Thursday, February 11, 2010

"Times they are a changing" -Bob Dylan

I decided I wanted to blog about the things going on with me. I to often find myself thinking out loud and looking for someone or something to vent to .



Firstly, It has been 8 days since I had my surgery. I have to admit that the recovery for this laproscopic procedure has been quick (Not necessarily painless). It is all worth it I think. My father suffers from many problems relating back to his weight including the most horrible of all diabetes. I know that I don't want that to be me and that I would do about anything to make sure I don't follow in those footsteps. While my lapband is installed, it is not yet inflated with saline. Therefore, while my stomach heals, food can still fall in to the lower stomach where the digestive juices are waiting. In around 4 weeks, I will get my band inflated a little. If I still manage to have food slippage and thus hunger, I will have to go back and get more solution added to the band. This is sort of a trial and error system to find the sweet spot, the point where I can still eventually drop food to the lower stomach, but also have it sit in my stomach pouch long enough to release the chemical hormones that tell my brain I am full to the brim.



Once the sweet spot is established, I should see a significant drop in weight, that continues for years. I don't want to make a modest goal for myself like 200lbs. I want to be 170 or less. I want to be truly thin and truly healthy. I weigh myself everyday. I have a long way to go, but it is a journey I have taken before. I lost around 150 lbs towards the end of my senor year in high school (2002 Woodcreek), I joined the army when I lost my sense of direction. I wanted to be hero too, heck it all seemed like a good idea at the time. Sadly, I found it very hard to adapt to the harshness and grittiness that came with being an arctic soldier. I soon fell into depression, and despite running 5 miles a day for 3-4 days a week, I began to stuff myself in hopes subconsciously of filling the emptiness I felt inside. I went back to a bigger weight then where I started. I felt like a real failure. How could I let myself get fat once again. I began to realise that what I had wasn't an eating or self control problem. I began to see what I had as a disease, one that needed to be cured.



Sadly, there isn't a cure, but there are treatments. No matter how much weight I lose, the disease will be there still lingering, still waiting for the perfect opportunity it can sneak in and take control.



I don't want to be fat for 3 main reasons. The first being acceptance. It doesn't matter where I go, people respect fat people less. They are often seen as dumb or the walking dead, the disgusting, the losers with no self control, and often we are overlooked for a job, told we need to pay for an extra seat on the plane, or that we aren't "fit" for the role we are auditioning for, or simply too much of a risk to sky dive, or do anything fun for that matter. I walk into a restaurant and get an automatic audience of people who continually glance with smirks in my direction as I need. Rodney Dangerfield had an expression for this. I need not repeat it. The second reason not to be fat is health. Extra weight causes extra stress on organs and especially the heart. The heart has to pump harder to reach more surface area, making any physical activity enough to wind a big man. Also fat leads to Type 2 diabetes, which is slowly killing my father. That cannot and will not be me. I vow this. The 3rd reason to not be fat, is that the world is built for the small. Nobody likes to sit next to the fat dude in coach, who has squeezed into a chair that is small for a normal sized person. It is even more uncomfortable for that fat man. He doesn't really want to be all over the people next to him, nor no matter how bad he feels can he morph into a 150lb man. When you are skinny you can "fit in" literally. There is a 4th reason, unless you are from the Sudan or another remote starving 3rd world country, fat isn't sexy. And in order to prolong your genetic material one must procreate, and to do that attract a mate, and then be physically capable of mating. You can use your own imagination.

So I embark therefore on a journey. Not just a journey of struggle, as I try to become healthy, but a journey of self evaluation and reflection as I fight all the demons that lay buried in my psyche that perhaps put me in this predicament in the first place. I am very very blessed, to live in a country where food is available and cheap. I took advantage, and now it is time to be responsible. I am also blessed in the way of friends and family who are so willing to run in and help me walk when I feel like collapsing.

After 60lbs lost so far I am excited for the future.

....I will share more soon

3 comments:

  1. You are a winner. Keep it up.

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  2. 60 lbs in just a week? That's incredible !

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  3. 60 lbs overall. I lost 50 pre-surgery and lost 10 post surgery.

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