Letting go

One surprising effect of the gastric bypass surgery I had nearly 9 months ago is the fact that through the imposed restrictions, I enjoy a newfound freedom.  You see, after you have this type of surgery, your stomach is very significantly reduced to restrict the amount of food you can ingest, thus leading to weight loss.  This has been the case for me.  The surgery is working extremelly well for me so far.  But before the surgery, I thought it would be hard to not eat as much as I'd want or not eat what I'd like and it sometimes is.  However, in my case, there's a bit of a catch in the sense that the surgery kind of works despite me.  I'll admit that I eat mostly well.  I've always had a very varied diet but a very strong preference for very rich, fatty foods and lots of it.  Now, with the surgery, I can't eat lots of it even though I sometimes intend to.  And with the dumping syndrome that comes with the gastric bypass surgery, my tastes are changing, and I don't enjoy and like the same rich and fatty foods anymore because they tend to make me feel queasy. 

The consequence of all of this is that more often than not, sticking to "how much and what I'm supposed to eat" is not that hard.  So the surgery allowed me to stop constantly worrying about what and how much I should be eating because I pretty much eat what and how much I want whenever I feel like it and I'm still losing weight.  So I'm guessing that I must be doing something right.  I should mention that I also exercise everyday by talking a 30 minutes walk with my dog.  But still, I've finally been able to let go of the conscious and mental control of my eating to focus on eating how much I need and what I want.  You have no idea how liberating this feels.  I still have worries about eating the wrong stuff and/or too much of it and I'm guessing that time will make it better although I don't think it'll ever go away completely.  However, I can feel my troubled eating days being further and further behind me and it feels amazing!!

Stuck between reality and a fat place a.k.a. thinking fat

So as you know if you've read my previous posts or the stats I provide on this blog, I lost a great deal of weight through gastric bypass surgery, more than 130 lbs to be precise.  I'm very happy to say that for the first time since I can remember, I now weigh less than 200 pounds - yeah me!!!  The thing is, even though my body is very different, I still think like the very fat person I was before the surgery.  And let me explain what I mean.  It's like most of the limitations that I had before because of my weight are now gone.  I can climb stairs, run, walk fast and/or for long periods of time, fit my ass into every armchair I come accross, bend to tie my shoes, cross my legs, give myself pedicures and the list goes on and on and on and on...  BUT, in my head, I'm still in a very "fat place", which means that often, I notice that I will react as if I'm still over 330 lbs, especially when faced with something that would have been challenging or even impossible because of my weight.  Which made me realize the full extent of the limitations I had to live with at my highest weight.  I never noticed them until they were long gone, and I'm still noticing new ones everyday.  But going back to what I was saying, I feel like I'm stuck between reality and a very fat place because I haven't yet realized that I'm no longer limited by my weight.  For example, when I go shopping, it took me a long time before I realized that I no longer needed to shop in the plus size section and can now fit in regular sizes from head to toe.  Hey, I even have to go down from XL to L and I'm thinking probably M now when I buy tops.  Can you imagine!!!  Before, sizes 3XL and 24-26 were becoming too tight...  What a change!  But my mind is not keeping up with my body's changes.  Another example would be with physical activity.  My BF and I recently went to NYC for Easter week-end.  I took us little to no time at all to realize that the best way to discover NY is by walking.  And upon coming to this realization, I could feel the dread of having to walk long distances or for sustained periods of time overcoming me.  But guess what?  I had the stamina to keep up with my relatively fit and not-obese-but-slightly-overweight BF.  More than that, he was the one who couldn't keep up with me!!!  I outwalked him.  Hey, I outwalked someone!!!  Now that's a first!!!  Literally.  Never happened before, in my life, like ever-ever.  Very awsome!  But this is quite a change from before when I was basically emprisoned in my body and had to avoid a plethora of places/situations/activities in order to dodge potential humiliation.  I do think that my mind is catching up slowly but it is definitely not up-to-date with my body, which means that I will still have avoidance reactions to certain things.  But now, when I catch myself having this type of reaction, I can overcome my initial reaction and engage in what ever was causing me to have this knee-jerk avoidance reaction because most likely, I'll be able to do/go what was impossible less than 8 months ago.