I was pretty balls to the walls about not stopping too much of anything at this point. Obviously, I wasn’t ready. The surgery had much bigger ramifications than I was expecting and it truly was going to have to be a lifestyle change on MANY levels, not just my eating habits but overall health – something that I have neglected most of my life. I always put myself last, for whatever reason. Maybe subconsciously deep down in the most intricate part of my brain I had convinced myself that it wasn’t possible, and this was just my life. Yes, of course, I wanted to get my weight off, but I had no damn idea how I was going to do it. Nothing works without a plan I tell you.
I was continuing my bi-weekly phone calls with my phone coach. Most of the things we covered were in the workbook. Slowly, I started coming around to the idea that changes were necessary and let me tell you; they were baby steps. This was also the time I was trying to make an honest effort to slow down the coffee drinking. Coffee is my drink of choice most of the day. I had to learn how to replace a lot of my coffee in the afternoons with water. This was good first step anyways. I ultimately knew I would need to get it down to 1 cup a day which was a huge deal for me.
In late March I would have my first appointment with the Dietician and also my first appointment with the psychotherapist. My first meeting with the Dietician didn’t go very well. Her solution was to put me on weight loss pills. SCREW THAT. If I was going to lose weight before surgery, it was going to be on my terms through juicing or holistic methods. This didn’t go over well. I strongly dislike this opinion in the medical community that pills are the answer to everything. More pills, pills, pills, pills, pills, pills. I had to strip down practically naked while she looked at every part of my body. She finally agreed to let me lose weight on my own, but you could tell she was a bit miffed.
The point of meeting with a psychotherapist is to determine whether you are mentally fit to go through surgery and that you are cognizant of the risks and are willing to make the necessary lifestyle changes. It’s up to them to rate you on a predetermined scale. At the end of the three meetings and the 600 question test that you need to take you either get a green flag or a red flag. A red flag does not mean that you cannot continue, it just means that there might be more required sessions or other conditions. It was her job to listen primarily to my story. I had to tell her about everything major that had happened in my life and determine why I got where I did and if I would make a good candidate. Since the surgery for me came more out of medical necessity, from my legs, her initial concern was that I was fighting the process. It wasn’t going to be successful if I fought it and after the first session with her, I knew that. I had to get myself to a place where I accepted this was necessary and that it was going to make my life better.
I struggled with the part about “making my life better”. If you’ve never lived as a thin person, you don’t know what better feels like. My whole life consisted of pain, dirty looks, humiliation, embarrassment, and frustration. It pressed down on my brain and body my entire life so It was very hard for me to “feel” or envision what DIFFERENT would look like. That “different” to me was scary. She sent me home with an explicit assignment to work on this part. I didn’t really know what to do with it, so I took it to my regular therapist.
She told me, “Bean, somewhere deep down inside you believe you deserve to be fat. You don’t care about yourself enough”. Ouch… this was a harsh reality, but I couldn’t deny the facts. She was right. My assignment was to reconcile the girl way back when who had to defend herself in every way imaginable. I had to change all of those thoughts… somehow. You aren’t just breaking a bad habit; you are having to go back and rewrite your self-talk since childhood. {{laughing}}. Ugg. How to do that? So she gave me an easier job; visualize all the things that I would get to do. I was to focus less on trying to re-wire the old, and re-wire with new. Loving yourself means that you love yourself as much as you love others, and it was evident this was not the case, and it had never been.
A higher love was something I needed to find before surgery. A love I never had to give…. Self-love. Society teaches us that our worth is found in the idols of our culture—technology, status, youth, sex, power, money, attractiveness, and romantic relationships.
I needed full surrender and the ability to OWN my potential. I had much work to do.
Bean there?
