The Nature of the Beast

It has been three long months since my last post... I had intentions of posting every week, but, well, we see how that went!

I will try to make this a brief summary highlighting the most important occurrences that might possibly help someone. The good news—I’m down 65lbs total! I had lost a little before surgery, but the bulk of it, obviously, is because of the surgery. I’ve had a hard time mentally… please, people; go to therapy! I do not have a random statistic of how many people who are morbidly obese also have a food addiction, but my thought is that it’s pretty high. I recently had a person who is scheduled to have the gastric sleeve soon tell me that she didn’t believe she had an addiction. Maybe she doesn’t. I thought my addiction was under control until after surgery!

My first meal when I was able to eat soft foods was cottage cheese. I’ve never loved cottage cheese so much in my LIFE. It was soooo good. I hadn’t had anything but liquids for about five days, so as you can imagine, the cottage cheese tasted like the best thing since sliced bread. I ate about ¾ of the individual size. I was full. Absolutely stuffed. Couldn’t eat more. That made me stop eating, but in my mind, I wanted to eat more. It tasted so good! And so began my daily struggle of saying no to food.

I still struggle with this. At the time, I thought the world was ending. My roommate at the time wasn’t a help. To no fault of her own, she did not know my weight struggles. She was supportive in every way she knew how to be, but one day I came home to the smell of pumpkin cookies baking in the oven… I woke to a delightful scene of iced pumpkin cookies sitting on the stove. I packaged them up and put them away so I wouldn’t have to look at them. Then I cried. I wanted one so bad. I called my friend Lori who had surgery about two years ago almost. I needed help. If there’s anything worse than crying over spilled milk, it’s crying over pumpkin cookies! I felt incredibly silly calling, but I’m so glad I did. Lori has a teenage daughter and proceeded to tell me that three weeks post-op from her surgery, her daughter had a friend over and they wanted to order pizza. Lori couldn’t eat pizza. She thought she’d be ok. She was doing well, as was I at the time of this pumpkin cookie meltdown… But by the time the smell of fresh pizza hit the air, Lori was in panic mode. “I went to my room and cried. I cried because I couldn’t have pizza and I wanted it so bad.” This was exactly what I needed to hear. And I share her story and mine with you in hopes that if you have a similar experience, you will know that it’s ok to cry over food. You will miss it. It was there for you. It got you through good times and bad, happy and sad, celebrations and depressions and social interactions…

I felt deprived off and on for a good month and a half or so. I thought it was terrible, but I knew it would get better. At least I kept telling myself that!