I know my peers will get this:

http://thescrambledalchemist.blog.com/2014/04/12/shame-success/

Well put.

This isn't just WLS... I have a friend whose dad basically raised him with "if you don't struggle doing it the hard way then you've cheated yourself and you aren't appreciative" ... This has nothing to do with weight loss, but so many other facets of his life. Why spend your hard-earned $8,000 on a reasonably decent used car, when you could buy two decrepit identical cars for $2500 and then spend another $8000 in five-hundred-dollar increments, and three years of unending frustration "fixing" one? Why buy a new stove for $400 when you can get an old cheapo one on Craigslist for $50 that only has two working burners? If you can't fix it you just aren't trying hard enough! It's EASY!! "Any fool can do it" he's fond of saying.

Now if the guy practiced what he preached, maybe it'd be something ... But he doesn't. The dad has got 5 - yes FIVE - old motorcycles just rusting away waiting for "a good day to build ____". House falling down around him bc he won't redo the roof himself and won't hire a contractor because "any fool can do it"! And if a project never gets done, well, it's never his fault.... Always someone else's fault. This has driven my friend some kind of crazy over the years. Now he's 36 and trying to not pass this crap on to his daughter.

I'm forwarding your link to my friend... Because he needs to get his head OUT of his dad's insanity.... And "purposely taking the hard way" is totally his dad's MO.

Thanks all. Elfnow, I think your friend is a victim of what I refer to as our cultural pathology. I see if everywhere! My blog isn't wls specific but its a great example of how we center our lives around this poverty mindedness. Martyrdom and Self-sacrifice feed the idea that we are somehow "not enough". Brene Browne often talks about this. We don't believe in our own worthiness unless we can point to our struggle and say "look what I overcame". If you make a list of personal heroes I promise you will see struggle as a theme in what you value.

Wow. It's sort of like you live inside my head. I love the way you write. I wish I felt as brave to "just be". You can tell you've done a lot of "work". I'm thinking I should probably start seeing someone to tackle the demons that got me where I am. Surgery definitely didn't fix my brain. Very good post. Makes me think. Transformation and Authenticity are things I really want, yet seem so far away.

Nice post, Ely.

I love that. Does it really matter if I took the easy way out or are the results what matter? I get really hung up on this question too. I had a thin friend tell me she was jealous I had surgery because now I don't ever have to worry about overheating. Boy! She doesn't live in my head, that's for sure! But it made me feel as if she might judge this as an easy out. But I honestly don't care. If it's the easy way out oh well it's still a way out (and I don't believe it's been easy).

I thought about this some since the original post. I think the problem is the idea of penance for immorality. Like if you screw up, you should do x times the amount of penance to show you're REALLY sorry...

Obesity is pervasively seen as some kind of moral failing (and believe me, I KNOW IT'S NOT!!) but so many of us felt like we needed to find "real" reasons for our obesity, beyond "ate too much and didn't exercise", because there is SO MUCH JUDGMENT about obesity!!

So we look for reasons: genetics that cause us to store extra fat, physical ailments that prevented us from being active, family who taught us to eat the wrong things, medications that made us eat too much ("body by prednisone!") etc. Anything to not be "that fat lazy **** on the couch", to not be some nameless faceless statistic, but instead to be a real person who has a real need for help.

Now comes the penance! We still feel like obesity is some sort of moral failing, so we feel like we need to work extra hard to show how "sorry" we are! Extreme diets! Hellish workouts! Pain and suffering!! And if we're successful, we can say we've finally "won", we've appeased the almighty cosmic scoreboard!! Somehow we're now "even" with someone who had a healthy relationship with food and exercise from day 1. Maybe we're even a little better than that person, since we now have experience and compassion, and that person has looked down at our "failing" all along. Or they would if they knew us. Or they'd have compassion if they REALLY knew us because it IS NOT a failing of our personal morality, but a product of so many experiences that leaves us in this predicament.

What would surgery do? It might erase the shame and humiliation that we think we HAVE to feel... Without all the self-flagellation and punishment! It's like cutting in line!! "Good" people might not recognize that we're secretly awfully immoral inside....they might love us as people like we've been worthy of it all along...

THIS WHOLE LINE OF THINKING IS COMPLETE BULLPUCKEY. WE ARE REAL PEOPLE. We are not nameless statistics for some news outlet to bombard the rest of society!! We are not immoral, and we DO NOT NEED REASONS. We are beautiful humans, with all the amazing perfections and flaws that ALL HUMANS HAVE. We are astounding creations - whether you believe we're creations of God or we've evolved to this point, the fact remains that it's FREAKING AMAZING. And we don't need to feel guilty, or bad, or like failures, or like we need to do penance for sins that we didn't commit alone.

We will anyway, that's part of humanity... But there is no "erasing", and it's not like

(Hit send by accident) ..... It's not like we're fooling anyone or luring someone away from a more righteous path by being thin but "secretly one of those fat people inside".

We aren't defined by being obese persons trying to blend in.... We are each defined by our own beautiful selves.... And this is all part of the journey.

I love that this has provoked thought and I agree with you Elf, its reflected everywhere in our society. I didn't have value until I had struggle. We teach our children that our hero's are those who rose up out of adversity. If we were mass raising martyrs this would make sense.

I love that this has provoked thought and I agree with you Elf, its reflected everywhere in our society. I didn't have value until I had struggle. We teach our children that our hero's are those who rose up out of adversity. If we were mass raising martyrs this would make sense.

I guess it's kind of endemic to a religious-morals-based society (not knocking any religions, just saying....) the US was founded on John Henryism (just work really really hard, and if you don't have what you need you aren't working hard enough)... And I think the "personal struggle" is often glorified over the actual results.