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AliceWoolf

Member
Hello! Thank you for reading me.

I would like to consult with you some of the things I have been experiencing these past few days: I am almost three months post op, and, though I have been consistently losing weight, my results have been more or less disappointing. My surgical team said they are in fact very good results, but I can’t help but compare with every success story I come across. I know it’s not a healthy thing to do, that every body is different, and I have resigned myself to do everything I am supposed to do, and let the weight come off as it will.

I am working with a personal trainer six days a week and my protein intake is more or less where it should be, with a couple of bad days. My dietitian said I have not lost a single pound of muscle since I started, which is good. However, I have trouble seeing results in the mirror. I feel like I don’t look any different, but, when I see videos of myself a couple of months ago, I do notice a difference. The thing is, I have been obese all my adult life and I don’t feel any less “fat” right now. I use the same clothes I did pre surgery (admittedly, they tend to be loose enough to kind of fall off). But I still feel like my size is XXL. Recently, I tried some L clothes and felt them constricting, as if they were too tight on me. Turns out they do fit, but I have become used to roomy clothes with lots of spare space. In a way, I think I am waiting for the inevitable failure and weight bounce. I don’t want to feel any less “fat”, because I am afraid.

Have any of you internalized being overweight as an integral part of your identity?
 
Hi Alice, I am 6 months out and admittedly feel a lot of what you are feeling. I'm still wearing the same clothes (that are a lot looser) and kind of fear moving to a smaller size. I actually have an appointment set up with the surgical team's clinical psychologist to address these feelings. Does your surgical team have a bariatric psychologist you can speak with?
 
AliceWoolf said:
Hello! Thank you for reading me.

I would like to consult with you some of the things I have been experiencing these past few days: I am almost three months post op, and, though I have been consistently losing weight, my results have been more or less disappointing. My surgical team said they are in fact very good results, but I can’t help but compare with every success story I come across. I know it’s not a healthy thing to do, that every body is different, and I have resigned myself to do everything I am supposed to do, and let the weight come off as it will.

I am working with a personal trainer six days a week and my protein intake is more or less where it should be, with a couple of bad days. My dietitian said I have not lost a single pound of muscle since I started, which is good. However, I have trouble seeing results in the mirror. I feel like I don’t look any different, but, when I see videos of myself a couple of months ago, I do notice a difference. The thing is, I have been obese all my adult life and I don’t feel any less “fat” right now. I use the same clothes I did pre surgery (admittedly, they tend to be loose enough to kind of fall off). But I still feel like my size is XXL. Recently, I tried some L clothes and felt them constricting, as if they were too tight on me. Turns out they do fit, but I have become used to roomy clothes with lots of spare space. In a way, I think I am waiting for the inevitable failure and weight bounce. I don’t want to feel any less “fat”, because I am afraid.

Have any of you internalized being overweight as an integral part of your identity?
Click to expand...
Your post is VERY insightful. I hope everyone reads it and absorbs your message.
 
mam said:
Hi Alice, I am 6 months out and admittedly feel a lot of what you are feeling. I'm still wearing the same clothes (that are a lot looser) and kind of fear moving to a smaller size. I actually have an appointment set up with the surgical team's clinical psychologist to address these feelings. Does your surgical team have a bariatric psychologist you can speak with?
Click to expand...
Hello,

My bariatric team does have a psychologist, but I have some trouble establishing trust with mental health professionals (sometimes, I find them kind of dismissing or too absorbed in their experiences with other people to see me as myself and not a walking DSM IV checklist) so I am addressing this issues with my clinical psychologist. He has been very helpful, but sometimes I long for a connection beyond therapy.

I knew before I had surgery I was depressed and had been idling myself to a passive suicide by acquiring the most self destructive habits out there. I knew then, as I know now, that, at least for me, this would be mostly a mental challenge. I talked it through with my psychiatrist and in therapy and we all decided it was for the best. Depression won’t be cured just because I take up less space on the couch, but something had to give and I wanted to actually be glad to be alive.

I suppose I did this because I held out hope for a better reality. This is not to say that being fat makes me miserable, what I mean is that I felt so miserable, food became a ready comfort. Seeing myself get bigger and bigger also felt a bit like a fitting punishment for my weakness. It’s wrong. There is beauty in every kind of body, but I could not find any beauty in mine. I resented myself. I was ashamed.

There was never an epiphany for me, just a slow realization that I could do better. That perhaps I had to try to be better. So I decided to do just that. If I am being honest, I am doing this because I committed myself to it. I wanted to have accountability for what I was doing to myself. Having a group of people monitoring you in such a close fashion forces you to make the right choices. So I eat what I should, exercise six days a week, drink as much water as I can, take all my supplements. I feel better. I can move much more freely now and my flexibility is back.

