Hindsight Chapter VII

Hindsight VII
June 30, 2011

God made us in His image and His likeness, so we’d better “represent”. Can’t let folks think God looks sloppy or just plain “sad”. Being fat just lets them know that God must eat well… being sloppy is just totally unacceptable. Being unhealthy because you refuse to do anything about “deadly” weight gain is unacceptable. I don’t know who came up with those charts that state “ideal” weight, but I imagine it was decided by some medical people who scientifically calculated how much people needed to weigh to be healthy. I don’t agree with those standards, but then, I’m not a doctor nor am I a scientist, so I can’t argue with them. I was glad that my surgeon was not so scientific. When we talked, before the surgery, he asked what my goal was going to be. When I started looking at the weight chart, he said, “Don’t worry about that… what’s YOUR goal?” He laughed when I said, “I just want to be too small to have to shop at Lane Bryant.” He stated that I probably wouldn’t get to “ideal” weight, but when I looked at those numbers, I really didn’t want to get there.
I was always an active person. Even when I was fat, I took aerobics. In high school, I played sports with all the gusto that the thin girls played, maybe even more. I was still discriminated against. I couldn’t have been a cheerleader, even though my voice was louder than most girls, I knew all the cheers, and I could turn cartwheels perfectly. At that time, they just didn’t let fat girls be a part of the squad. I’m sure it had something to do with not being able to get uniforms in my size, or at least I told myself that, but somehow it just didn’t seem fair. Now, girls can be considered for cheerleading squads, no matter what their size is, or at least it seems that way. I have seen a lot of fat cheerleaders. I’m proud of those girls for being confident enough t get out there and try.
Just as food is addictive, losing weight can be easily addictive, too. I guess you have to understand “addictive personalities” to get that. In the weeks immediately following the surgery, I was not allowed to eat anything solid. I loved milk and instant breakfast anyway, so it wasn’t really that bad. What was good was seeing the weight “melt away” almost overnight. I had, earlier in my life, gone to Weight Watchers; where I would follow the diet religiously, drink gallons of water, exercise, and lose only ½ pound at the weigh-in, after a week’s hard work. I tried desperately to hide my disappointment, but it had to be evident. I lost about thirty pounds during my stint with Weight Watchers, but I managed to gain that all back, and then some, after I stopped going. I really wasn’t impressed by Weight Watcher’s anyway… it seemed as if all the women who directed groups were paper-thin, and had always been that way, except maybe for a few weeks in their lives, while working off the twenty pounds they had gained when they were pregnant with their 2.5 children. (You know… the ideal family size. I never figured out where and when the .5 child was, but I digress!) They might have known enough about losing weight to try to help others lose, but they knew nothing about being fat. I could have taught them something about being fat. They, of course, thought they were helping me, but they really served to turn me off completely to dieting and weight loss. That lasted for years.
Without eating solid food, the weight just “went away”. Four weeks without solid food equaled a loss of about 40 pounds; then came four more weeks of slowly introducing food back into my system. It was a painful process. (Disclaimer: This is a gross explanation.) What the surgeon did was staple off the stretched part of my stomach, and attached my intestines, minus some inches, to the pouch made by the staples. The pouch was only the size of a baby’s stomach, so I could only consume about 4 ounces at a time, even of instant breakfast, and that passed rapidly through my system. I went to the bathroom a lot. Adding foods meant that I could eat different things, not just instant breakfast, but I still could only eat about four ounces of food. That equals one jar of baby food. Baby food meat is “the worst”, has no taste at all. So, because I had to cook for my husband and children anyway, I took whatever food I cooked for them, and put it into the blender or food processor to make it the consistency of baby food. I mixed the meat with the vegetables and blended it together. Somehow I managed to get the food taste, and get the consistency I needed. Sometimes I would eat too fast, which would cause me to eat too much. There are people who don’t know that the speed with which you eat has a lot to do with the amount you eat. (I didn’t know it either until I started this process.) If you eat too fast, and you keep eating until you feel full, actually you were full way before that. If you eat slowly, your brain has the time to register the fact that you are full, which keeps you from overeating.
Overeating was painful. First, I’d feel sick, then all the food would come back up. Since I hated to have that feeling, I soon stopped overeating. Even now, when I go out to restaurants, I only eat half my meal. Many times, I’ll ask for a carry-out box before I even start eating, since I know how much I can eat at once. Buffets are totally out, because I can never eat enough to get my money’s worth and they don’t allow carry-out. I would much rather cook anyway, but I have friends who like to eat out, so I go. I have friends who seem only to think about eating, so I sometimes have to avoid being around them. I hate to do it, but I have to. I also have to avoid people who only want to sit and do nothing. I have to make return trips to a couple of places I have visited; Chicago is one of them, because I went to visit friends several times, but never really got to see anything because I stayed with them and they stayed home more often than not. I didn’t want to be rude, so I stayed at home with them. On my next visit, I’ll stay alone and arrange to see things on my own. Everything I saw by car, riding down the streets, I want to see, up-close and personal… and I’ll probably do a lot of walking!
That is the best thing about losing the weight... the freedom of being thinner. When you are thinner, and if you’re not super-lazy, you move around more. You want to move around. You don’t mind walking and sight-seeing. You can have more fun. You don’t mind putting on a bathing suit to go to the beach, even if you still have some work to do on your body, which you always will have. It takes years for your skin to stretch and years to un-stretch it, to tighten things up. Your energy level soars, because you’re no longer carrying excess weight!