At the End of My Learning Curve

November 30, 2009

When I was 325 pounds I grew fairly irked listening to people on the other side of weight loss telling me that losing their weight had been easy compared to keeping the weight off once they reached their goal.

I am of course equally irked to learn at this point in my life that they were right all along.

The past couple months have been uncharted territory for me and more than a little complicated around issues of weight loss, body image, and adopting a lifestyle that includes a sustainable activity level and satisfying plan of eating that will allow me to maintain my weight and lead me into my golden years.

Here are the stats. I set my original goal weight at the first of this year at 160-165 pounds. I weighted 217 at the time. I reached 165 when I had my first surgery to remove some of the excess skin I’d accumulated over the years. Following my second surgery about two months later my weight had reached 147 (for about an hour and 15 minutes) but then tenuously balanced off around 152.

Now, this word tenuously is important because while it’s normal for body weight to fluctuate between a 3-4 pound range, my weight can leap anywhere from 3-6 pounds overnight. I don’t even need to eat a quart of ice cream or a large pizza with extra cheese to do it. It literally just takes a little more salt or fat or rounding up my portions of my usual food plan and my weight will bounce up like a Wham-O Super Ball. I’d love to tell you that my weight bounces back down just as effortlessly but then I’d be creating a work of fiction rather than reporting on the facts. Instead it takes not only paring back down to a bare bones food plan but kicking up my normal activity level to have it drop back down again.  People who don’t know me might think I’m making this up; that I’m eating more than I realize or making poor food choices that are dense in fat and calories but that’s not the case. There’s no question as my blog attests, I’m a full-blown foodie at heart. I appreciate food and I love cooking and baking. I thoroughly enjoy pouring over cookbooks and creating a beautiful meal or baking something ridiculously decadent but when I’m whipping up the baked goods and other gooey wonders, except for a bite or a taste, they all go out the door to church or to my eager neighbors or are tossed into a shipping box headed to family or friends.

A month ago I weighed in at the medical clinic (where I go every week to attend my follow-up maintenance meetings) on a Wednesday afternoon at 153 which I held for a couple days. That Saturday D and I went out for dinner at The Slanted Door, a most excellent Thai restaurant at the Ferry Building in San Francisco where I ate too much of a good thing and by good thing I mean the menu leaned heavily toward vegetables and low-fat protein sources. If memory serves me, which it seldom does, I don’t remember whether I had dessert or not but looking at their online menu nothing stands out as familiar so I’m hazarding a guess that I passed. Passing on desert is my default. But as I said, I ate more than I normally do with my indulgance in white rice and some other off my normal food chart ingredients like eggplant cooked in coconut milk and caramelized tiger prawns. The next morning I weighed in at 160 (7 pounds overnight) and have held steady at that weight through this morning. And as a side note, while others might be having their annual Thanksgiving meal over-stuffed regrets, I’m okay with how I handled the meal we had at Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino. I had a diver scallop appetizer, two ounces of turkey (hold the gravey), a half-cup of brussel sprouts, one single bite of each other item served on my plate, and for a rare happening I admittedly didn’t pass on dessert.

It comes back again to a fact I’ve resisted accepting. I’ve blogged about having a survivor’s type metabolism; an explanation given to me by a doctor with more than 30 years of experience with bariatric patients when explaining how my weight held numerous times for 2-3 weeks in a row with no weight loss while on the liquid fast causing me to lose weight at a much slower rate than most other patients. My body tends to grab onto calories with a tight fist and then refuses to let go without a rigid food plan and stepping up physical activity. Is there a hereditary factor involved? Is it a consequences of 30 years of extreme dieting and equally extreme overeating? Does it happen when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars? Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. All I can tell you is that while I’m not particularly happy about things being this way, I’ve come to learn this is what is and I can either accept and adapt accordingly or continue to ignore the evidence and go all delusional which is going to ultimately lead to some miserably tight pants.

So here I am at 160 at the low end of my original weight loss goal but at up 8-13 pounds from where I was a couple months ago at the end of the fast and surgeries. I have a whole world of body image issues that are going on in my head that are making it extremely difficult for me to decide what weight is right for me and where I can be with my body and be satisfied. That’s too big of a discussion for this long enough already post but I’ll be blogging more about it in the coming days because body image is something we don’t talk enough about when talking about obesity or weight loss. I just know that to maintain any particular weight on the scale, I’m going to have to accept how my body responds to nutritional fuel and eat accordingly. I’ve taken a couple months to find my way around with the food and now the time has come to return to a clearly defined plan of eating….and for anyone interested, if anyone is still with me, I’ll spell that in detail tomorrow.

And just so you know, I’m being totally honest and out there with all this. I tend to not soften the edges much or paint the picture in unrealistic colors. Instead it’s about keeping it real both for myself and for anyone who might find themselves struggling with similar issues or celebrating similar successes in the future.

Posted in Body Image, Health and Nutrition, Liquid Fast, Reconstructive Surgery, Weight Loss