Nevertheless, there is also the thing under my bed I need to face in order for this process to be worth it: how can I reconcile my reality with my expectations? I always wanted so much from myself. Expected too much, demanded everything and then some. Nothing was ever enough. It’s only natural I felt short of those expectations. When you set yourself an impossibly high bar, you will fail. I am terrified of failure. That fear paralyzes me so much I find it almost impossible to start moving. Giving up before trying is almost painless in comparison. I could not do that again. I did not want to, so I decided to establish a routine and stick to it. I have been doing well in that aspect. However, I do all of that in auto pilot. It is a considerable effort, but one I am afraid to actually recognize. I don’t want to expect me to set a record. I don’t want to be harsh on my body. Such is my dilemma. I am doing my best, I hope I can one day feel it is enough.
 
dianeseattle said:
Your post is VERY insightful. I hope everyone reads it and absorbs your message.
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Thank you!

I have been thinking about this all day long. I don’t know when it happened, but there is some kind of disconnection between what I perceive as myself and my body. It’s just a coping mechanism, but it has enabled me to treat my body unkindly. I feel like it is the visible reflection of everything I wish I wasn’t. I feel ashamed of the space I occupy.

For me, “fat” is not just a word. When I use it on myself, it almost becomes a slur, a reproach. But somewhere along the years, being “fat” has become part of myself, so integral to the way I understand my person as the color of my skin or the shape of my eyes. My shame and my armor. I suppose we become attached to the reflection in the mirror and equate ourselves to it. I have been wondering who will I be when I am no longer “fat”. I know I am many more things, but they are all so much more elusive. “Fat” is the thing that you can see as soon as I enter a room. It’s the stigma and the dismissive glances. The quite judging, the concerned comments. The mean ones.

I am the girl that got laughed out of a Pilates class by size 3 teenagers when I was in high school. I felt humiliated and ridiculous for having tried at all. I blamed myself. I am also the person that attracts furtive glances and little smirks at a buffet. I have been yelled at by passing cars and swallowed the anxious tears in the street. I am the cautionary tale of what some girls could look like if they don’t watch their carbs closely. But when did it become my identity? I am decidedly not what other people think of me. When did I start thinking so terribly of myself?

I keep wondering if “fat” is a metaphor for all the things I am that I cannot embrace. Twenty kilos lost and I still feel too big, too much, bursting at the seams. However, I can face it now, head a little clearer.
 
I think I can relate. I too am very self conscious most of the time. Losing some of my excess weight has helped me understand much of that shame is internal. However, I internalized it because hearing the same thing from everyone, all the time, makes it a truth in your mind. I hope you can feel better soon. :)
 
When I first joined this group a member said being a "fat girl" was as much a part of who she was as her eye color. I felt that to my SOUL!! To hear you say it brings it all back.

There is a lot of work to be done to become healthy. I was very surprised by how much of it is mental. For me, it turned out it wasn't just my relationship with food. It was also my relationship with me. And my family. And my world. I tried therapy. I wasn't feeling the therapist. She wanted to tell me my issues without listening. (We had similar situations with our older parents and had made very different choices. She believed hers was the only correct one.)

My regular doctor just gave me anti anxiety meds lol However, they help. They allow my mind to slow enough to actually think, instead of react. So, instead of saying to myself "Oh My God you fat loser, you gained 2 pounds!!" I can say "What a fun weekend. But, those margaritas sure did have a lot of calories. Guess I'll do an extra gym day this week to burn it off!" And that's it. I didn't drown a puppy. I'm not ruining my surgery, failing my self etc etc etc. ( all the negative deal we tell ourselves) I am okay.

You may not need meds or therapy. But you WILL have too find a way to accept that you're not a failure of a human being and find ways to be kind to yourself . My thing is I (try) not to say things to or about myself that I would not say to someone else I love. It doesn't always work. But I have developed the habit of reminding myself that I would not say that to insert loved one's name here. It might be a place to start.
 
You might be experiencing Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I imagine your mental health professional has already talked to you about this.

My mom had OCD and she had 8 kids and an unfaithful husband who had a traveling job, so he definitely got a lot of nookie traveling from Seattle to St. Paul, Minnesota. They had known each other from birth, as their families went to the same church and every Sunday included a big family dinner and socializing. I have 17 pair of aunts/uncles and 70 first cousins. There was constant criticism in the family because of our religion, which considered good self-esteem with vanity and sin. Not a day went by that Mom didn't hit me and tell me I was ugly (I wasn't).

And that is the recipe for shame. I remember being in therapy and the shrink said, "Guilt is about what I do. Shame is about who I am." Wow. That hit me hard.

