Bonbini

The concept of being your “perfectly imperfect” self was first introduced to me by one of my heroes Heidi Powell. [ You can read her original article: I am (still) Perfect here]
One of the biggest things I have struggled with post-weight loss is body image issues. The picture below is one of my favorite photos of myself. I feel like I look fierce, strong, happy and proud of what I have accomplished. But there are days I don’t feel like any of those things.


At my darkest moment, I was having a nervous breakdown after reconstructive plastic surgery #4 in Dallas, Texas when things still were not looking perfect and the numbers on the scale were reflecting my swollen body weight and not the numbers I was used to seeing in weight maintenance.
It took Chris Powell telling me to get off the scale for me to stop obsessing and start trying to get back to me again. [ See related Facebook post here: July 22, 2013 ]
The truth is the hardest thing you will ever tell someone. The truth is really scary. It makes you vulnerable because once you put it out there, no mater what anyone has to say, it is your truth.
But the truth is what I have promised you from the very beginning. So the truth is, there are still things that I don’t love about my body. There are still flaws that I pick out and can beat myself up emotionally over.
The excess skin on my hips and lower buttocks area still causes me skin and rash irritations.
The skin that hangs right above my bra line and pooches out over my tank top dives me insane. It makes me super self-conscious about wearing tank tops in public. But I force myself to do it because it’s a fear of something that I know is really only noticeable to people who are looking for it. Though I just told you all where to find it. So that ends that.
My arms still bother me. Two brachioplasty surgeries and two touch up surgeries later, I still dislike my arms. They just don’t look right and that little indentation that they keep telling me is a genetic traits that is unrelated to obesity or weight loss, absolutely drives me nuts. Every time I look at my arm I see a little fat roll. This makes me really self-conscious about wearing tank tops. But I force myself to do it as part of my acceptance of my imperfect body.
Shorts are an entirely different manner. The skin I see hanging off my thighs if I do a plank in front of one of my group training sessions in the gym is so embarrassing to me that I refuse to wear anything but capri pants unless it’s cool enough outside to wear pantyhose underneath to help shape them and hold the skin in place.
My hair is never quite the way I want it. Coloring it myself rarely comes out the way I intended. But who the heck can afford paying a stylist constantly these days? If I can’t do it myself it’s not achievable.
My eyebrows, no matter how well-groomed I keep them do this wonky thing when I’ve rubbed my face nervously.
My boobs look great in a bra. Outside of one and naked in front of the mirror I obsess over how slightly differently my nipples were placed and how I can see the ripple in one of the implants. These I am told were normal things to expect after getting implants. I’m still not 100% convinced I made the right decision on that. Lord knows after being told at a weight loss surgery convention that one of the main reasons a group of women disliked me was because I was too skinny and my boobs were too big, I really second guessed that decision. [ Read related article here: The Teeter Totter of Weight Bias ]
My stomach still has more skin than I think it should have after three different abdominal surgeries to fix it. I’m sure I have defined abdominal muscles under there, somewhere.
There are areas of my body right under my arms and along the sides of my breasts where the skin is so damaged from obesity that I get these little pockets in the skin that if I’m not watching carefully can get infected. I truly believe that we need to work on getting doctors and insurance companies to realize that the disease of obesity damages the skin and that removing that damaged skin is a part of treating the disease.
My feet are funky. I think I have a hammertoe or something. My little baby toe is pretty much deformed. Even the people at the nail salon snicker at its appearance when I get a pedicure.
When I lay on my back on a bench doing a chest press I have weird excess skin on my back right around my shoulder blades where my muscles move. Dislike.
On any given day, I can look at all of these things in the mirror and I can fixate on and pick myself apart over how something should have looked had I never weighed 420 lbs.
I try hard not to do that. I try to accept that weighing 420 lbs. was part of my story. It is part of what makes me a good weight loss coach, it is part of what makes me good at helping other people fight obesity. It’s all part of who I am, part of the imperfect life that led me to being the perfectly imperfect version of myself that I am today.
Who knows where I would be if my story had been different? Each one of us has a past; we can either allow that past to haunt us or we can decide to define our future. My story has brought me to where I am today. To a career that feeds my passion to help other’s fight obesity and find the fun and potential emotional outlet in fitness as a Weight Loss and Wellness Coach and Fitness Instructor.
During one of my major moments of body image issues, at time where I was upset that my body wasn’t perfect, a woman who I admire greatly asked me if I wanted to be an example of what most of my clients could never achieve, or if I wanted to be an example of what is attainable. This message hit home for me.
Each time that I catch myself standing in front of the mirror picking myself a part I remind myself that I am an example to my clients and my community of what can be achievable after 260 lbs. of weight loss. I am not perfect. Nobody is. But I am myself perfectly. I stay true to who I am and I am an example of my own story. That, my friends, makes me perfect at being my imperfect self. That make me perfectly imperfect.
Learning to accept your flaws and loving yourself in spite of them, and muting those internal negative voices that put your emotional well-being in jeopardy is an integral part of your weight loss journey. If you don’t learn to do that and love yourself success will exponentially be more difficult.
So what is my biggest tip for battling the barriers of body image issue that can sometimes present themselves in my life after weight loss? In some of my worst moments, when my body image issues are getting the best of me and my internal voices are being unkind when I look in the mirror, I pull out some old pictures. I look back at the photos of when I actually weighed 420 lbs and would have given anything to lose the weight. I look back and the photos of all the skin that hung on my body afterward and remind myself how miserable I was and how good of a job my surgeons did with what they had to work with.



