Thinking thinking thinking

I don't know what to say, but I'm so sad that you are in such a dark place right now.  I can't pretend to truly understand where you are, but I hope you find your way to feeling better and if you ever want to talk about it please let me know.  It sounds like you are mourning the loss of your coping mechanism, food, and sort of adrift until you find a new way to cope?  I'm getting a haircut tomorrow and maybe color.  We'll see if it helps me I'm not permanently sad, I'm more surprised and confused.  I don't know myself very well I guess, and so I am learning a lot about who I am right now.  Not all of it is glitter and sunshine. 

It is bad enough that SMO is a disease with same attached to it.  Please don't add shame to your recovery.  Hold your head up high and be proud that you made the choice to recover.  Express gratitude that you had the opportunity to have this surgery.  You did not eat yourself into an early grave?  Are you dead?  I think not!  :)    You talk about the obesity being who you were and are.  It reminds me why I have always liked Miss Piggy.  She is fat.  It is a major part of who she is, as a pig and Miss Piggy.  She wouldn't be the wonderful gal she is is she wasn't fat.  The hateful responder to the post you referred us to is a hater.  She didn't get this way after she lost weight and her hate isn't just directed at overweight people.  She reminds me of the Madame that wrote a column in Penthouse or Playboy.  She said she was sick of fat people calling themselves overweight instead of fat.  She said let's call a fatty a fatty. Well, she called her self a sex therapist.  I wanted to write and say let's call a ***** a *****  LOL  But I don't have anything against prostitutes either.  I am not a hater.  If a prostitute is unhappy, I have compassion for them.  If a fat person is unhappy, I have compassion for them.  If you are unhappy today, I have compassion for you.  Please don't be ashamed that you needed this surgery.  Your inability to loose weight because you had a disease is not your fault.  Your success with this tool is a triumph and a glory to your higher power. I think as we lose weight, we SMO look at our very large pictures and see the very sad people we lookedlike.  I know I do.  I look so sad in my pictures.  It is a hard pill to swallow.  I never realize just how far I had gone.  I am so relieved to be free from that bondage.  I wish you more comfortable  feelings and the ability to let your hubby take those pictures.  Maybe you could do a dry run without film first.  Many hugs, Loris

Loris, you are a very practical lady.  Thank you for responding here and setting my head on straight.  I tend to forget obesity is a disease, and I just think its completely my fault.  Its only partly my fault, and food is my drug of choice - but unlike other addictions, ours is left out swinging in the wind for everyone to see. 

In a way, it's hard to make friends with our smaller selves, especially for the SMO like us. Our bodies once felt found full--- imagine a tomato-- its appeal is in its plush, round juiciness. And now, well, we're closer to tomato paste in a baggie! ;) . We're everything we ever were, but concentrated-- and in an imperfect, wrinkly body. Where we once bought a 6x or 7 x and threw it over ourselves, we now shop to camouflage imperfections, and hide parts that upset us....like every other American woman. We used to be "other' and now we're just like them. I think most of us go through this. But remember back as a girl, or a teen, how we struggled with being bigger? It took time, but we learned to love ourselves. And I have confidence that we will find our way back there again. While the Sig Ot is not a "fat admirer" per se, two nights ago he said, "I was looking at before and after pics, and it made me sad, but most women looked prettier before surgery." I did what any hormonally challenged woman eating a super low cal diet would do--- I cried like a baby. And I realized, you know, he's right, for the most part. My facial skin has lost its padding and I have tremendous dark circles under my eyes-- I look like Walter Matthau"--15 years older, jowly, sallow. (I photoshop my pics here.) My nipples are literally below my waistband. And you've seen what the arms are doing. It's hard to love-- but I am going to endeavor to try. I was prettier before, Bunny-- so I do know what you're saying. But your sparkly eyes and gamine features aren't gonna be obfuscated long, if they are at all. You're a beautiful woman, always were, and will find away to know it again, I am sure. (not an online hugger, but making an exception for you--- HUG!)

I'm a sun-dried tomato!  Mmmm... sundried tomatoes.  Just like them?  *shudder*  Don't say that!!    I'm special dammit! Thank you for the hug and the comments :)  And all that stuff about beauty on the inside... blah blah.  I guess its true, eh?  All the best, Jenn