The trick here is to STOP LISTENING TO OTHERS. In 12-step groups they say, "Don't let anyone take your inventory." What a powerful statement. You say you're "self-conscious," but that's not true. You've been brainwashed, usually by others who are jealous of you. And you're right. Shame IS internal.

You can heal yourself by taking control over the lies they're telling you. It doesn't matter if you're a size 5 or size 50. You're the one driving the bus. So kick those hitchhikers off and change the message.

The best way I know to do this is to practice affirmations. Affirm, don't negate. When that negative thought comes into your mind, like you're just not good enough, STOP it and say the opposite. I always recommend this book, The Only Diet There Is by Sondra Ray. It's a diet... from negative thinking. It's absolutely miraculous. And it's online in PDF so you don't even have to buy it.

I'm forever baffled that people are so often anxious to have a family with sweet little babies and meals around the table, only to have screaming fights for dessert.

I don't know you, but I know from reading your words that you are a beautiful person. And here you are in this group, telling your story so you can help others feel better. Thank you for your support. You may have helped hundreds, even thousands of people with your words, because we are more alike than we are different.

Here's a link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...usg=AOvVaw0P1OEXKveYEYylA9d-lGix&opi=89978449

5654


Thank you for being here and giving us all something to think about. You're awesome.
 
missyinacage said:
When I first joined this group a member said being a "fat girl" was as much a part of who she was as her eye color. I felt that to my SOUL!! To hear you say it brings it all back.

There is a lot of work to be done to become healthy. I was very surprised by how much of it is mental. For me, it turned out it wasn't just my relationship with food. It was also my relationship with me. And my family. And my world. I tried therapy. I wasn't feeling the therapist. She wanted to tell me my issues without listening. (We had similar situations with our older parents and had made very different choices. She believed hers was the only correct one.)

My regular doctor just gave me anti anxiety meds lol However, they help. They allow my mind to slow enough to actually think, instead of react. So, instead of saying to myself "Oh My God you fat loser, you gained 2 pounds!!" I can say "What a fun weekend. But, those margaritas sure did have a lot of calories. Guess I'll do an extra gym day this week to burn it off!" And that's it. I didn't drown a puppy. I'm not ruining my surgery, failing my self etc etc etc. ( all the negative deal we tell ourselves) I am okay.

You may not need meds or therapy. But you WILL have too find a way to accept that you're not a failure of a human being and find ways to be kind to yourself . My thing is I (try) not to say things to or about myself that I would not say to someone else I love. It doesn't always work. But I have developed the habit of reminding myself that I would not say that to insert loved one's name here. It might be a place to start.
Click to expand...
Hello!

I agree. When I first started the preop diet, I was surprised to actually see how my mind craves food. One of the most interesting things I’ve discovered about myself in this period is that it’s much easier to resist hunger than cravings, because cravings have such a strong emotional element to them. I was hungry, yes, but I was also starved of the comfort food had provided for such a long time. I don’t know if that is why they call emotional hunger. To me, it felt like existential comfort.

Food addiction is a funny thing, because we actually need food to survive, so we cannot quit it. We need to constantly monitor our responses to our drug, and second guess our impulses. We have to always ask ourselves wether or not we are actually hungry. We have to live with it every day, several times a day, in fact.

When I was a child, my grandmother would cook my favorite breakfast every day before I went to school. Those are memories I hold very close to my heart. Her cooking tasted like love. Food felt like care. Now that she’s gone, I remember her recipes. We didn’t have much in common, but we both loved each other. Food was a language we could speak among ourselves. Looking back, a lot of the best moments of my childhood involved food.

My mother, on the other hand, was a brutal kind of love, because she had a brutal kind of life. She used to be the kind of woman that gets asked for her number several times a day. Beautiful and an overachiever. Then she got married to an abusive man with drug addiction, and started gaining weight. We both started to become overweight around the same time, and she was angry at us both for it. Nothing ever looked good on me. I was such a wasted pretty face, in her words. A common criticism I heard during those years, by family and strangers alike, was how unfortunate it was that I focused so much on books. I needed to cultivate my looks too, they said. I should strive to be beautiful. I needed to be thin to be beautiful. How could I ever be happy if I didn’t grow up? I wondered what growing up meant. Turns out, it meant actively looking for marriage. I was told I needed a career and financial independence, but I was also told I needed to be thin to be worthy of being looked at.

And while I never grew up according to their standards, I did remember my body was something I should be ashamed of. I did remember I would rather be invisible than repulsive. I held on to my books and my financial independence, but I wanted to be looked at as if I was worthy.