I stop and remind myself that while what I wanted was to have the body of a porn star, that wasn’t a realistic expectation. Given my story, where I have been and what I have done, the body I have today, though imperfect for all the reasons I mentioned above, is still my body. I eat healthy, I work out on a regular basis and I do the best I can at making my body a reflection of who I am today.
Never let anyone including yourself fool you. Losing all that extra weight won’t make life perfect and it won’t make you perfect. Losing the weight is the big physical part of the journey but the emotional part just begins there. From there you’ll face issues like regain, battling with the numbers you see on the scale, how you handle life without food as form of comfort and maybe the biggest of all, the body image issues that surface when you realize what your body should have or would have looked like had you never been affected by obesity.
From there, it is time to appreciate the journey. Be proud of what you have accomplished and understand that you’re exactly where you are supposed to be in your journey right now. Don’t focus on should, could or would, focus on being your imperfect self and understand that you are perfectly imperfect and that my friends, is exactly what we should be.

People who have undergone bariatric surgery know the weight loss battle does not end in the operating room. Months and even years after surgery, some weight can slowly creep back on. But this isn't a time to panic because now you have the tools to overcome a little setback and regain control of your weight.
This time, you are in charge.


One of the lessons you learn after weight loss surgery is that you are in charge of your health, diet and exercise program. The food no longer rules the roost--you do.
The truth of the matter is no matter what the scale says, 110 or 310, everyone puts on a few pounds now and then. As a bariatric surgeon in New Jersey for more than 10 years, one of the biggest anxiety triggers for patients is weight gain.
"That's it--it's over--I'm going to gain all the weight back."
Of course that's not true. To get back on pace, I’ve listed a few essential steps to help get you back on track to dropping the pounds once again:
• Go back to the beginning
Post-surgery, you probably followed your healthcare team’s advice to the letter. But as time passed, and you looked and felt healthier, you may have started to deviate from those dietary and exercise guidelines. Pull out your notes and review the program guidelines that brought you this far. Get back on the scale once a week and fire up your food journal again.
• Get thyself to the nearest support group ─ STAT
Weight loss is a personal journey, but it doesn’t have to be a lonely one. Online support groups on BariatricPal.com are great secondary resources to live weekly or monthly groups with your bariatric doctor or hospital. There is support all-around you, reach out and take it.
• Work it out
Are you using the ‘too tired’ reason for missing a trip to the gym or 30 minute fast walk around the neighborhood? If you need energy, you know how to get it—get up, get out and get moving. “Too busy,” you say? Remember, only you can prioritize your health and wellness. You matter—make time for your health every single day.
• Come to terms with the weight gain
This doesn’t mean blaming yourself. Rather, be forthright about how and why it happened and pat yourself on the back that you’ve recognized it now—not later.
There’s no need to beat yourself up. You have already done the hard part by recognizing some weight has crept back on. That in itself shows you are going to battle back. We encourage our patients at Sterling Surgicare to call us if they feel frustrated or defeated--everyone needs a pep talk now and then.
Remember there are many people supporting you 24/7 in this effort.
Life is filled with occasional side-steps and set-backs. It is part of making us who we are. Make a plan, regroup, recommit.
You can do this.

