Saturday, May 14, 2011

Withdrawals and Rehab

My life is about to change forever.

I've made the choice to have weight-loss surgery. No, not plastic surgery. I'm not having liposuction or a tummy tuck. I'm having a new procedure called plication. Basically, they're going to fold my stomach in on itself, so that I get full much faster, stay full much longer and basically have much less room in my stomach. If you want more details on the surgery itself, I'll send you here:

(Fair warning, that is a youtube video of what the procedure looks like in CG. Not real blood and guts, but if you're overly squeamish, you may want to skip it.)

God brought this opportunity to my doorstep or else I wouldn't even be considering it. But after about 20 years of being overweight and fighting my own body, I've decided to take this opportunity and run with it. So on May 17th, I'm going under the knife.

Until then, I've been pushing to lose as much weight as I can on my own. The weight's been falling off, but it's been hard and it's only reminded me of why I want this surgery in the first place. Being hungry all day is unavoidable when I diet. I can count on maybe 2 hours of feeling satiated after a meal before the hunger pains set in. It's not fun. And of course, my own food addiction doesn't help anything either. I don't just want to eat, I want to eat French bread and spinach dip. And I don't want a piece of bread with spinach dip, I want the whole loaf. Which, of course, must be followed with something sweet.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how I kept the pounds on.

Right now I'm in the last few days before surgery and I'm on an extra special "please kill me now" diet. Some nasty powdered stuff mixed with water two times a day, with a small meal (no more than 300 calories) for dinner. You can imagine my delight in this diet. But, I have to admit, only eating 800 calories a day does force your body to shed pounds. Fast. I'm two days away from surgery, started this diet 5 days ago, and I've lost 5 pounds. Not too shabby.

The withdrawals have definitely set in. Like I said, I'm a food addict, a "food-a-holic" if you will, and this is like going through detox. My brain/stomach/every pore is screaming at me to eat. Eat a LOT. Like, RIGHT NOW. And my social calendar, naturally, is filled with events that include piles of food I can't eat. Today, I sat in a room filled with people and their plates of barbecued goodness, while I dipped my raw broccoli in pico de gallo. Yum.

My only help is knowing that the day after tomorrow, this will all be over. Sure, the first month will be a tiny bit of torture, seeing as I can only have liquids the first two weeks and then only soft foods for two weeks after that, (my surgeon wants to be very cautious, since this surgery is so new) but after that, I'll get to be the girl at the party who has half a plate of food and says, "oh my gosh, I'm like, TOTALLY stuffed!" (Apparently I picture my skinnier self as a brunette version of Cher from Clueless) Which will be very refreshing, considering I've always been the girl who wonders if anyone will notice that she's going back for thirds.

This next month will be my 28 days of rehab. At least, that's how I'm looking at it. I can't give in to cravings, simply because my stomach will not be able to process it. There's no exceptions unless I want to be violently ill. Which, thankfully, is one thing I am NOT willing to be in order to have yummy food. Hopefully, this time will help me start to break the habit of living to eat, instead of eating to live. After all, the surgery can only help my stomach, it can't get inside my head and force me to make wise choices. That part of this ordeal will take a HUGE amount of prayer. Because one thing I know is that without God's helping hand, I will screw this up just as I've screwed up every other diet or eating plan I've tried before it.

So here goes nothing. See you on the other side...

~Leigh
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