Leorah, welcome to your new group of best friends. We're here for you. We are all hoping we can say just the right thing and save a life.
Words have lots of power. We choose our words to heal. But words can also build walls that become prisons. Don't let your fears become words that trap you. See the examples below:
I did well but started to regain the weight back slowly due to meds this surgery started me back on full liquid for two weeks.
Huh? What are you saying here? I cannot figure out when or how you began to gain weight back, or if you are on a liquid diet now, or if you're saying the liquid diet cause you to gain weight. Please clarify.
That was hard...
I forgot how hard it was...
I need to talk to people that have been on this path that understand how hard it is...
people that can help me through the rough patches...
To find ... new ways to deal with food.
I do the cooking they love my cooking ...
I need to figure out how to make meals we can all enjoy...
So please any help to get me back on track...
...admitting I need help is scary.
The first thing I would do is tell them to cook for themselves. I do not understand why women willingly take on the responsibility for feeding men who are perfectly capable of cooking. They should be cooking for you, with your needs in mind. They should be learning about the pureed aspect of your diet. They should know everything about what you can and cannot eat and they should be supporting you completely. Are you trying to sabotage your success by exposing yourself to food that you should not be touching or smelling or eating?
As you repeatedly describe your journey as hard ...hey, this is hard, this is hard, this is hard... you are reinforcing your brain's own resistance to success. Now your brain is thinking, "Oh this is too hard. I can't do this." Why don't you say "this is fun" or "this is easy" or "this is a challenge I can meet?"
And why is it scary to ask for help? This is not a frivolous question. Are you always scared to ask for help? Is that why you just jump in there and make the food for them instead of asserting yourself and saying, "Cooking is not good for me. I need to be away from food while I am on my post-op diet. You guys are on your own."
I am always willing to support our members and to listen to what they have to say. But reading your post is depressing. You have built up such a wall around your own capability. You are abdicating all of your power because "it's too hard." It is NOT too hard. If it was too hard, nobody here would be successful. And there are a lot of people here who are incredibly successful.
So here is the first help I'm going to offer you. Listen to yourself talk. Stop framing things so negatively. Practice affirmations. Look ahead to your ultimate goal and rejoice! Believe in yourself. And be good to yourself. Stop sacrificing your own success so you can continue to baby a bunch of men who should already know how to make a sandwich or a salad or thaw out a frozen dinner.
Yeah, I know I'm blunt. I am a very emotional person. And I'm going to tell you the truth. When I read a post like yours, I don't even want to respond. What I see is a person who has convinced herself she's a failure and now she is asking me to talk her out of believing that.
And my experience with people who are so convinced that things are hard, is that they tend to argue with every suggestion I offer to help them.
You say in your own words that it is "not fair" for the others not to have your problems. So if it's not fair why are you helping them?
If you are like all the other members here, you already have a diet written out for you. You already have a list of foods you can eat during your liquid diet and your semi soft diet and your pureed diet and your solid diet and all the other phases of your eating that will allow you to drop a lot of weight and end up in a very healthy eating place. We can't tell you any more than that. It's broth, jello, protein shakes, pudding, cream of wheat, smoothies, cottage cheese, etc etc.
Leorah, you need to be honest with yourself. You lost your weight and kept it off for 5 years. Now you are blaming a surgery and medication for causing you to gain it all back? Did I understand you correctly? That's not how you gain weight. It is a simple formula. You are taking in more calories than you are using. When that happens, your body stores those calories and you gain weight. You are eating too much. You are not following your food plan. You don't even have to get exercise to lose weight if you are following the post-op diet. It just melts off.
I urge you to revisit the reasons you had the surgery in the first place. What did you want? Were you looking to cure yourself of diabetes and heart disease? Or did you just want to look like a Hollywood bombshell? Or were you tired of sitting on the sidelines while everyone else was playing games?
Whatever it is, you need to support yourself first. Swap out saying "it's too hard" with saying "I can do this." Get online and find affirmations for weight loss. Say them to yourself over and over and over and over again instead of all that other smack talk your brain is giving you that's making you fail.
Please understand that as I have been writing this, I have been feeling a lot of concern for you and hoping that you hear my words as tough love, not as criticism. You need to get out of that funk you're in and work with me and everyone else here who will try to help you. But if you don't drop the negative thinking, you're going to be wasting everyone's time, including your own.
Lastly, let me just share that I am going through a serious crisis right now. It's very complex and multifaceted and nobody here can help me even a little tiny bit, so I am not sharing it here. It would just be a waste of time to explain it, because I am the only person who can fix it. But when I compare my problems to yours, I wish we could trade. Not because I want you to suffer, but because your problems are so fixable.
Stop painting yourself into a corner, adopt a positive attitude, remember who you are, and who you want to be. We are here to help you. But you have to also help yourself.