Those just beginning to explore weight loss surgery are wondering if we really can manifest our heart’s desire of a thinner healthier body. While the vets, who having manifested those thinner healthier bodies, have newfound desires in other areas of our lives.


What is it that your heart truly desires, that something so irresistible that it consumes your dreams at night and invades your waking thoughts, what is it that you must have?
Those of us on this forum are all at different points along our “path to self.” Those just beginning to explore weight loss surgery are wondering if we really can manifest our heart’s desire of a thinner healthier body. While the vets, who having manifested those thinner healthier bodies, have newfound desires in other areas of our lives… perhaps we now might bear the children we’ve always wanted… or unite with the love of our lives… or get out of a loveless relationship. We wonder if we, again, can manifest our dreams.

Yes, we absolutely can. We can manifest anything we truly desire for ourselves and our lives.

The opportunity lies before you. The choice is yours and yours alone: Will you step up and go for your bliss, will you dare to create heaven on earth and live a life so wonderful that others will aspire to do as you have done? Or will you take the fallback position and merely settle for what you have already, rationalizing it is good enough, or worse, lying to yourself that your dreams are foolishness? We who have defeated our obesity and its related diseases did not get here by merely settling. No. We were the brave, the risk takers, the believers. And we were rewarded for that: We actualized the thinner healthier bodies that we once only dreamed of having.

If you fall back into familiar patterns of behavior and, like most people, simply “settle” rather than going for your bliss, then you are going to be miserable and miss out on living a life you love. If you keep on your rose-colored glasses and think everything is going to be okay then you’re going to find out the hard way that its not. Its your life and you are only going to live it once, not twice or more. You deserve to live a life you love.

Consider the attractive middle-age woman who recently asked me if she’d ever find true love. I replied that I believe she’d already found the man she loves but is afraid of communicating her feelings to him. Indeed she admitted that she had all these feelings for this man, like she’d never had for anyone before, but had so many reservations. There were complications — both were in loveless marriages, among other things. Of course there were complications, because nothing worth having is ever easy peasy to obtain. If it were then everyone would be living their dreams! I said my piece and noticed that look of “ah ha” on her face when I concluded with, “You never want to go to your grave with regret thinking what if… What would my life had been like if I’d just told him that I loved him?” We are sometimes so afraid to risk going for our dreams that we never even try. How dumb is that? Don’t ever make bad choices based on fearful thoughts.

Now consider a pretty young woman that I know who had been trying for years to have a baby. It was what she wanted most for her life. But she was met with tragic heartbreak after heartbreak time and again. And when she was about to declare she’d given up, she and her husband tried again. This time they had a baby boy. Yes. Dreams really do come true. Many years earlier in high school, she had secretly loved her husband back then when he was just a boy. She was in a dating relationship with someone else at the time and she and the boy whom she really desired were merely friends. But she would doodle her name with his surname on paper, dreaming of one day being “Mrs.” married to him. They went away to different universities that were states apart and most would have thought that was the end to a dream unrealized. But fate brought them back together when this boy, now a man, did a semester as an exchange student at a university near the school she was attending. And what happened was that this young woman manifested her heart’s desire. She created heaven on earth with this man whom she had secretly loved for years, all because she “went for it.” After graduation they got engaged, then married. They now live a life so wonderful that most people would envy: owning homes on the east coast and west coast, living abroad all over the world, and traveling extensively with their two beautiful children. She truly lives a life she loves. We have to be willing to go for it, what it is that we desire, then orchestrate our minds to focus on manifesting our bliss.

Think about it, dream big: If you could write the story of your life what would it look like? Visualize yourself healthy, happy, beautiful inside and out, fully giving and receiving love, being your authentic self, living your truth and doing the things you want to do; your life is blissful and you are living heaven on earth. Now bring your story to life. Understand this: The only thing holding you back is you.

