Brain dump

Jun 30, 2014

I joined this forum and read a lot for several weeks before posting.  To all of you who unknowingly helped me get to the point I am right now - thank you!

I am a 52 year old, mother of four, grandmother of two, recently remarried woman who has been overweight/obese/morbidly obese for most of her life.  I'm sure many of you can relate.

One of the most vivid memories of my early school years was what my best friend in third grade wrote on the back of her little school picture when we swapped that year.  "To a fat girl who's really skinny inside."  I look back at my third grade picture and don't think I was fat.  Not at that age.  But it was what I heard from my friend and it was reinforced by my mother who put me on a diet that summer.  That started my lifelong love/hate relationship with food.  I was always either on a diet or eating everything in sight (the "I'm gonna eat whatever they don't want me to eat!" phases).  I yo-yo-ed up and down the scale.  Each time I was up after a considerable loss, it seemed to set a new "normal" point for my body.  In high school I was in the 190 range.  In college I lost and was about 170.  Then I got married and had my first son.  All of a sudden my new set point was 220.  Then it was 240 with my next son.  Then along came twins and I was at 260.

Then my body started to betray me.  I had had an accident as a young child that affected my structure.  This caused a lot of pain in my life starting as a teenager.  It's something I grew to live with and manage.  But, as I approached my 40's the structural issues caused damage to my hip joint to the point that I had bone-on-bone contact and excruciating pain.  It became a vicious cycle.  The more it hurt, the less I could do (even walking across the room was agony at the end), the less I could do, the easier the weight came on.  I had a total hip replacement when I was 43 and 295 lbs.

I lost some weight at that point as I started to resume a more normal level of activity.  I was restricted in what I could do since the surgeon wanted to preserve the hip as long as possible (they do wear out) and because my other hip was also degenerating to a degree.  Then the back arthritis hit.  I had injections and meds to help control that, but since I hate pain meds, I usually do without.  My weight continued to rise until I was over 300.  I knew I had to get it under control and went on Atkins.  That was by far the most successful I ever was in losing.  I got down to 247 and felt great.  In the middle of losing, I filed for divorce and still maintained losing through that stress.  I tend to not eat when stressed and have a much harder time when I'm happy.

A year later I met a wonderful man.  We were 1500 miles apart so I packed up, changed jobs, and moved.  Once moved, I was ecstatic - never happier in my life.  Oh oh.  Every meal felt like a celebration.  We explored lots of new restaurants, went out with new friends...a recipe for disaster for me.  I was happy eating.  All the pounds lost, came back.

We were married last October.  I wish I had been thinner of course, but I was so happy it didn't matter.

I started thinking about weight loss surgery shortly after, but didn't tell my husband right away.  Like most of my big decisions, it percolates in my brain a while until it's something that I can't stop thinking about.  I started researching and talking to a couple of people in my life that had already done it and then told him.  He asked where it was coming from.  He loves me no matter what.  I told him it was because of him. He was shocked...but I quickly explained.  

We found each other very late in our lives - both having been in long marriages previously.  Our kids are grown.  We're already grandparents.  We aren't going to have our 50th wedding anniversary (highly unlikely anyway).  I don't want to give back years of my life because I get sick or worse from being obese.  My family has a history of heart disease and diabetes.  I am lucky so far...but how long is that luck going to hold?  I don't want to lose one second of the time I have with this wonderful man by being side-lined or gone.

I have to stop the denial  "I'm healthy, so it's okay that I'm heavy."  I have to stop the procrastination "I'm young, it's okay."  (neither is true).  I have to stop the illusion "Nobody believes that I am this heavy because I can carry a lot of weight."  I have to stop.

On someone's blog (I'm sorry I can't recall now where or I would give credit) there was a post that has stuck with me.  I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially it was that there was a reason they were called "little old ladies".  It's because people that look like me don't make it to old age.

My goal?  To be a little old lady.

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