Holy Buckets - It is OK to eat!

Hello All!

Happy Friday!  It is the weekend baby!

I have made a MAJOR (for me) discovery this week!  It is OK for me to eat!

I will start this out by saying I have an appointment with a therapist - I realize that this is more of an emotional issue than anything else and I am dealing with it.  But I thought it was pretty important to post here in case anyone else is going through something similar.

I am almost 9 months post op.....I am ok about exercising - I need to do more but I am a work in progress.  I just had a big aha moment....I punished myself for years by being morbidly obese...I used food to eat my feelings, it was something I could control and it was a way to basically punish myself.  I have noticed that since I have had surgery I have been VERY rigid.....there were only certain foods that I will eat, only specific amounts, no carbs.....I have rules for every morsel of food that enters my mouth.  I have also had emotion attached to foods - if I ate some sweet potato I was being bad.....I have tried to really control everything....in kind of a scary way....so many changes in my body have manifested in a need for pretty severe control over what I ingest.

I added up my calories and on a BAD day I ate 700 - 800 calories.....huh?  That is not enough to survive on.  Part of the problem is that my surgeon's office is very very very weak on the follow-up portion of the nutrition aspect.....I had not educated myself, and I also have not given myself the permission to eat.  I have been punishing myself by denying myself nutritious food, and keeping my calories so low that my body is saying - no thank you lady - we will not be dropping any more weight.

I have decided that I have worked very hard to lose 100 pounds - I have definitley more to lose and I am not at goal but I have all the time in the world.  Instead of my focus being on limiting - I am changing my focus to health - fueling my body so I am not feeling physically ill all during the day...giving my brain nutrients so it can function. 

I have worked VERY hard this week.  I have followed my surgeons guidelines of 1 cup of food per meal - protein first and all of that good stuff.  But.....I have added two snacks a day (1/2 cup mango, a cheese stick, 100 calorie yogurt, a piece of toast, a smoothie, lunchmeat etc) and holy mother - I feel good, I don't feel crazy, I feel in control of helping myself be healthy.  I have had 1000 calories a day, and I have not weighed since the beginning of the week - I was weighing 3 - 4 x a day.  I am more than the number on the scale, I deserve to have proper nutrition.......just because I had surgery does not mean that I will have to live on 800 calories a day.

Hopefully this makes sense..........I do not plan on going off the deep end and eating myself into craziness - I am just being kind to myself - stepping outside the box..

Has anyone else experienced this?

Good for you!  It always concerns me when people go from food controlling them in terms of overeating to food controlling them in terms of being obsessive about measuring, tracking, limiting, etc. (but, as a counselor , it's just kind of an occupational hazard, I guess).

Eating a healthy, balanced, diet -- including being to have occasional treats -- is very freeing for many of us.  The ability to do so (and to have continued to do it with no regain for almost 6 years) is probably the most amazing part of having had the surgery for me. NEVER would I have thought that I would be able to eat just 8 or 10 M&Ms and put the rest of the bag away for the next day (or the day after... or the day after that)!

Lora

I really love posts like these! Amazing insight, and I can't relate to so much of it. Thank you, thank you for posting

Good for you! I've been seeing a therapist that deals with eating disorders for about 6 weeks and much of what you said touched on many things her and I have discussed - the need for control, food "rules", giving ourselves permission to eat. She'd be very proud of this discovery you've made about yourself! :)

 

Amy