 Hey QT,  A couple of weeks ago I was at Wal-Mart Maybe it was a month ago.....Anyway I saw this woman walking with the cart the way I always had before, (I used to use the cart as kind of a walker in the stores) I found myself staring at her ankles . She had them wrapped with  some kind gauze , they were terribly swollen and because the gauze had fallen off a bit you could see the red and blisters. It looked so terribly painfull that I wanted to go over and say its ok I understand! Its to hard to exercise when your health is so bad you can't walk or in my case preop breath!  I was pretty much taught that being overweight was a shamefull thing and that if you were overweight it was most certinly your fault and if you did nothing about it it was because you were to lazy! It honestly took the experience of the surgery to teach me that it wasn't just because I was fat and lazy that I couldn't do it. I could always do anything So I duno why I couldn't lose weight! I failed my stress test . I was 35 years old and failed my heart exam because I was so out of shape :( The pulmonologist told me it was all due to my weight. I'm pretty sure he was right because I can run for alot longer than 4 mins and all they were asking for was a 6 min walk!  Anyway I was not like you I didn't like me. Well thats not completely true I always liked me but I didn't like who looked at me in the mirror. I didn't like the me who let my kids play inside on the PC or watch way to much TV  because it was to hard for me to go outside with them!  I understand how you feel about the "ugly" thing I feel like that too, Before it was like if it fit it looked good! now I struggle every morning to find a shirt that hides my hanging gut! I try everyday to hide the fact that I just lost 140 lbs so quickly,  Have to have sleeves, The shirt can't be to short becase my gut hangs down, I lost all my weight in my ass so I had this belly from hell and no ass to make up for it. My toes are really "ugly" somehting that has always bothered me but now its worse because I can fit into these cute shoes and I still an't wear them!  Did I mention how big my nose is now? and my eyes are something I always liked before but now I have to hide so much with cover up because of the dark circles.    Saying all this I am so happy for the WLS because I can help with my sons baseball team, I can take my daughter to the gym, I can show them That food is not the most important thing to think about today!   One day I will hug my grand children ......OH THE THOUGHT!!!!  LOL I love your honesty and I apreciate how hard it is to spill your guts on the www.  Your an amazing woman and in jerrys words "still Cute" lol Estelle

"It honestly took the experience of the surgery to teach me that it wasn't just because I was fat and lazy that I couldn't do it. I could always do anything So I dunno why I couldn't lose weight!" You paraphrased exactly what I went through/am going through.  I didn't fail my stress test though - I was too big to use the bike or treadmill, over the weight limit.  So I had to have an extremely expensive left heart cath instead.  And it was so much fun I decided to crash on the recovery table.. twice.  The irony being I had a "surprisingly good" ticker.  Granted my blood pressure was 8 million over 6 million, but hey I almost died to learn my heart was a-ok.  I'm so glad you are seeing such a dramatic change in your fitness.  I was always vaguely active, even at my biggest and sweatiest, but I've also seen a very dramatic difference in the amount of intense exercise I can handle.  Before I stuck to thinks like yoga and balance ball.  I was a very flexible fat person - I could still bend over and put my palms flat on the ground even at 440 lbs.  I am consistently amazed and thankful now as I shrink at how flexible my body really is without so much skin in the way.  If it fit it looked good!  Amen, I totally believed that too.  Now its much more complicated to get dressed and I am much more critical of the end result.  The dark circles, ugh.  I don't usually wear makeup (pointless in summer here), and I don't actually own concealer, but I've been pondering adding it to my arsenal.  Thank you so much for understanding what I am going through.  Its nice because we are at about the same spot in our journey.  If only in our weight!  I'd be so much closer to goal that way!

As someone who once weighed 500+ lbs, I had normal blood pressure, which health professionals simply could not wrap their minds around.  They would take my blood pressure and pump up that sucker until my fingernails were about to shoot off like bullets, and the gauge still showed a normal pressure.  Stupid doctors!  Of course, now that I'm a more normal (?) size, they don't even think twice when my pressure registers in a normal range. Kix

Jen, I just wanted to thank for you having the courage to start this thread.  The discussion and comments have been real eyeopeners for me.  Our little forum here is usually so happy-go-lucky, the glass-is-half-full that it's easy to lose sight of the struggles we still face, and that we're sometimes facing alone because no one else is talking about it.  So it must just be my problem...   As is often said on these OH boards, weight loss surgery is one small tool that can help us lose weight.  But 95% of the battle is in our heads.  In how we think about ourselves...  In how we relate to the world...  In how our relationship to the world changes as we become smaller....  In perhaps finally learning how to like ourselves, how to love ourselves.  That we are, in fact, worthy of love.  That skinny people have issues too.   I can honestly say now that, for me, losing the weight was just the beginning and was perhaps the easier part of this journey.  But learning to really like, love, and respect myself, well that's a lot harder, but hopefully worth it in the end -  Kellie

You know it'll be worth it in the end.  And you are welcome.  This was a real eye-opener and relief for me too, because I can hear so much of how I feel in other people's words.  I don't feel nearly as alone as I did yesterday.  You ladies are the best!