What's eating YOU?

Nov 17, 2011

 I have come to believe that it was not what i was eating, but what was eating me that caused me to get to 450 pounds.  I am of the unpopular belief that therapy before surgery should not merely be a suggestion, but a requirement.  Surgery fixed my stomach and did a world of good for my physical self.  But at the end of the day, i still have to deal with whats in my head.  

For me, my weight was a way to insulate me from the world.  I am a trauma survivor.  Although I am not ready to share with the OH nation the nature of that trauma, I am willing to share with you the devastating effects and echoes i let it have in my life.  I started eating for comfort at a young age.  I knew that if i felt empty, sad, bored, mad, anything uncomfortable, that i could put food in my mouth and that feeling would go away temporarily.  I hated my body and i didn't want anyone looking at me.  So when i first started packing on the weight, i was glad.  

Then boys became important.  And being overweight became less of a "Look at that cute chubby little girl" and more of a, "Wow look at that fat teenager with the bad skin."  Although i was terrified of a boy noticing me, I craved the attention and anonymity that came with being normal.  When you are as big as a house in high school, you get singled out for ridicule.  Somehow my weight went from shielding and comforting me, to being like a bad Halloween costume i couldn't take off.  More, i couldn't stop the cycle of self abuse.  I would eat, become remorseful and depressed and then eat again because i didn't know how to deal with the pain.  

This is when i got into other trouble.  I started taking diet pills.  But my eating didn't stop.  I didn't eat because i was hungry, so taking away the hunger didn't work.  It did give me energy though so i began to take more to get the same buzz.  At nineteen, i began abusing methampethamines.  Now i was a smart girl from a loving home.  My parents were married and involved in my life.  They loved me very much and did all they could to protect me from myself and others.  Addiction didn't care.  I went from medicating with food to medicating with drugs.  I lost weight, boys noticed.  This opened a new set of issues and suddenly, not only was i abusing the drugs, i was back to abusing the food too. 

I managed to get to treatment and began dealing with my drug addiction.  I am proud to say that i have not used meth since 1999.  That doesn't mean my addiction went anywhere.  I managed to get to 450 pounds.  I never dealt with the trauma in any healthy way. 

Three years before i actually had my gastric bypass, i began to learn about it.  I really research it and watched people succeed and "fail" with it.  I use the word fail hesitantly.  I believe there is no fail until we give up and decide not to get back up.  Anyway, what i noticed is that the people who had the most success were the ones who were dealing with their head hunger.  The things that were eating at them on the inside.  Some used therapy.  Some used support groups, but most of the success stories were the ones who were dealing with their issues.  (Now here is where i will say that no, not everyone who is obese has trauma issues and so this doesn't apply to all)  

Armed with my observations, and determined to live a better life, i began to seek out help.  I learned coping skills first.  Simple things like journaling.  Walking instead of eating.  Talking it out with someone i trusted.  Things most people figure out long before i did.  Armed with the coping skills, i then allowed myself to be guided by a professional through the mine field of my trauma.  It was hard.  I had several relapses with food abuse.  But i hung in there.  And when i felt ready, THEN and only then, did i contact a surgeon about my gastric bypass.  

I still use support groups.  I am still learning as i go.  But the head hunger does not call to me as loudly as it did in the past.  I am learning to take care of myself as i was meant to.  I dint imagine that there will ever be a time when i can say that i am cured or that i wont have to think about food before i put it in my mouth.  But the overwhelming impulse to eat has lifted for me on a daily basis when i do the things i know help.  

Had i plunged into surgery, i know i would have lost weight for a while.  However, I believe that i would have not had as much success as i have had, nor would it have lasted long.  I think that instead of banning surgery like my home state tried, (Iowa) they should instead require that along with the 6 months of supervised dieting, candidates be required to go to counseling.  The surgery is just one weapon in the arsenal against obesity and the major problem with most of us isn't in our stomachs.  It is in our heads.  And even if you aren't a trauma survivor, ask yourself if you can honestly say that at your highest weight you had a healthy relationship with food.  Chances are, you couldn't say yes.  i dint know about you but if i am going to war, i want all the weapons i can have at my disposal!  I want to win!  

Some days it stinks having to stop and journal or think about why i want to eat when it is just so easy to put it in my mouth and not think.  However, that's how i got into my trouble.  Now i deal with what's eating me so that i can know what i am eating.  For too long, i gave negative events power over my life.  I stayed a victim.  I let it control me and my actions.  Now i stand and take control back.  What happened then does not run my life now.  I went from victim to survivor and folks that is just an amazing feeling.

 Weight loss for me has been much more than watching my body change.  It has been about changing the way i think and feel.  I am no longer a powerless victim but a woman with a voice.  That didn't come from surgery.  It came from a lot of hard work.  The surgery with the therapy and support groups combine was like an atom bomb on my obesity.  That's what i want for us.  I want us to have every opportunity to be successful.  I want us to win a war.  I no longer have to abuse myself.  I want that for others.  It's time to become the people we were always meant to be.  To rekindle that spark that got snuffed out.  Welcome back to live my brave friends, its so nice here!  

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