Manifesting that which we truly want for ourselves and our lives involves mastering the mind and finding the truth within our hearts. Fear and ego cannot exist there, nor can anger, shame, or inaction. Let go of the old and rebirth into the new. You have within you the power for magical transformation in your life.

Today, right here, right now, identify one small change that you’ve been postponing that would bring you closer to attaining that which you desire. This could be any action from clearing your home of unhealthy foods to sending a nice card to the person you secretly love inviting her/him to coffee. Small changes will propel you along your journey and ignite powerful ones. Your goal is not to settle. Rather you are to be brave, take risk, and believe until you manifest what it is that your heart truly desires, that something so irresistible that it consumes your dreams at night and invades your waking thoughts, that which you must have. Your life really can be heaven on earth.

In the comments section below, please identify your desire, your fear related to attaining it, and commit to a change(s) you’re willing to make to bring your desire to life. Please also inspire us with your stories and advice for how you’ve manifested your dreams.

As for me, I’ve conquered my obesity and transformed the physical. Now I’m on the path to transforming mind and spirit and the journey is just as amazing as the journey to transform my body. Change is not easy but one thing I know for sure is that the outcome of actualizing your dream is worth it; this I promise you. I invite you to read my story.

Old habits can be hard to break. Throw in a sale and the temptation is fierce. Bariatric dietitian Elizabeth Anderson gives you some tips to stay strong.


Perhaps you're not like me. Perhaps you're not a bargain diva or czar. Perhaps you don't have a sweet tooth, never have.

Maybe you never went into a drug store to buy a greeting card and came out with 3 for 1 bags of candy? Perhaps you always share big bags of treats with others, never squandering it all for yourself... on the drive home!

However, if ANY of this sounds a little like you. Read on. You're in good company.

Easter is over but the candy is not. Are there marquees or sale flyers in your world advertising deep discounts on the leftover candy? It's tough to resist, especially if you have a history of overdoing it during the holidays. If the Peeps are literally calling your name consider the following:

1. There are No Peeps left! They were sold out a week before Easter. The only thing left is candy so icky, they're selling it for 70% off. (No doubt those licorice jelly beans.)

2. This isn't Christmas wrapping paper people. If you stash away these deeply discounted items, you might have lots of chubby vermin in your attic making making nests out of that holiday wrap

3. Splurge your bargain urge this weekend at one of the first yard sales of the year.

Be honest with yourself. Is your weight up a little after the holiday? Maybe in a downward spiral of negative thought you've said to yourself, 'Buy the damn candy. What difference does it make? You're fat anyway?'

I'm here to tell you it does make a difference because YOU matter!!

There is no lasting love, lasting relaxation, lasting peace in the discounted candy. Yes, it soothes momentarily but at a very, very high price to your peace of mind, your confidence, your well-being. And those are the things I'm most interested in protecting.

No two WLS clients are the same, but I'll bet most would agree that having bulk candy around the house or office is an invitation for stress. Save yourself the grief, drive on by the candy sales and aisles and discount bins. Focus on the fun springtime clothes, bike rides and outdoor walks you're now enjoying. Now that is something to PEEP about!

Mom taught me the greatest lesson I’ve ever learned:
Self-acceptance and the desire to change are not mutually exclusive propositions


