The (afternoon) diary of a food addict

1:19pm  I can do this.  Food should not cause panic.  Soup does not require crackers.  Summon memory of smashing crackers in a restaurant as a toddler as a way to keep busy while the parents tried to enjoy a meal.  (Bad crackers!  *fist pound*  Bad crackers!)

1:42pm  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to complete a thought if I keep having to get up and go to the bathroom - and I'm only halfway through my water consumption for the day.  I hope I can sleep tonight without getting up 5x to pee.

1:45pm  Ow, what is that headache?  Caffeine withdrawal?  Hunger?  Pee pain?

1:48pm  Now that I peed, I feel hungry again... and I think the soup spice is burning in my ears.

1:59pm  I hate Audrina Patridge.

2:04pm  No, I hate all celebrities who say dumb things and reinforce bad body images and poor eating habits - like Fergie, who said, "I don't have a perfect figure, but I'm working with what I've got."  I think her body is pretty damn perfect, nevermind the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect figure.  Shame on her for all the girls and women who will look at her and then feel bad about themselves because Fergie is gorgeous but makes herself sound disfigured and ugly.

2:19pm  Pee.

2:20pm  Just remembered that I have to work until 6pm today instead of my usual 5pm.  Should have gone out for an hour at lunchtime.  I work right across the street from the mall; I could have gone there!  No, the mall has food.  Where am I supposed to go - everywhere has food?  There is no place for me.

2:27pm  Wow, just realized I'm not hungry!  Wow!  Awesome!

2:28pm  Realizing this has made me hungry.  Grrr brain.

2:40pm  I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Just half of one.

3:00pm  Looking at my bracelet, I just realized this past March was my five year surgiversary.  I didn't even remember and definitely didn't have anything about it to celebrate.  That's bad - the five year marker is the biggee.  If you're good at five years, you're likely to be good for life.  Okay, so not yet for me.  Let's be happy on the six year surgiversary.

3:15pm  Pee.

3:16pm  I wish my brain would stop flashing pictures of cheese.

3:34pm  The iPod is playing "Everybody Hurts."  I want to make a sarcastic comment about the pain involved in a cheese and carb-free day, but the song is actually affecting me.  What I told Amy yesterday is so true: it's just not fair that some of us have to work this hard.  But we do it.

3:35pm  I need to start wearing waterproof mascara.

3:55pm  I'm almost out of water.  Oh crap.

3:57pm  Pee.

4:12pm  Suddenly FUCKING STARVING.  Stomach grumbling, mouth salivating, hungry.

4:14pm  Mm, soup.  I want to filter out all the barley and lentils and just eat them by themselves and pretend they're baked ziti.

4:28pm  I want a soft pretzel.  This might be the first time I'm glad there are no Wawa's around.

4:47pm  Doing okay.  Hunger and cravings are not an emergency.  Can wait for the next meal.  Feeling strangely powerful.

4:56pm  I feel like my brain has been turned on.  Good eating takes time, planning, and patience.  Duh.  I knew that!  Now I know it again.

Purpose - it's the fire under your ass.

Purpose. It's that little flame that lights a fire under your ass. Ha! Purpose. It keeps you going strong like a car with a full tank of gas. Everyone else has a purpose, so what's mine?

(Any Avenue Q fans out there?  Luuurve that show.) My dear friend Amy over at My Right To Dream is having gastric sleeve surgery today, which is a form of weight loss surgery (wls).  As I've mentioned before, I had gastric bypass surgery and, a year and a half later, corrective plastic surgery to remove loose skin (abdominoplasty) and complete a breast reduction/lift (most wls patients bemoan the loss of their boobs - nope, not me - I still had DDs, even after losing over a hundred pounds, lucky me). As can be expected with any major surgery, especially a life-changing one that someone is undergoing by choice, Amy is incredibly nervous and a bit scared.  WLS involves such a roller coaster of emotions - joy at being approved, depression and guilt and sadness and anger about needing the surgery in the first place, fear of failure, fear of success (because it changes everything in your life), and so much more.

I was at my lowest weight in September 2005, following my plastic surgery.  In the nearly four years since then, I have gained about 18 pounds per year, which I shouldn't have to point out is NOT GOOD.  Really not good.  Not good for anyone, but especially not good if you've had WLS.  This means you are defeating the surgery and "the tool" (i.e. the stomach pouch).  I got a scope done early last year to see if I had stretched out my pouch and it turned out that my pouch was perfect BUT that my stoma (the opening between my pouch and my intestines) had stretched and so food moved really quickly from my pouch into my intestines, leaving me hungry more quickly than it should.  In a fully working pouch, the food sits in there for a long time so you feel full for a while.  Immediately post-op, the stoma is the size of a pencil eraser.  I don't know how big mine is now, but it's definitely not small and apparently I would be eligible for stoma revision surgery, but that would involve doctors and bills and insurance approvals, blah blah blah.  I can't afford a dime of it right now if it's not covered 100%, so I haven't followed up on it. 

