Dagne Tripplehorn

Send Message

Block

Add Friend

This post contains  (gasp!!) colors! I know some people don't like colors, but they make life worth living and I love 'em.

Nearing my first surgiversary, and it's not an entirely happy occasion. I have not lost any weight in eight months. The last two months have been off-plan and exercise-free. I didn't gain during that time, and if I were at goal I'd be chuffed at eating whatever I want and not gaining weight! But as I still have 100 pounds to lose, I'm not happy at all. I went through some bad depression and anxiety and I hope double-hope triple-hope it's ebbing now so I can put my life back together. Weight loss isn't all that's in the toilet.

I have to change my attitude. (Department of Duh!) Staying / getting back on plan has to be its own reward. That is, there is no reward other than general health and sanity. Evidently eating 1000 calories and day and exercising to pain and exhaustion does not make my body release fat. But it does seem to keep my diabetes in remission (so far, knock wood). I've got to resign myself to eating on plan because it's Good. 

Just...Good. Like following the Ten Commandments when you don't believe in Hell or Heaven, or even in Moses: They're good things and that's it. 

Blind faith has not been my strength. I'm more a science geek, an evidence-based thinker. Evidence shows that my eating and exercising don't affect my weight. Yet I'm going to take a leap of faith and do it anyway.

I am mad at people who found WLS to be easy. Nothing in my life has been easy. In fact, my life is total crap. Bad luck, bad genes, bad timing, bad teeth...you name it, it's been a freakin struggle with a bad outcome. Why did I hope WLS would be any different? So all you who got surgery, followed the plan, and lost 150 pounds in seven months can go suck eggs. There! That's honesty for you. No, I'm not happy for you any more. I used to be, but now I'm just p.o.ed.

Even with the garment-rending and complaining, I'm keeping on keeping on. I'm exercising again and still trying to beat the carb cravings at night. I don't really think I'll win the war, but can't seem to stop fighting the battles. I'm dumb-stubborn like that. I'm born under the sign of the ox, and a Capricorn (the mer-goat), and obstinate as a mule.  So as of this lovely spring morning, I'm digging my hooves in once more, lowering my head into bashing postion, and pushing ahead.

My closet door is always open. 

It's not that I love looking at my clothes and shoes and dusty suitcases. No, it's that monster. It's been living in my closets since I was old enough to be scared of monsters. It won't hide under my bed or in unused rooms. It's a closet monster. When the door's open it can't get out.

Except it does get out, in a sneakier form. It comes out of the closet and goes inside my head and sends tentacles down into my veins and arteries, folds in and out of my brain crevices, secretes monster juice onto my tongue. The monster is hungry, and only I can feed it.

The monster wants bread. Sometimes it wants meat, often it wants dessert. It wants something warm and doughy, something big and solid and chewy. I have tried to placate it with things that are crisp and crunchy, things that are liquidy and delicate, things green and things cold. The monster wants what it wants.

In the daylight it hides or sleeps. Or, for all I know, it goes to the other side of the world and inhabits some other soul's night. When my slice of the world grows dark, it comes for me.

I have cleaned my closet. I have cleaned my diet. I've tried to scrub the thing out of my mind with therapy, meditation, imagery, hypnosis, and talktalktalk. 

Military strategy isn't my area of expertise, but I believe flanking maneuvers will weaken it. A two-pronged approach: Deprive it of fuel by stripping out hunger; and maintain scrupulous night-vision observation. I have to be aware of it at all times, because it can slip through the tightest defenses, the smallest openings, the briefest lapses. The monster is overwhelmingly powerful...yet there is one force that can kill it.

One silent weapon, a tiny, gentle weapon that penetrates the enemy, like water: undetectable to monster senses, wearing it down and backing it away drop by drop. Every night I delay it a second. Every night I push it half an inch further back. During the safe daylight hours I plan for the night. When night comes I am ready for it. I make it wait. I build my walls, I let the water drops wear it away, I move my forces ahead one step.

One day it will be worn to a handful of sand and I will blow it away. Until then, I plan, I observe, I make tiny steps into its territory. When it overwhelms me, I begin from where I find myself and advance bit by bit: learning it intimately, getting close to my enemy and closing in on my enemy. And I know that one grain of monster sand has the power to crumble my walls in an instant. I remain ever vigilant, and I will never surrender; I will never give up.