I hit 300 pounds by the age of 18. Dating back to early childhood, all my efforts to diet had failed, and always left me heavier than I’d been when I started.
In my 20s, I decided to accept my body - fat and all. No more diets. No more wasting time feeling bad about my size. From now on, I was gonna work on loving the body I had. If I remember correctly, about 10 minutes later, my mother broke the news:
“Sweetheart, I’m having weight loss surgery.”
A chorus of ‘No!’ started singing in my head. Every reason why surgery was a bad idea tried to elbow its way to the stage.
“It’s dangerous!”
“It’s expensive!”
“It’s a cop out!”
“It’s society that needs to change, not you!”
“You’re beautiful just as you are!”
“It’s their problem, not yours!”
“NO!”
My mom had gone through periods of consistently eating nourishing foods in nourishing ways, exercising every day, and sleeping well. And as a result, she knew what it felt like to be more comfortable in her own skin, and to move through the world without the burden of 150+-pounds of excess fat.
I, on the other hand, was young, and had always been overweight and out of shape, but I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from believing I knew what was best for my mother. I was an idealistic feminist college student who’d just stumbled upon the solution to suffering: loving myself just exactly as I was.
To my mind, by choosing to have surgery, my mom was being a narrow-minded, self-hating fool.
“Mom, you need to love yourself! Don’t let society tell you how your body should look!”
“I do love myself," she said. "That’s why I’m doing this. I want to be comfortable. I want to be able to do things I’m not comfortable doing at this weight. And I want to be alive and healthy for when you have babies.”
I could hardly believe the depth of her ignorance.
“There’s a support group for post-ops that’s open to the public. Please come with me,” she said.
Fine, I thought. There was bound to be some post-op there who’d almost died, or someone that couldn’t swallow...All I needed was one flesh and blood person to base my argument on, and then my mother would have no choice but to come to her senses.
“I’ll come on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to listen to everything that gets said in that meeting. I’m not going if you’re gonna ignore the truth.”
“It’s a deal.”
My mom drove us to the meeting in Englewood, NJ. There was a facilitator, and just under 50 people in the room, mostly women in their 40s and 50s. Some had had surgery already, some were scheduled to have it, and some were just thinking about it.
I sat against the wall in silent protest. While waiting for the meeting to start, I invented a life and a personality for the facilitator, compared her to me, and decided I was superior. She started with some house-keepy details and then launched right in.
“Welcome, everyone,” she said. “First we’ll hear check-ins from the post-ops, and then, if there’s still time, we’ll take some questions.”
The post-ops shared personal stories ranging from the straightforward: ‘I had surgery, I lost a lot of weight, I feel better, and here I am,’ to the gripping: ‘I had surgery, had a bunch of post-surgical complications, and here’s what life has looked like since.’
Everyone’s story was a little different, but one thing was universal: these people hadn’t gone under the knife to get hot; they’d undergone surgery because they wanted to live as fully as they could in the time that remained, and for them, that meant being a healthier weight. Dieting had failed them, like it fails most of us, but surgery felt like it might be the answer.
The facilitator called a break. I watched as my mother got up and introduced herself to a post-op who’d shared that losing weight meant getting her blood pressure, cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes under control. The woman was older, she was not meeting any popular standards of beauty, and appeared positively vibrant. I hadn’t realized how down my mom looked until she started to brighten up talking to this woman.
The moderator called us back. People were smiling and whispering, quietly exchanging cards and phone numbers. She thanked everyone for their shares, and opened up the floor, as promised.
“Does anyone have any questions for the post-ops?”
Now was my chance. I raised my hand.
“How many of you wish you hadn’t had surgery?”
Not a single hand went up. Maybe they’re embarrassed, I thought. Surely the ones who’d had complications felt foolish for having had surgery, but maybe peer pressure was keeping them quiet.
I needed to ask a better question, get them to talk about the danger.
“Uh...can I ask one more?” the facilitator nodded.
“What’s the biggest, scariest risk to having surgery?”
There was a tiny pause. My brain fired off all kinds of answers: Vitamin deficiencies! Pain! Death!
“Judgement.”
What?
“Being criticized.”
Wait, what?
“When people think surgery’s the easy way out, or a sign of weakness, or just a stupid idea, and they never stop letting you know." Huh.
According to a roomful of WLS post-ops, having to deal with my criticism might be the biggest, scariest risk my mom would face if she had surgery. Compared to daily, holier-than-thou judgement, even post-surgical complications might seem trite and manageable.
My mom do go ahead with her surgery. In under a year, I watched her regain much of the health and livelihood she’d lost. A little over a year later, I went to the same surgeon.
Ever since I opted to have gastric bypass surgery myself in 2003, I can tell you that the folks at that meeting were right.
I’ve worked my tail off to get well, to get an honest handle on my relationship to food, and to create a body I love. I became a personal trainer, coach, and educator to help others do the same. As a wellness professional, I’ve been judged for having had surgery in much the same way I was judged for being the fattest kid on the playground, except now, it’s often by other fitness “professionals.”
I’ve since apologized to my mother for the grief I tried to give her when she first started exploring surgery as an option. And I’ve thanked her for sparking the greatest lesson I’ve ever learned - the lesson that I’ve dedicated my career to teaching to others:
Self-acceptance and the desire to change are not mutually exclusive propositions - they can co-exist. In my experience, and that of countless clients and students, the only way to make lasting, sustainable, positive change is to begin from a place of love.