Instead, I'm going to work on this on my own. Amy's surgery today has lit a fire under my ass.  I was supposed to be a good example.  I was supposed to be a success story.  I was not supposed to become a raging snack addict.  I was not supposed to regain OVER SEVENTY POUNDS.  I'm not supposed to feel sad that my husband met me at my thinnest and most athletic and now has to live with a wife who continually gains weight, which makes her unhappy.  He continues to support me at any size and does not/would not care if I stayed my current size for life, but my unhappiness upsets and concerns him.

I spent over an hour on the phone with Amy yesterday, trying to calm her fears and reassure her that this will be wonderful.  One of the main points I wanted to make was that everything she'll go through is valid; all of her feelings and emotions and reactions are valid.  If she's mad that her husband can eat half a pizza and not care, that's fair.  It's not fair that some of us have to work better at maintaining a healthy lifestyle than others and it's fair to say that.  All's fair in food and weight.  I was told that it was "stupid" to miss food or pigging out and that people with food addictions had the real problems and that anyone who cried over missing food was laughable - so I cried in secret and became ashamed.  I know this is a part of my current food issues.

After my plastic surgery, my mother bought me a bracelet to commemorate the occasion (my apologies for the cheesy camera phone pic):

The idea was that the engraved dates are my birthday and my rebirthdays.  My WLS and plastics dates were my rebirth.  It was almost like a do-over.  I got to be me again (or, really, for the first time) - the me that I thought I could be but felt I couldn't be because of my weight. I haven't been able to wear the bracelet for a long time because I was ashamed of no longer meeting the criteria that the bracelet represented.  When I took it out today, it was tarnished because I haven't worn it or even touched it for so long.  So I buffed and polished it and put it on my wrist.  There are spots of tarnish I couldn't buff out, but that's okay.  I have spots of tarnish I will never buff out. 

This bracelet represents my goal.  I need to get back to the me of those rebirthdays.  I will continue to wear the bracelet as a reminder of what I am trying to achieve for myself. So today I have started the 5 Day Pouch Test.  So far today I had a coffee protein shake for breakfast (minus the cocoa because I didn't have any at home), a yogurt (which is off-plan but I didn't want it to go to waste), and am about to dig into some lentil and barley soup for lunch.. which I will also have as a snack... and as dinner... and repeat tomorrow.  So far I'm feeling okay, though.  No snacking anxiety yet (although that always tends to come later in the day) and really not any hunger pangs, surprisingly.  They suggest you cut caffeine, but can have one cup if cutting it completely will throw you into withdrawal, so I put one cup of coffee in my shake this morning.  There was no way I was going without coffee.  But other than that, I have just been sip-sip-sipping my water and I'm even going back to the "no drinking 30 minutes before or after meals" post-op rule.  If one of my problems is an open stoma that lets food slide through easily, then I need to make sure I don't make my meals into a slurry that leaves me hungry soon thereafter.  Not drinking while I eat is really difficult for me, and will be since I made my soup really spicy (I didn't have all of the spices the recipe called for so I just winged it and I think I over chili peppered it).  I'm also trying to eat more mindfully - slowly, thinking about what I'm eating.  My whole life, I've read while I ate and now I often watch TV and/or read online while I eat, so I'm not paying attention to how much I eat or how it tastes or, probably, when I'm full.  I've been living in fear of food and I can't do it any longer. So my purpose is to help Amy succeed and to drag myself back on the road to success.  My failures can be some of her keys to success.  I can take all that I've learned and help my dear friend avoid the same mistakes.  My failure will not be for nothing.  I can help her and I can help myself not do it all again.

I don't know how I know, but I'm gonna find my purpose. I don't know where I'm gonna look, but I'm gonna find my purpose.

5 Things That Make Me Sad

In no particular order...

1. The Arkansas law that makes it illegal for gay and unmarried couples to adopt or become foster parents (NY Times article).

2. Ann Coulter.

3. The press felt the need to report on the backpack that Sasha Obama carried on her first day of school at Sidwell.  Reporting on their first day of school is okay, but detailing what they wore is so highly unnecessary and possibly detrimental.  I don't want these two young girls to spend the next four (hopefully eight) years having their every possession detailed and analyzed.  (Thank goodness for the details, though - I feel SO  much better about national security knowing that the President-Elect was wearing a "pressed white shirt" and "black wristwatch"... and, what, Malia and Obama were spotted "smiling"??  Hurrah!  Happiness must be "in"!)

4. As I best understand it, sometimes cancer medication is given in a dose intended for a person's "ideal" weight instead of their actual weight.  This then skews cancer survival rates because, obviously, if fat people aren't given meds appropriate to their weight, they have less of a chance to live.  I can scarcely believe that this even happens. (Salon.com article by the awesome Kate Harding).

