First
of all though…. thanks to my lovely friend Farrah who took time out
from her constant hair flipping to help me come up with the name of this
new blog. I have a thing for bees so I wanted
that to be the theme and she reminded me of the book, which of course I
haven’t yet read, called The Secret Life of Bees and well.. viola a
name was born! And it’s just so damn perfect for the current status of
my life – so that’s even more fun!! She’s a
genius – though I think her hair weighs her down sometimes, but we
don’t need to discuss that just yet.
I’ve
been sort of thinking of starting a new blog and finally decided it’s
the right thing to do and the right time to do it… I’ve had a lot of blogs over time and I totally
enjoy it, but have always seemed to get to a point
where I was no longer comfortable being wide open, which is my style,
because of the people who read the blogs. Actually, I got to the place
where I was comfortable with the grown ups that read it, but figured it
was only a matter of time before my kids find
the blogs and for me to continue writing about what’s actually going on
in my life – that’s a big no way in fucking hell…. So here I am with my
new and hopefully last blog.
It’s
going to be entirely anonymous so I can write with impunity about all
manner of things, but mostly it’ll be okay to talk about the aspects
of my life which aren’t always comfortable for
everyone and are certainly not okay for my kids to read. I love this
blog title because I feel like I’ve got all kinds of secret lives… it’s
exhausting. And the first one up for discussion is my lap band. Very
few people know about it, which is a blessing
because for the most part I’m a complete failure as far as that’s
concerned – which is one thing in front of my loving and understanding
friends, but it’s a whole other thing in front of the generic people in
my life – family, co-workers, neighbors… that kind
of thing.
When
I first got the thing installed it did make itself known for a while
and while I never noticed any soft stop that lots of my friends talk
about, I definitely had a hard stop that I could work
with. I always had this belief that if I got a lap band installed
there would be something different. I didn’t need it to be a magic
bullet, I’m happy to do the work, but so far just diet and exercise had
not worked for me over the long haul. I had hoped
and expected that the band would add something to the mix – would be
another tool. But what I’ve heard from both of my doctors is that I
should be eating 1,000 calories a day and not eating after 7pm and
exercise every day and I’m sure to lose weight. And
while – yes, they are 100% correct when they say if I do those things I
will lose weight, I sure as hell didn’t need to have surgery for
that to be true. Have any overweight person alive eat 1,000 calories,
stop eating by 7pm and exercise every day and
they will lose weight – no surgery needed. Sigh…
After
about 6-8 months the hard stop went away too. I seem to have two
settings on my band… either I have no band. I sense no difference,
there is neither a hard nor soft stop, there are just
scars on my stomach and a need to diet. There is nothing I can’t eat,
no off limit foods, I can eat fast or slowly, I can chew well or not.
It’s just like I never had surgery – nothing… nada.. OR I can not
swallow my own spit. The last 4 or 5 fills I’ve
gotten have been huge ordeals. I go in, beg them to give me a tiny
fill, finally agree to half a cc which I’m sure is too much – but I
haven’t had a fill in so long that seems reasonable at the time…. I
dutifully swallow the water in the office with no problem
and then about an hour later, I’m puking my guts up on water. I end up
not eating anything for a week or so, but am usually progressively able
to work my way up to milk or maybe a creamy soup – which of course is
good. But every single moment of each day
is centered on me worrying about getting enough liquid in me so I don’t
get dehydrated and it’s frightening. I have this whole hierarchical
structure in my head each day – 1st goal is to get liquid in me, 2nd goal is to get vitamins
in me, 3rd goal is to get protein in me, 4th goal
is to get calories in me. I end up losing 8-10 lbs in water weight in
the following few days until I get tired of it and go back in and have
half ish of it removed. At which point, so
far, I’m back to the… I have no band at all place.
I
just need to get over myself and pretend it doesn’t exist and start
religiously following weight watchers and figure out how to be healthy
without that tool. There are plenty of other tools in
the world - it doesn't have to be the band for me. Weight Watchers which is a great program to follow. I've had success on it for good stretches of time so that's the tool I'm going to explore now. I've had an online membership for the past 4 or 5 years that I rarely use, but it's right there just waiting for me to pick up where I'd left off.
I am going to also go through the ordeal again - I suppose going in with that attitude could be a self-fulfilling prophecy... I have scheduled an appointment with my doctor for December 13th. I'll talk about my two settings and see what he has to say... but in the meantime I'm going to look into WW and pretend I don't have a band. I spend lots of time hoping it's going to start magically giving me a signal to stop eating or slow down or something that when it consistently doesn't it makes me a little nutso and that's just no good!
Anyway... welcome to the new digs, I'm glad you're here.
