story

Butter bean, my name is story, I'm new here, and ran across your post, I have never read anything so heart felt, so full of truth, you really made mr cry! God bless you for sharing with us! I would love to talk to you more. I'm getting sleeved in oct, my jurney is yet to start. If you would like to talk, you can find me here or at storywelch@yahoo.com. Thank again

Butter bean, my name is story, I'm new here, and ran across your post, I have never read anything so heart felt, so full of truth, you really made mr cry! God bless you for sharing with us! I would love to talk to you more. I'm getting sleeved in oct, my jurney is yet to start. If you would like to talk, you can find me here or at storywelch@yahoo.com. Thank again

Over the years, there have been many things Doctors have told me that went in one ear and out the other. The above statement is one of them. I really didn't see a problem. Afterall, I wasn't a person who hid in the closet everynight with a bucket of ice cream and 2 bags of chips. Honestly, I really didn't even know what that statement meant.
When I first met my sleeve surgeon, he told me this...and again, it fell on deaf ears. I pretended to hear it, but I knew in my mind that I would do nothing about it. Then I met the nutritionist. The first thing she did was ask me about my most successful weight loss period in the past. I told her I had lost 110 lbs back in 2005-2006. She wanted to know if I had kept any food logs from that time. Luckily (or unluckily) they were all living eternally online on fitday.com. Well, we looked at them together. Over the course of a year I had lost 110 pounds eating about 2200 calories a day. But she pointed out something to me...something that has meant more and more to me the farther out from surgery I get, and the more I learn. I was averaging about 300 grams of carbs a day, and they were not the good carbs. They were not brocolli, asparagus, apples, zuchinni...and so on. They were wheat bread, Protein Bars, Pasta, potatos, more bread....in other words, all processed food and starches.
One thing I remember most about that time period, I was always starving. I thought about food every second of every day. If I didn't eat something every couple of hours I just about fell out. I got shaky, confused and irritable. Wow was I irritable. How I ever convinced my fiance to marry me during that period I will never know. She deserves some sort of a sainthood or something. It's no wonder I couldn't maintain that lifestyle. I eventually gained it all back of course. I also quit logging my food on fitday about the same time the weight started to creep back up. Funny how that happens. At least I wasn't irritable any more.
Somewhere in there with the nurtritionist, things started to click. I finally started to understand what they were talking about. For me, food did not have to be about entertainment. It did not have to be about comfort. I did not need a treat. I did not need to indulge myself "every once in a while". The occasional treat was not going to keep me sane. I needed a new definition of what sane really was. I needed a new definition of what "eating normally" was. Is it "sane" or "normal" to eat something that I know is going to kill me, even in moderation? Just because I see some skinny person eating Whataburger every day, does that mean I deserve to eat it? That I should be able to eat it and still be skinny?
The answer is...no. Food is just fuel. It is not my comfort blanket. It is not my friend, my partner, my crutch or my reward. It has been a one way relationship all my life. I loved food, it never loved me back. Who needs that?
Now I know, I need more than just a weight loss surgery. The sleeve will give me Portion Control, but that is just another obstacle that I can easily get around. Ice cream, sodas and chips are like kryptonite to my sleeve. They will walk right through it. I'm learning that I need to fuel my body with the best fuel I can get. Afterall, I didn't have surgery just to see the scale go down. I did it to feel better, be healthy....and to live. I want to live a long life. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, it will be while jogging 2 miles. I will not die a slow, agonizing death in a hospice bed because I'm too fat to breath or walk, and can't wipe my own butt.
Is it easy? Obviously no. I still have work to do. Maybe I always will. Maybe it will always take effort to live like this. I don't mind. I spent many years not putting any effort at all into my health, and it was way harder than this.
Thanks for listening.