5. Anything Ricky Gervais has to say about being fat (Huffington Post).  Fat is not a choice like hair color is a choice.  I will freely rip into someone (in my mind, to myself) about a bad hair color (okay, and maybe I'd say something to my husband if he's nearby) but in the end I would also applaud their ability to do what they want with what nature gave them.  When someone gets bad plastic surgery, I feel bad that they felt they had to alter their appearance to fit some kind of created ideal.  When someone has corrective surgery, I do NOT feel bad.  Wanting to feel normal is not bad.  Wanting to feel like you can blend in is not bad.  Some people will choose to try and blend in by losing weight.  Others will try to make the crowd accommodate them (cheers to the fat acceptance community).

Gervais said, "I heard someone on the radio once say that they were tired of the prejudice aimed at the overweight. They said something like 'you're not allowed to make fun of gay people, so why are you allowed to make fun of fat people? It's the same thing.' It's not the same thing though, is it? Gay people are born that way. They didn't work at becoming gay. Fat people became fat because they would rather be that way than stop eating so much. They had to eat and eat to get fat."

We all have to eat and eat; it's a key part to survival.  I can't stop eating any more than a gay male could stop liking other guys.  Yes, I can work at monitoring what I eat and the amount of physical activity I do and work to avoid OVEReating, but to say that the key to stopping being fat is as simple as putting down a burger and going for a run is ridiculous and insulting.  Why was I fat at five years old?  My parents were certainly aware of my health and our family history so they were careful with my food intake and I wasn't tall enough to reach my own food, so I clearly wasn't "eating and eating".  Just like some people are born gay, some people are born (to be) fat.  It makes me SO very sad that certain aspects of human life need to be "proved" by genetics before it becomes acceptable.  "Oh, you were born gay?  Well, nevermind trying to change you, then."  Maybe YOU, Mr. Gervais, are overweight because you eat too much and sit on the sofa, but it's a pretty elementary idea that you can't take all of the circumstances from your life and apply them to humankind overall.  Simply wanting something isn't always enough.  Yes, we can always try harder to "put down the burger and go for a run" but that will never be enough for some people.  It's a shame that you only have your own self-hatred to turn into a comedy routine.

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin

NaBloPoMo's theme for January is change.  The reasons for this are obvious - New Year's resolutions and all.  I'm sure there are millions of bloggers trudging their way through the ways they will improve themselves this year.  I have mixed feelings about New Year's resolutions.  I feel that some of those who rail against them doth protest too much and fear failing.  Others, I believe, are lazy.  Others, possibly, feel they don't need to consciously improve themselves.  Kudos to them, I suppose (although I would be highly sceptical of anyone who did not feel they could improve in several ways).

Change isn't easy.  Nearly five years ago, I underwent a significant change: I had gastric bypass surgery (laparoscopic RNY for those in the know) and the changes it forces have not been easy.  Even the parts one would think would be easy weren't always.  For example, shopping - one might think it'd be such an extreme joy to go shopping after losing a significant amount of weight, say 60 or 70 lbs (I believe that's about how much I lost when this occurred).  What I found was that shopping, previously an activity that I enjoyed immensely, had become trying and taxing.  I no longer intuitively knew the dimensions of my body and clothing shapes that were previously flattering (or at least acceptable) now hung in the wrong places and clung in other wrong places.  I wandered around the store incredibly frustrated and unhappy, nearly in tears because the picture I had of the perfect shopping trip was disintegrating further with every article of clothing I tried on.

Skip ahead to today, where I still struggle with this because after losing approximately 115 pounds, I have regained 60.  That is not a small failure.  It's not ten pounds, not twenty pounds.  It's not the grad school version of the "freshman 15" or too many holiday cookies.  It is a failure to change.  I HAD changed - I went to the gym for 1-3 hours at a time four or five days a week, usually (and definitely never less than three).  I followed the wls (weight loss surgery) diet of eating protein forward and avoiding most carbs, sweets, and fats.

Then my life changed and these changes were left behind.  I moved for grad school, stopped working out, stopped following the wls diet, started letting myself eat less-smart food choices, started a terrible habit of snacking often, and lived an entirely sedentary lifestyle.  What makes this harder is knowing every day that my husband did not marry the woman he met.  We met in 2005 when I was at my thinnest and healthiest and while I know he loves me more now than he ever did before (because it seems we love each other more every day), it hurts me to feel like I didn't keep up my end of some kind of bargain - a bargain I made with myself, my surgeons, and my future.  I promised myself that if I was given this awesome opportunity, I would do my best to succeed - and I have not done that.

There's a great article in the NY Times today about why people's attempts to change fail more than half the time.  The main point I take away from it is that we're not hard-wired to accept change quickly and that "the only thing that convinces the brain that it is O.K. to change is to see it change" (Dr. Marion Kramer Jacobs, clinical psychologist).  Well, I've seen myself succeed at this before.  So, hopefully, I will see myself succeed at this again.