Sunday Poll (yes, I know...I been polling a lot!)

For me (and this will sound horrible), I think that going through this has made me realize that I AM a quitter.  If something is too hard, I just quit.  I've been that way all my life, although I never really understood why.  But in going through everything I've gone through, and quitting many times on the way, I've finally picked myself up, dusted myself off, and realized I CAN NOT quit.  So I'm not quitting.  Taking all my vitamins and planning out my food is hard.  Finding time and motivation to exercise is hard.  I quit doing those things in the past, and suffered because of it.  But now I know I have to do them and I will do them, even if it's hard.

I finally realized that I give up and quit when things are hard because of a lack of self esteem.  If I try and fail, I will have failed.  And that's hard for me to deal with.  But if I don't even try, I somehow don't feel as bad about the failure.  Does that make any sense?  Anyway, it's something I'm working on.

 I've learned that I allowed unfounded fears run my life.  Fear of failure, fear of falling, fear of men, fear of looking/sounding stupid, fear of sex/intimacy, fear of strangers (and what they are thinking about me), and on it goes.

I've been forcing myself to do things I have never attempted before and this month alone, I have done three things that I NEVER would have tried before out of fear.  My fat was an excuse to not face those anxieties, and now that the fat is disappearing, I keep discovering new ways I had insulated myself from the world. 

This weekend........... I learned that I have very little upper body strength, little coordination and no body awareness.......I took a yoga class.  I am trying to digest it right now!  I learned that the neurophy in my feet is a lot worse than I thought.  I also learned that no matter what/ my mother has to up me one......to make it about her and not me.  NOT A GOOD WEEKEND AND I AM NOT IN A GOOD MOOD.

I learned that I can take care of other people AND myself. I don't have to ignore my needs and put everyone else first. I learned that when I take care of myself, I am bettter at wearing all my other hats. And all this time I worried that if I took care of myself, others would feel slighted or neglected or I wouldn't give them 100%. Not true at all. When I meet my needs, I can more easily meet others' needs too.

And this is important to me because I am a natural caretaker. I used to think I was a caretaker because I was forced to be the parent when I was a child, but now I see that while that may be a part of it, the bigger part is that I am a caretaker because that is my personality. And self knowledge is a good thing.

1.  I no longer live to eat...I eat to live.
2.  Even when things are bad (complications from WLS)...this too shall pass.  Wisdom for the future.
3.  Ignore stupid people because they have no clue that WLS is HARD...not a cure or an easy fix...you substitute one set of issues for another.
4.  I am a strong and determined woman.  I can do anything I put my mind and energy to.

Mary
RNY 1/9/12

I have learned that even though for YEARS I have said that I liked/was attracted to larger guys I am really not. I dated larger guys because they seemed to be the only guys attracted to me when I was big. I am very much attracted to average sized guys but would never seek them out or give them a chance because I had it in my head that there was NO WAY they would like me.

That I truly like gray. Let me explain. For many years, I was a black or white kind of gal, an all or nothing type. I'm an IT person so it kind of correlates: 1 and 0s, offs and on's, yes and no. But that very limited thinking and very defined lines of demarkation created the absolutes in my life that I allowed to avalanche into all or nothing. Either I was dieting or I wasn't, either I was perfectly on plan, or I wasn't, either I was losing weight, or I wasn't (ergo, I was gaining weight).

I'm not sure if the weight loss surgery was the catalyst or being in the 5 decade of my life was a significant influence, but man, I now LOVE gray. It's not yes or no, it's sure, maybe, whatever. And what that means to me is that I know I'm not perfect, and I don't expect perfection from myself, and in not having to live a "perfect" WLS life, I'm more able to adapt, recover and continue on. I make imperfect choices, but I recover from them and adjust and adapt.

Sure, I'd like to think that someday I could become the Mary Poppins of WLS (practically perfect in every way), but it's not going to happen. So gray is a wonderful color. No blacks, no whites; no lines you can't cross and be stuck on the other side. I live my life knowing that I have the strength to control my outcome, even when (not if) I make strange or inappropriate choices.

And I don't think I wrote the answer to this poll very well, but hey...it is a lovely shade of gray, isn't it?

I actually love this answer.  Black / white world is where I have always lived and now I am trying to kind of expand my "fences".
  I'm getting there!

You are the awesomeness. That is all.

1) Hunger is not an emergency
2) I can do hard things
3) I am super competitive, even just with myself
4) I LOVE living life. (nope, I didn't know it was possible to love life before. Weight was only a part of the problem though)