Cervidae

I'm getting my one year post op labs done tomorrow! And one of the things I love so much about my bariatric center is they encourage and expect you to be patients there for life. They schedule annual follow-ups every year following surgery for as long as the patient will show up. The surgery and lifestyle change is for life, so the checkups should be too!

Great timing, as usual, Alex! Thanks for the post. I'm right at the point where my hunger is coming back and I'm transitioning into maintenance. Tricky time! D:

Beautifully and eloquently written, thank you. <3

When I was a young teenager, I had serious anger issues. I never hurt anyone else but I often took my anger and frustration out on my own body in absolutely unhealthy ways (self-harm, binging, starving, staying awake for days, etc). The only thing that ever helped even a little to cope with those intense feelings of anger and frustration, mostly frustration at my life, my body, and my limitations, was to wear a rubber band around my wrist and snap it whenever I felt like doing or saying something harmful to myself. I found it also worked when I wanted to give someone else a good slap! It's tough for people who have a hard time coping with intense amounts of these bad feelings. Just talking it out or taking deep breaths sometimes just doesn't cut it. Great list!

Beautifully expressed, and I relate to this so, so much. Thank you for sharing.

I'm in the process of getting therapy for these very issues! It's not easy to learn to be objective and realistic about yourself when you have an eating disorder because your reasoning is flawed, and thoughts that you feel are valid and logical are often completely skewed by the disorder. If anyone reading this has noticed these problems... get help! We didn't go through a life-threatening, life-altering surgery only to keep treating our bodies poorly. You deserve to take fantastic care of yourself, and if you need help to do that, there's no shame in it. Thanks for the post. It was a good read and a reminder that this is always going to be a journey of health, not a destination.

I didn't know there was a chat room either! That's a really cool feature. I went in there about two hours ago and said hi but it echoed around the empty room, lol.

@@baylyy the whole point is that whether you're a fat person who is working out and eating healthy and trying to lose weight or a fat person who likes pizza and eats it every daya nd is slowly killing yourself, you deserve to be treated like a human being. And as a general comment about medical professionals and the fat acceptance movement: the connection between the movement and medicine/doctors is that there's no denying that doctors often sort of just brush aside other possible health issues when someone is overweight. It's common for a doctor to take one look at the number on the scale and automatically chalk up all symptoms to obesity. The movement is trying to say "hey, yes, weight can and does cause health issues, but assuming a fat person is automatically unhealthy is utter idiocy, and it needs to change." The fact is even medical professionals can be discriminatory towards obese people. And that's a big, big problem.

The fat acceptance movement is a lot like the feminism movement in that a lot of people have utter misconceptions about what the movement is actually about and why it exists. Much like the crazy people who call themselves feminists while attacking men, saying we should just kill off all the men, saying the men are inferior, etc are not ACTUALLY feminists, people who truly believe that being fat is healthy and that all doctors are just being hateful and discriminatory are not actually fat activists. The point of the fat acceptance movement is the same point as the broader body positivity movement: it doesn't matter if you weigh 800 pounds and literally can't move off your bed, it doesn't matter if you have made yourself unhealthy with poor choices or if you are making no move whatsoever to lose weight. Every person deserves to be treated like a human being, with dignity and respect, end of story. Fat acceptance is all about treating fat people like they are humans instead of the often appalling way we are often treated, ways that are still socially acceptable and that need to change, NOW. The point is, no one has a right to judge you or treat you poorly because of your body because it's your body, not theirs, and no one gets a say unless you want them to. These misguided people who stubbornly tell themselves that fat acceptance is about pretending to be healthy and thinking fat is better are just that, misguided. I can't really blame them, in some ways. Being treated like less of a person because of how you look is just absolutely wrong and ridiculous, and doesn't serve to actually help people. No true body positivist would ever ignore medical advise just because they are hurt and offended by the truth, just like no actual feminist would say that men are inferior. There are idiot radicals in every movement, but what's important to take away from it is the core message.

This will be my first Thanksgiving since surgery. I thought I would feel more frustrated or wistful but I truly don't. I'm lucky to still be in the "I'm never hungry and food is for my body, not my emotions" phase. Have an awesome, healthy Thanksgiving Alex and everyone else!

Either I will get up early or stay up later than I should so that I can take a nice, long, HOT shower. If I can just have like 20-30 minutes in the quiet of a hot shower to decompress, I'm a-ok for the rest of the day.

Just like before surgery, everything we eat in moderation. 1 ounce of pistachios = good. Half a cup of pistachios = not so good.

Tomorrow will be 5 weeks post op for me, and this was so, so comforting to me. Thank you.