Standing outside this morning I looked about and all was quiet. Moments later a light breeze started to affect one of the Maples we planted thirty years ago. It drew my attention because it was a soft rustling noise that came from no where and sounded peaceful and pleasant. Suddenly in the distance I could hear the rumbling of thunder and it felt ominous. Approaching my peaceful moment with the ability to give me cause to worry. It hit me that the entire experience of a few moments was comparable to the journey of weight loss surgery.


We get to a point where we give in and think that we have reached the bottom of our life. There is nothing left and we think there is nothing for us out there to help or offer us an option to turn our lives around. But through gentle words and in the form of encouragement by family, friends and the medical field we learn about Bariatric Surgery. We are offered a tool that can assist us to find a new path to good health and well being. A fear builds deep within us but we know inside that this is the only option left. This is make or break it time and we have no where else to go. We see our mortality and the future looks dim. We are willing to do what it takes to find ourselves on the other side which offers a new life without food addiction.
We can't even imagine how that would feel to be thin and in good health. Finally having the real control of our future and our lives. Not being the object of well intentioned or intentional comments or opinions that hurt so deep we feel wounded and or scarred for the rest of our days. But it is not to be. We have an option. A gentle breeze overcomes us as we realize we do have an option. We do have a future. One that will keep us around long enough to enjoy the rest of our lives as the person we always wanted to be. Being able to watch our children grow up and then the grandchildren. Not to mention doing all the things you thought you would never do. Making a bucket list of experiences you want to have and places you want to go. Not to mention the effects this new and improved you will have in a positive way with your family and friends, work acquaintances and yes even strangers. This is the gentle breeze of realization that is engulfing your spirit and giving you hope for a better life ahead.
When does the thunder roll in the distance to threaten this new found peace you are experiencing? When you realize that it will take real effort on your part to accomplish this. When you take the time to really start changing how you view food and figure out why you used food as a comfort in good times and in bad. We are conditioned to believe that food plays a much bigger roll in our lives then simply giving us the proper nutrients to keep our bodies in good working order. By well meaning parents who told us how it was so important to clean our plates to the diet industry that makes millions off of failed diets. The false comfort in the form of food related slogans that advertising companies use to make us think that food equals happiness. That food is the backbone of our lives. Here are a few.
Help yourself to happiness – Golden Coral
Come hungry, leave happy – IHOP
Unwrap a smile – Little Debbie's
Comfort in every bite – Mars Bar
Life tastes better with KFC – Kentucky Fried Chicken
Little nuggets of joy- McDonald's Chicken McNuggets
Double your flavor,double your fun – Double Mint Gum
Feels like home – Sarah Lee
Get your smile on – Lay's
And on and on, teaching us that food is the answer to all our woes and will bring us happiness. But we know from our own personal experiences that this is not the case. And yet we battle these feelings of needing food as the drug of choice to fulfill in us an emptiness every single day. We find ourselves reverting back to the habits that has brought us momentary relief only to find that it did not help at all.
This is the thunder that we all experience in our journey. The fight to stay on course and not give into the heavy winds and booming sounds of habit or the artificial comfort of using food to make us feel better. We are in a war. We will win a battle at a time. We will get there. Maybe not today or tomorrow but we will control this disease. Weight loss surgery is our tool to learn new life long habits and choices that will once again bring the gentle breeze of hope and then success.

Your life story is so touching. Thank you for being so humble and taking the time to share. Im 3 months into this and am learning how to deal with my life. Your story gives me hope.

Your life story is so touching. Thank you for being so humble and taking the time to share. Im 3 months into this and am learning how to deal with my life. Your story gives me hope.