, the horror!)
Existing on the Edge of Effectiveness 