Perhaps it’s ridiculous to say it now, but I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to feel like I didn’t need to justify my body, like I shouldn’t be sorry to exist. That is still me. I still look at myself and stare at everything that is not how it should be. I was a fat girl, a fat teenager and a fat woman. I grew up assuming I would always be the one no one would chose. I was defective, damaged, unseemly.

It took a lot of effort to realize I didn’t want to carry all of that. I did this because I needed to save myself, and in doing so I have had to sit down with the child and teenager I once was, see their wounds and forgive myself for all the cruelty. I need to remind myself that, no matter what my weight is, this is the body that has carried me through the years. This is the same body I resented. The body I am trying to heal.
 
dianeseattle said:
You might be experiencing Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I imagine your mental health professional has already talked to you about this.

My mom had OCD and she had 8 kids and an unfaithful husband who had a traveling job, so he definitely got a lot of nookie traveling from Seattle to St. Paul, Minnesota. They had known each other from birth, as their families went to the same church and every Sunday included a big family dinner and socializing. I have 17 pair of aunts/uncles and 70 first cousins. There was constant criticism in the family because of our religion, which considered good self-esteem with vanity and sin. Not a day went by that Mom didn't hit me and tell me I was ugly (I wasn't).

And that is the recipe for shame. I remember being in therapy and the shrink said, "Guilt is about what I do. Shame is about who I am." Wow. That hit me hard.

The trick here is to STOP LISTENING TO OTHERS. In 12-step groups they say, "Don't let anyone take your inventory." What a powerful statement. You say you're "self-conscious," but that's not true. You've been brainwashed, usually by others who are jealous of you. And you're right. Shame IS internal.

You can heal yourself by taking control over the lies they're telling you. It doesn't matter if you're a size 5 or size 50. You're the one driving the bus. So kick those hitchhikers off and change the message.

The best way I know to do this is to practice affirmations. Affirm, don't negate. When that negative thought comes into your mind, like you're just not good enough, STOP it and say the opposite. I always recommend this book, The Only Diet There Is by Sondra Ray. It's a diet... from negative thinking. It's absolutely miraculous. And it's online in PDF so you don't even have to buy it.

I'm forever baffled that people are so often anxious to have a family with sweet little babies and meals around the table, only to have screaming fights for dessert.

I don't know you, but I know from reading your words that you are a beautiful person. And here you are in this group, telling your story so you can help others feel better. Thank you for your support. You may have helped hundreds, even thousands of people with your words, because we are more alike than we are different.

Here's a link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjWgOGgkr-AAxVyJ30KHZ0-AIoQFnoECA4QAQ&url=https://archive.org/details/onlydietthereis00raysrich&usg=AOvVaw0P1OEXKveYEYylA9d-lGix&opi=89978449

View attachment 5654

Thank you for being here and giving us all something to think about. You're awesome.
Click to expand...
Hello Diane,

Thank you so much for your kindness. I have seen one of your posts with that book and I read it. It is healing.

Reading life stories of people with similar struggles helps me to understand myself a little better. As I have understood it so far, each and every one of our bodies holds our past and our wounds. Thank you for sharing yours with me. Family and religion are some of the things that will define how we look at the world for the rest of our life. I am sorry you had to grow up with so much violence and shame. I am also very glad you have done so much for your own healing. I admire it.

It really is never about willpower, is it? It’s about the way we were taught from an early age to relate to ourselves, and unlearning what once was perceived as a fundamental truth is a life long struggle. By trying to understand others, I have started to show some kindness to myself too. What is true for everyone else must be true for me too. It’s not that I am weak or unworthy.

Weight loss surgery is not an easy way out, because there is no easy way out. It’s about self discipline, of course, but it’s much more about actually loving who we are. We cannot succeed in any way that matters if we look at food as an enemy and constant hunger as a honor. We should stop punishing ourselves.

Each and every one of us had a different reason for taking this step, though we all say the same: we want to be healthy. How we define health is what matters. Health is not size, nor weight. Thinness is not an ideal on itself. What does “health” mean, when we say it? When would we consider ourselves healthy enough? Is weight regain a personal failure? Is it a symptom of something else? Do we need to keep a detailed log of every single calorie or is that an obsession?

Are we allowed to enjoy food again? Why does it scare us? Why does eating feel like a sin? Everyone is so scared of eating too much, of plateaus, of falling off the right track. I want to understand.

I want to remember that my grandmother’s cooking was her way of saying “I love you” and to eat the things she used to make without feeling like I am cheating. I want to believe I can like food and trust myself to build a healthy relationship with it. I want to trust myself to be responsible and caring. I want to allow an indulgence and realize it is not a relapse. I want to stop looking at the scale and letting the number dictate how I will feel about myself that day. I want to do this because I actually want to undo the damage made. I want to be glad to be alive. I want to want to live.
 
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