We Did This Why? Oh, yeah, to lose weight.
Before you read the rest of this post and especially before you get to the last section of this post, I want to make a statement or two about motives. When we all arrived at that place where we made a decision to modify our bodies so that we could lose this weight, we were all desperate. Many of us were well over 300 pounds and some even larger than 300 pounds. We were not skinny minies and we had larger than life appetites or we would not have been so desperate to try wls. Some of us had lost weight to only gain it back and others were so tired of trying to lose weight that the days of diet were gone. Yet, here we are having been surgically modified, putting our lives on the line to get out of the X sizes and into the single number sizes and under the 200 pound number on the scales. Here we are having done so much and felt so much pain and we have lost our weight and now we are feeling a familiar haunt that we know so well. That haunt is there when we test our pouch rules and there when we are sitting on our asses watching TV instead of moving. I read where the new folks are so happy that the weight seems to fall off in spite of eating incorrectly and in spite of not moving and you oldies who are here with me know how that felt and we thought we had time to change our eating and exercising habits after the weight was gone but now the weight is gone and what the hell are we doing? (they will see what we mean when we say you have a set amount of time to change and after that your body evolves and can absorb the food you eat, so grazing and eating badly today eventually will catch up to them).
The point to this madness is that did you come all this way have all this done to gain it all back?
My exercise today is walk/run. When I get on the treadmill, I listen to my iPod. I usually start out listening to CCR because I always feel empowered by the songs that I listened to as a kid—back then I thought I was unstoppable. But, by the time that I start moving the speed up and am at the running part of my walk/run, I am listening to Tina Turner. If Tina Turner can move and shake at her age, I can surely run for the last mile of my three-mile venture.
My appointment with the treadmill has been one of those routines that I have resisted. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to walk, but I just hated that I had to include walking in my list of daily activities. Sometimes I thought, I get enough exercise, so why should I include walking? Or, my favorite was: I can just walk a three-mile hike on the trail by my house. I realized that those mental conversations were my attempts to sabotage my success at exercising. And, I realize that there are those of you who consider weightless and exercise efforts less about success—that by labeling our efforts as succeeding or failing, we are creating negative associations and the negative associations will only widen the measures that we will take to create a routine of good habits. To that I have to say, if you are not practicing the rules of your pouch and if you are not exercising, you are not successful. If reading this hurts your feelings or creates angry or hostile feelings toward me, then I am sorry you are feeling this way, but what are you going to do to take care of yourself?
Are you going to defeat or be defeated? All I am suggesting is that today you make an effort to do something that will improve your circulation by increasing your heart rate. You can walk in place, swing your arms when you walk to your office, park a little further away from the entrance to the store or building…do something today that creates a distance for you that will make you increase your steps.
What you write is sooooooooo true and heck I have often said, exercise and sweat were dirty words I did not want to have in my vocabularly prior to this journey and it certainly showed in how I looked, how I felt and how I moved.
My surgeon made it abundantly clear that this journey is about changing the way we did things prior to changing our physical anatomy and that exercise MUST be a component of life from this point forward, meaning from the time I began this journey of WLS.
I don't know how much you remember of my first year post-WLS, but it was not easy, many others lost weight with much less effort than I, I cried, I complained and I was oh so jealous, but I also knew that I was doing what I was told to and that if at the end of it all I had not achieved the same results as others, it was not for any other reason than that's what and where my body is meant to be. That being said, it does not mean I have ever been completely happy with my results, nor does it mean I have given up. I hired a personal trainer at a great cost for my first year (I cannot do that now, it is just not in my budget) because I knew that if I had paid someone, it would keep me accountable and get me there, it did and at the end of that first year, my trainer told me that I was truly an inspiration to him and that I could do this.
When I began all that, I was still working in New York City and commuting 5 hours a day, but still spent 4 to 5 days per week at the gym and was engaged there for 1.5 hours at a time. It is why I felt cheated when I saw others who blew by me, but the truth is, inside I knew what I was doing was changing me and while I struggled at times between the thinking that I was less than because of the number on my scale, I also saw my health and life vastly improve and so I was happy and ultimately accepted that for me I had arrived at a place I could find comfort.
I rode that feeling and then last year, stress got the better of me, motivation was lost due to a variety of things including an injury that stopped my gym work out, interuppting what had become something I did by routine, that and I had stopped logging my food choices, knowing I was making some that were not beneficial, but feeling like I could get away with a little of it, the problem with that, was the little, was without exercise, there was no room for a little. Basically, I lost my motivation.
I never fell in love with working out, but I did know it was what I had to do, so when between the stress and lack of working out I started to regain, I began to feel like I was failing once more and feared I would return to that person I once was, so in January of this year I marched my butt back in the gym, bound and determined to reclaim what I needed to have my own brand of success and within a few weeks I had developed a heel spur, which made me feel defeated once more, the scale became something I did not want to acknowledge even as my clothes got tighter still, until in late February I had to buy the next size up and I was cowed into admitting that I must get back to the gym, or I was doomed, and so one day, I wrapped my foot with an ace bandage and said, I'm going to do what works and that's it and so here I am 4+ months later, I had taken off 7 lbs. through my sweat equity and now I am missing my workout and that is a far cry from where I was over 4 years ago, hell, it's even a long way from 1.5 years ago. I have arrived at a place, where I feel good when I get my workout in and I am going to find my way back.
The point of my reliving this aspect is, like you, I hear people who think this is magic, when in fact it is science and eventually the reality of the wonderous human body kicks in and bam, people wonder why they are not losing or regaining. It's not rocket science, it's plain and simple, exercise is the proven key to keeping weight at a healthy level and without it, well unless you are happy with eating air and/or no food, regain, most especially for those over a certain age, is a very strong likelihood.
Thanks for posting, I know people often mistake what we speak as know it all ism and think "that won't be me", but I also remember thinking that too. . .
Hugs, Laureen
My Mantra is that I do not determine my success by the number hanging in my closet, nor will I let the scale determine that success either. . . It is through trial and error I will continue to grow and succeed. . . Laureen
"Success is a journey, not a destination." Ben Sweetland
Laureen,
I know exactly how you are feeling. Exercise is o hard to work into an already busy schedule plus from all the years of being overweight, our bodies are prime for having some type of joint injury or inflamed tissue.
Hang in there; you are already one step above the game because you know what's going on. I am so happy that you are responding to these posts. It helps us all to hear how we all handle the situations that create road blocks. You are an inspiration.
Keep the positive posts coming. We may not want to hear it but we definitely need too.
HUGS and smiles.....connie d
PS I have a very bad home situation, my husband is an alcoholic and has no job and we are destitute, so getting revved up is all but impossible. I walk tomorrow ... with my walker ...Samantha
