DaMomb

After spending years praying that God would inable me to overcome my eating addictions, and never losing faith that He is completely able to, I finally decided that, while God is completely able to deliver someone from addiction in a moment, more often he uses other methods much more comparable to the Exodus of the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt.  My spiritual journey truly began after my weight rebound from phen/fen.  After quickly losing 74 pounds on phen/fen, I just as quickly gained that weight back.  I have often said, the joy of losing 74 pounds does not compare to the absolute despair when that weight starts piling back on.  All the cute little clothes begin to get put away with this totally hopeless feeling that nothing will ever work.  That was in 1995. Since then, God has been showing me so many things about my weight and my struggles.  While I won't go into all of that right now, the most important thing that God has shown me in this journey is that if I am unable to love myself fat, then I will still be unsatisfied if/when I lose weight.  That I was to seek His kingdom and His will, and that He promised He would give me the desires of my heart if I put His desires first.  For about two years or so before having my surgery, I was learning to truly love ME.  Losing weight is a walk in the park compared to that.  As women, we are very hard on ourselves and very unforgiving of our physical attributes.  We can be completely unrealistic about how we should look, what we should weigh, and what size we should be.  Most women, at every age, will reminisc about what size they were when they got married.  The funny thing is that most women lose 20 pounds or so before they ever get married.  So that weight is not even what their real weight was, yet it is the weight goal that they carry around in their head and it never changes as their life changes.  What I mean is this.... I was 20 years old when I got married.  I was in the Army.  I had no children.  I did PT 3 times a week and was very active.  Just before I got married, I went from a size 13 to a size 7-9, and was actually able to wear a size 5 wedding dress (because of how it was made).  Now I am almost 45.  I am NOT in the army.  I am no where near as active as I was when I was 20.  I have a couple of kids, each of whom I gained about 50 pounds during each pregnancy, yet I carried this vision of who I was when I got married and actually believed that if I got back down to that weight I would be happy.  One day, while I was praying, the Lord showed me that I was to have no graven images or idols before him.  I was stunned and assured Him that I didn't.  He then began to show me what I thought was the key to my happiness.  It was me at that same weight I was when I got married.  That was the thing that was going to make me happy!  Not God, or what He was doing in my life.  And then He told me to look really closely at that image of me that I thought would make me so happy.  As I did I realized that even if I reached that weight, I would still have wrinkles, I would still have some amazing stretch marks that I did not have at 20. That image was wonderful from a distance, but in reality, as I got closer it was just a mirage.  Not sure if any of that makes sense, but I am sharing it to the best of my ability.  After showing me this, God began to continually show me how important it is to learn to love me, and forgive me for where I have fallen short in my weight/size goals.  Like I said, definately not easy to do.  It takes a big big God to help a 250# 44 year old woman be able to look in the mirror and feel beautiful.  I learned to find clothes that made me look as good as I possibly could and get rid of all those clothes that made me feel horrible.  I learned to go ahead and do things at that size, that I thought I would wait to do when I finally lost all my weight.  And my life really began to change.  And when I finally felt like I had learned to love me, I decided that it was the right time to have my lapband surgery.  Once I made the decision, it went rather quickly.  Aside from going to a doctor to begin with that could not make any progress with my insurance (not the fault of my insurance, but I think the lady at the docs office kept letting it fall through the cracks) I changed doctors, and from the first doctor appointment, to the day of my surgery was only 56 days.  That was complete insurance approval, finding out that I had gallstones, and having my gall bladder removed, and then having my surgery.  It went amazingly smoothly.  One of the things that I had been praying for at length was that I would begin to truly desire to be more healthy.  That my weight loss and lapband surgery journey would not just be about droping 74 pounds in 7 months, like I had done with phen/fen, but that it would be more about being healthy and seeing the weight loss that would result from being more healthy.  This is exactly what has happened.  I am not only learning to eat healthy, but I really desire to eat healthy and to exercise.  I am losing weight much more slowly than I have ever lost weight before, but I feel amazing.  And I don't have any weeks that I gain weight.  I may not lose every week, but I am continually maintaining whatever weight loss I have had.  I have to be very careful not to get discouraged by the numbers on my scale and I have to remember that I cannot compare them to the numbers of other bandsters.  I once made a comment as I was looking at this website that I thought it was crazy to have this surgery and then only lose 35#.  I realized the other day how stupid that comment was.  Although 35# is obviously not my ultimate weight loss goal, I would do the surgery all over again if it was just to lose the weight I have lost thus far, (which is about 37#).  I say that because I really feel good exactly where I am.  No matter where you are, 35 pounds is great.  If you don't think so, fill your pants with 4 or 5 gallons of milk and walk around with that, and tell me that is not significant.  But that contentment is probably related to the place I had already reached in my journey of learning to love myself and be contented with me before I ever had my surgery.  I always hoped that my weight loss journey would be one that would allow me to help others to lose weight.  Now I am not sure if that is what will happen or not.  But time will tell.  I think the thing I want to help others with, that is more important than weightloss, is learning to love themselves.  And that starts for girls when they are teen agers.  That discontentment with their weight, clothing size, butt size, thigh size, boob size, shape, etc will only grow and the numbers on their scales will follow.  And as the numbers climb so will their personal discontentment and self hate.  That is what I think I hope that I am eventually able to help others with.