The "honeymoon" is over - the winding road that follows and my journey along it!

Hey everybody, I wanted to talk about some things I have been dealing with. A good place to start would be how I spent the last week.  Personally, I spent Christmas here in Arizona. Christmas Eve we had dinner with my wife's cousin and exchanged presents there. I made a funny little music video of the gift opening frenzy and posted it on my Myspace (myspace.com/bialowitz)  The food cravings were pretty bad, and I did great up until Christmas Eve; then for two days I broke a lot of the rules and ate as much as Ralph (my pouch) would allow me to.  On one hand I was dissapointed because I gave in to temptation, but on the other hand I felt somewhat encouraged when I realized that in years past those holiday binges would have included at least three times as much food, tons of sugar and about a five pound weight gain for the week.  This year I DID overeat, BUT my "tool" helped keep me from doing too much damage. Is this a good way to approach things? Is it healthy? Is it - dare I say - "rationalizing" my inappropriate behavior?  Good questions, I'm not a professional so I don't know the absolute answer, but I think it is OK. As you journey beyond the honeymoon phase of WLS and enter the maintenance phase you can struggle a little bit. I know I have. You think to yourself, OK I lost the weight, now what? Do I keep dieting? Answering that question can be a bit more of a challenge then you would think. I've been struggling to answer these questions for myself and ellicited the professional help of the wonderful nutritional and psychiatric practicioners at Duke in seeking an answer.  What I got from the conversations is yes you need to continue to diet, but you can't look at it as a diet, it all goes back to those two all-important words: "lifestyle change" -you know, that thing you committed to back when you jumped on board for surgery.  The way I have been eating is the way I will need to eat for the rest of my life.  You mean I will have to eat this way for the rest of my life?" Yup, pretty much.  That answer is a little bit sobering. Remember back when you were just recovering from surgery and you were lying there asking yourself "what the heck did I just get myself into?" Yeah, it's kind of like that feeling all over again. It makes me feel like I have sentenced myself to a life term in "food prison." The psychiatrist introduced me to that term - food prison. She said I would need to try to make sure that I don't live my life stuck in a "food prison."  It means losing the diet mentality. Losing the "all or nothing" mentality that a lot of us adopt. You know, that feeling that you get when you equate your eating choices, weigh-in results, and commitment level with either total success or total failure. You set yourself up for an emotional roller coaster ride that you don't need to ever even go on. It's unhealthy. The goal is to feel "normal" - and "normal" people do not let those kind of things get to them the way some of us do (at least not to the same extent).  So what does this all mean? What can I take away from this advice?  To ME, it means that yes I will continue to have some limitations on what I can and can't eat. I will always have to avoid refined sugar or face the consequence of dumping. That's fine, I knew that going in, and I have been managing by finding sugar-free alternatives to get sweets-fix.  It means that I will have to continue to watch my portion sizes and follow the rules about not drinking and eating. However, it also means that I need to stop looking at all carbs as my enemy - I don't need to lose anymore weight and carbs DO have a place in a healthy diet.  It means that if I desire, sometimes I don't have to weight three hours between feedings. Do normal people use their watches to dictate when they eat? No. So why do I need to. If I eat when I fell hungry, that is OK. That might sound like the wrong approach, but let me just say, I am not saying I feel it is alright to eat every hour, what I am saying is that if you eat one meal two hours after your previous meal and the next one four hours after, it is not the end of the world. Most of the time, if you let your hunger (not appetite - big difference - remember physical vs. mental) dictate, you will average out to about every three hours between feedings or five or six times a day. If I do this, and don't obsess about the schedule as much I will be less likely to feel like I am living in a regimented "food prison."  I think it is the regimented part that makes us feel like we are stuck in a diet mentality or in a food prison. For that reason - counting grams of protein; measuring ounces of food at a meal; counting how many times I chew; how many minutes between drinking and eating - all of those "rules" - I'm going to stop obsessing about them.  This is something I am advocating for myself because I have been doing this for nine months now, and it has become a habit. I don't even need to think about it. This is how I eat now. At first, I had to make a concerted effort to abide by these rules, but now I have trained myself, it is second nature. Wait a second - one might say I may have actually adapted real "lifestyle change!"  So you see I am trying to shift my thoughts about the rules and regimens of post-op WLS life from likening them to a food prison, to something more like this: they're more like a brace used to help straighten out crooked bone-structure. It's more like a swing-trainer that someone uses to engrain muscle memory for that pefect golf swing. It's more like a tool that people use to help themselves adapt to their new plumbing the right - the healthy - way.  I guess that's my take on negotiating the path from honeymoon to maintenance, from diet to lifestyle change. From WLS newbie to graduate. From Morbidly Obese to - umm, healthy. I fully acknowledge that I'm by no means at the end of my struggle, it's more like I have paddled hard and navigated past the violent surf near the shore, and now I have to learn to stay afloat in an efficient and healthy way. So for those of you have succesfuly gone down this road, do you have any additional advice? For those who are headed that way, does any of this make sense? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Your post makes perfect sense. This Christmas I feel like I pigged out (when in all actuality I probally only ate 8-9 oz total all day which is still LESS than what I am supposed to be getting in). I did try stuff I probally shouldn't have I had a bite of my MIL's peanut butter fudge (it's protein right?) and I even had a small piece of SF pumpkin pie. Would I normally eat that way? Absolutely not because I don't keep that stuff in my home. It just so happens it was there and I tried the stuff. Did I beat myself up over it?? Yes because I made myself dog sick with trying to eat so much, but then I got over it and realized that the next day was a whole new day.

Thank you both for posting. You hear all the time how WLS is so great and it changes your life forever, both are true, but its not always so glamourous! Congrats on your success and I wish you future success as you continue the journey. Happy New Year!

Meg

yeah it makes sense.  I think the hardest part of this journey is maaintaining.I mean how many times have we all lost weight, only to gain it back and more.Loseing is just a short part of the journey. Also I think alot of us live in that diet menatality thinking once we lose the weight we can just go right back to normal. it doesnt work and we have to realize that the way we used to eat was what made us fat, and can make us fat again. But we cant live like were on a diet for the rest of our lives.Who could possible be on the diet for the rest of thier life? Its absolutely a mental change. Hope that your counseling helps you work through this. Sounds like it is.I myself even being just out of surgery am definatly thinknig about getting some counseling.Ive been overweight my entire life and this surgery didnt change my brain.