It has been 5 months and 1 week since my life was able to truly begin. It is amazing to me how different I feel. When you are thin or at a somewhat healthy weight, there are so many things you take for granted. Fat kids have to endure so many things that unless you ARE a fat kid, you truly could never understand. Here are some examples of fat kid syndrome- (Thank you Mary for the BS {Before Surgery} and AS {After Surgery} examples-here are a few of my own):
BS-Food was my ultimate best friend. I had a good day, I had a bad day, Someone said something nice to me, someone pissed me off or simply because the sky is blue, food was my go to friend for it all.
AS-Food is for when I am hungry. I have amazing PEOPLE in my life that I want to spend my life with, and now that food has lost it's control over me, I actually have a life to live.
BS-Sitting in a booth terrified me. There is nothing fun or rewarding about going out to eat and having to sit with a table crammed into your belly. I would always request a table with chairs instead, and would avoid places that primarily had booths. Then as in the above statement, I would want to gorge even more to feel better about the whole booth thing. A vey vicious cycle indeed.
AS-I can now comfortably sit anywhere I want!!!!
BS-I could barely find clothes that fit, and forget about shopping in a regular store, nope, fat people stores were where I could shop. I don't call them fat people stores to offend, that is simply what I called them because as a fat kid, that was the only place I could shop. The problem with these stores is that most of the clothes that I could buy were a bit old for the look I always wanted. Not that anything I wore looked good. Once you reach a certain size everything no matter how cute you may think it is, becomes tent like when you are over 300 pounds. The prices were rediculous, too. $45 for a T-Shirt, now I have overspent so lets go out to eat to feel better-And can I just say, why in the heck do they advertise their fat clothes on a size 3 model? I never got that one....
AS-I have a pair of Baby Phat capris that I am totally comfortable in! I can shop at a few more stores and find clothes that really fit and that actually look cute now! No more tents for me! I can only imagine what it will be like when I can shop at any store-watch out shoppers, I will be ruthless for a good sale!
BS-As soon as we decided as a family to go on a vacation, I would map out restaurants in the area that we just had to go to and look up their menu's to see what I wanted to eat-months before the trip. Forget everything else, let's just spend our vacation eating!
AS-I map out places to go see and tourist attractions for my family to enjoy. I can care less where to eat now. I know I can eat anywhere because all restaurants have oatmeal-which I eat plain now, veggies, a vegetarian soup or some kind of fish.
BS-Let's elaborate on the whole oatmeal thing. I was so addicted to sugar. I would eat at least 2 candy bars a day, drink 2-3 slushy's a day, drink soda as my primary beverage, snack on chips, fast food or whatever I was in the mood for on top of my 3 ginormous meals! I could go to Subway and eat an entire foot long, chips, 2 cookies and a large soda no problem! Now, I go to subway and can eat a scoop of their tuna. Going back to sugar-if you had given me a bowl of oatmeal without sugar I would have thrown it back at you. Now I find it quite delicious and it has become a breakfast of choice.
AS-Sugar is a complete no-no. It does things to me that are just down right mean. Imagine feeling like you have been punched in the face, kicked in the stomach, have a head ache, your tongue feels swolen and you are light headed, all while feeling like you have the worst case of the flu of your life. This is called dumping syndrome and it is pure hell. The 45 minutes of this hell-which is about how long it lasts-is not worth the 1 or 2 bites of something bad for me. Now I find fruit to be so much tastier.
These are just a few insights to what my life was and what it is now becoming. I am in no way near to the end of this journey nor am even close to the healthy weight I am hoping to reach, but I am absolutely HEALTHIER! Thank you to everyone who has been supportive to me in this life change thus far. I am so fortunate to have real friends in my life that have proven that food -the way I chose to eat it, was not my best friend but my enemy. I am a Foodie as everyone knows, but my relationship with food has drastically changed. I can still enjoy it, but in very different ways.
