I haven't necessarily had
the easiest time with the decision or the required steps that needed
to be taken to get to the point I am right now. I struggled A LOT
with telling the people I am close to. I still haven't necessarily
told everyone, just the people I felt had to know that I was doing
this. In terms of telling people I have definitely felt the weight
(no pun intended) of telling people on my shoulders. I have anxiety,
pretty bad, and I struggled with getting anxious anytime someone
would even look like they would be mentioning my impending surgery.
It was like this secret that I wanted to keep to myself because I was
honestly terrified of what people were going to think and say about
the fact that I was having the surgery done.
I decided on the Gastric
Sleeve surgery. It involves getting your stomach stapled so that it
looks like a sleeve. It will hold about 4 oz after surgery and I have
lovingly named it “Stitch”. You know, because my stomach will be
stitched back together? I thought it was funny and it gave a little
bit of comic relief which made it easier to talk about with people.
I think the hardest part
besides telling people has been this diet though. It starts 3 weeks
prior to surgery (I know that it's different for different programs,
but I'm going to be talking about mine because it is the only one I
have experienced.) It really feels like a challenge. For the program
I am in, I had to take 6 nutrition classes before getting approved
for surgery and they tell you about the pre op diet and the post op
diets, but none of those classes really prepared me for what it was
actually going to be like. This is what my diet looks like.
On day 1 in the morning I
was motivated and felt like I could do it. Then the day started to go
on. I should also mention that for some reason my dumb ass decided
that I would be fine doing all of this during finals for college,
wrong choice to start off. I was home alone on my first day of the
diet and all I could think about was food. Food I wanted, food I
didn't have before starting the diet, food I couldn't have on the
diet, what little food I could have on the diet, and the foods I
wanted after surgery. It was literally all consuming. I already
started hating the protein shakes I have to drink (three a day for 3
weeks). Then my mother and her boyfriend came over for dinner, and I
knew they were trying to be supportive, but all I could think was
that they were fine with dinner because they knew they could go and
eat whatever once they got home. I don't think I have ever been so
hangry in my life.
Then on day two, I stood
corrected. I was home again. Alone again. And food was literally
consuming my thought for the entire day. I cried at one point to be
perfectly honest because I was tired from studying and working on my
final projects and I was tired from the fact that my body was
detoxing from all of the crap that I had filled my body with for
years. It felt like too much for me to handle in a single day. I knew
I had people that I could talk to about it had I wanted to, but to be
honest, I was embarrassed. I have so many people telling me how they
know I'll be fine and they know that I'll get through it and for a
little bit I resented that. I resented that I had so much support,
which sound stupid to be quite frank, but I felt bad because I felt
like giving up and I knew I couldn't because so many people were
looking at me to succeed.
Day 3 was easier luckily. I
got over that feeling of misplaced resentment and got on with my life
and with my diet. I had a final critique (I'm in art school so for
some finals it isn't a test it's handing in a piece of art that your
professor gives feedback on) and it gave me something to do and
somewhere to be other than my house looking in the kitchen where
there was very little to be found. Also at this point I had texted my
godmother (whom had Gastric Bypass a little over a year ago and was
on the same 3 week diet) and asked her how she had gotten through it.
Her response was: sugar free popsicles. I had the popsicles sitting
in my freezer from when I went grocery shopping prior to the start of
diet. But I had never really been a popsicle person. Until now. Those
stupid popsicles have been a life saver. I have eaten more of those
sugar free popsicles in the last few days than I have in the last
year or 2. It is so funny how things change once you are required to
change your way of living.
Day 4 came with a bump in
the road. Every semester the printmaking department at the art school
I attend has a shop clean up day with a party that follows. The
problem was not the cleaning of the studio spaces, the problem was
the food table filled with things that I couldn't eat during the
party portion of the day. Oh my great giddy aunt was I having an
issue with being there. It was also coupled with the fact that one of
my favorite professors isn't coming back in the fall and this was her
last clean up with us. So everyone was super sad and I have a hard
time not getting emotional and crying when I see other people crying.
And when I cry I want to eat because food used to make everything
better, in theory. I ended up just having to leave because between
the crying people and the food I couldn't handle being there.
Day 5 was a Saturday so my
mother was home. We luckily had to go do some running around because
we needed to get my grandmother a Mother's Day present and I was
taking my mom shopping for her present. I also had to run to my
school to pick up my final piece for my book arts class. The biggest
problem I had on this day was that I didn't anticipate being out as
long as we were. It wasn't like we could stop at a restaurant or go
through a drive thru because of this diet that I need to be on. My
mother was very understanding, but I was honestly on the verge of
tears because I felt sick I was so hungry. I had had two of my 3
allotted protein shakes already but we had been gone for over 6 hours
and they weren't keeping me full. All I had had were those protein
shakes. So what I learned on that day was that: no matter if you
think you'll be home soon or late always pack food because you don't
want to be stuck in a terrible mood and feeling sick because you
didn't prepare anything to take with you.
Day 6 was Mother's Day and I
felt like a terrible child. It seems funny to say that because I am
literally doing all of this to better myself and extend my life, but
I did. My mother gave up going to dinner because she knew that I
couldn't go. However, she did go out to dinner after her boyfriend
got out of work and I got upset because I couldn't go and it was
mother's day and I was jealous that they got to eat food that I
couldn't. It was weird to feel like that and to actually be upset
because other people were eating, but I was. And I felt super hungry
because of it, because all I could think about was what they were
eating. My moods and emotions are so dependent on food right now that
it makes me start to think about before I started this diet. I don't
remember being this addicted to food, but I guess that's the whole
problem, you don't realize your addiction until you have to look it
straight in the face.
So if you are going to be
going through weight loss surgery and someone tells you that it's the
“easy way out” you have my permission to tell them to fuck off.
This choice is nothing even close to easy. What is easy is going
about your life with eating habits that can kill you or saying
something stupid like “oh, they're taking the easy way out.”
This isn't easy but it will
all be worth it, remember that.
