The Five Stages of Grief

Today, on day four of my 10-day pre-op diet, I found myself pretty content after lunch. I wasn't stuffed, but I didn't have the hunger pangs like I've had the past couple of days. (In all fairness, I'm currently eating somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the amount of calories I was eating before.) And so, right after lunch, I got this crazy idea in my head.

I could do this forever.

Yeah, that's it! Who needs surgery? I could just stay on this diet forever, do some exercise, and lose the weight that way!

Yeah, right. File that under, "never going to happen." If I were capable of doing that I already would have, I told myself.

That whole "making deals" thing sounded familiar to me, so I did a little Googling and came up with Kübler-Ross' Five Stages of Grief. According to the Wikipedia entry, the five stages of grief are:

Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening."

Anger: "Why ME? It's not fair!" (either referring to God, oneself, or anybody perceived, rightly or wrongly, as "responsible")

Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my child(ren) graduate."

Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"

Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."

The entry makes a couple of interesting points. One is that these stages can be applied to any form of catastrophic personal loss or significant personal change. The other thing I found interesting was that these steps do not necessarily come in order, nor are they all experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two.

I suspect my feelings at lunch today were an attempt at bargaining. ("I'll do better next time, honest!") I'm sure all of us will go through some or all of these stages. I've been in denial about my weight and my health for some time now, so I can mark that one off the list. I don't know that I've felt angry, per se, but depression is another one I can claim.

And, now that I'm committed to having the surgery, maybe I can claim acceptance as well.

You can read the whole article here.