A Case of Blogger ADD

I tend to read all of the updated blogs on my list before I actually write a post. The problem with this is that I read each blog and say to myself "ohh yea that is a great post. I should write something about that" and then pretty soon my post idea is either forgotten or deemed stupid or boring. Next I have a posting crisis because If I do not write the post I have already figured out in my head I don't know what to post...geeezzz..its like performance anxiety. so now I am going to post my initial idea plus some extra stuff.

High Heels-
When I weighed 304 pounds I carefully planned my footwear. If i had to do a lot of walking I had to wear tennis shoes. This meant that I had to choose my clothing to go with tennis shoes. I had one pair of dressy tennis shoes (if you can call them that) that I wore to work when I was doing classroom observations and then I had regular on vacation tennis shoes to walk around town or museums. I had slip on work shoes too. If I was just teaching for a few hours or able to sit down for most of my work day I could wear these shoes (believe me they were flat and comfortable).

Today I taught in high heels!!!! In December I bought a pair to celebrate some milestone or another. I wore them out to lunch or out for an evening but in order to wear my new too long slacks to work I needed high heels today and I wore them. I walked in these high heels from my car and to my office up three flights of stairs then down to my classroom and stood and taught class for 2.5 hours and then back up the stairs to my office and then down and back to my car. Best of all I could keep wearing them if I wanted. not that deep pain that I used to have in my legs and feet at the end of teaching a class or even at the end of the day when wearing my practical shoes. wahoooo.

Sweet Spot?

I canceled my fill appointment for tomorrow. So here is the funny thing. I have gotten so used to the lapband needing maintenance I am having a hard time with this. After no loss for two weeks I hit a hormonal and sickness tightening up for a week. I lost 4 pounds then had my bender and now I'm tight again and dropped another pound.

My last fill was months ago but the tightness has tightened and loosened quite a bit over the period. The other weird thing is what tightness feels like has changed. I can now eat some foods that were difficult and new foods have started causing me problems. Pasta and olives and pickles are now back on the menu but beef, and chicken have to be handled very carefully. Crackers sometimes cause me problems. Mexican and Indian food seems to burn as it goes down. I have to be more careful about acid reflux. Chocolate can give me indigestion as can ice cream. If i eat too much I might PB but I also might just have a wicked case of acid indigestion and feel like the food is sitting in my pouch forever like a rock.

I have tried my old fill indicator test and it says I need a fill. I can eat a full 1/2 a grilled cheese sandwich and in the past I could eat a 1/2 a grilled cheese sandwich minus a crust. Now it is the whole 1/2 and this sandwich goes through my stoma quite quickly. I could eat more but don't make one anymore thank goodness!!

So as I come up to the end of April I have lost 5 more pounds and a grand total of 115. Leaving 26 or so to reach the normal bmi range. On May 5 I a have a plastic surgery consult at another doctors office and will again report on what they tell me. We were not 100% happy with the one we went to a couple of weeks ago (flaky would be the term) so my friend and I have decided to get a second opinion. Right now my plan is to have the surgery in December where ever the scale lands. At this rate I will be at goal and need a little un-fill by then :) Fingers crossed this all pans out!

Hiding
I'm thinking about the hiding behind question everyone has been posting about. Some of you talked about what you thought might be the origins of your weight problems while others talked about the coping mechanisms you used to 'cover' for your not fitting in.

I might not have always had the most positive relationship with food but I don't fully know if my weight problems are the result of my relationship with food or if something is broken with me physically that caused the food issues in the first place. I grew up with a skinny sister. She has never enjoyed food the way I did nor has she ever heard food voices in her head. She also had some kind of internal meter that told her when she was hungry and when she was full. My sister indulged at Christmas and Thanksgiving as much as I did but during the rest of year she ate when she was hungry and had a clear sense of when her body was hungry. I do not think my body told me. Now whether that was something that got broken over time or whether it was always broken I do not know. I have seen similar issues among my own daughters. I also tend to wonder if some of the people who took on a lot of self-blame for their weight in the blogs might not deserve it...I think there is more physical than everyone thinks.

Now after I was fat (and to a greater or lesser degree this has been my whole life). I thought I carved out a life for myself as the 'smart' child. My sister was the 'pretty' one so I took the nerd path. There were lots of times where I used my pursuit of learning as an excuse not to cook dinner or exercise because there was some academic deadline approaching but.I used the nerd power motto to excuse my inability to wear attractive clothes or willingness to fix my hair or makeup.

Now to end all of this I hesitate to take any blame whatsoever in any of it or regret it either. weight gain and the ensuing life i led as a result was painful no doubt but I am who I am as a result. I think much of my life would have been easier if I had been thin but it was a complicated path to my obesity and most of it was physical and out of my control. The life I carved out for myself is a good one. I have learned to value who people are not what they look like. I have surrounded myself with friends who understand human weakness and have experienced pain in a variety of ways and learned from it. My children value the inside of people not just the external. I have learned how to learn and help others learn...Any other life path would not have afforded me the same opportunities.

So perhaps instead of writing about how we hid...we should write about what we learned from this experience?