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I pulled up outside my once-favorite fast food restaurant and ordered a small Diet Coke.
"Got it!" a friendly voice said. "One large Diet."
The very thought of it made my stomach hurt. "No," I said, "not large. Small."
Long pause. "Um...the thing is, you can get a large for a dollar, but I have to charge you $1.85 for a small."
Okay, then. "One large Diet," I said resignedly.
Well, I've officially weathered my first case of the flu since my gastric sleeve. Actually, it's unusual for me to contract a stomach virus. I can't remember when I had my last one. I don't know whether the surgery made me more vulnerable or whether I just happened to stumble across a vicious bug, but I spent most of the weekend sticking very close to the bathroom.
Let's face it, I've got to be one of the world's worst cooks. All right, all right, take away the words "one of" and you've probably hit the nail on the head. Let's just say that I'm not bad at serving up cat food, but when it comes to edibles consumed by humans, I'm just not the domestic type.
Besides, when my friends and I get together, we don't want to waste out time cooking. We want to enjoy each other's company, so we usually go to a restaurant to eat.
After my gastric sleeve decreased my stomach size by over 70%, however, I started to notice a problem. I was paying full price for entrees that stopped tempting me after a few bites. I have just enough German in me to dislike wasting money, so I came upon a few solutions that made eating out a less expensive proposition.
I wrote last week about how a colleague of mine convinced me to weigh myself, but I didn't relate how that came about. She had come back to my office to talk to me about a patient issue and found me despondent at my desk.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I don't think the surgery is working anymore," I told her. "I'm gaining weight again. I can tell."
Her eyebrows almost disappeared into her hair line. "Gaining weight? I don't think so. Your clothes look looser every day."
"They're not," I said. "I'm gaining. I can tell."
So she dragged me to a set of scales, where I learned that my subjective reality was not objective reality--in fact, I had lost seventeen pounds since my most recent visit with my bariatric surgeon.
"Stay in your body." The first time a health care professional gave me this bit of advice, I have to admit I shook my head. Where the hell else had I been for 43 years if not in my body? It wasn't like I'd been renting out the space to anyone else so I could go on that long-awaited, body-free vacation.
As I began the process of recovering from gastric sleeve surgery, however, I began to realize that the doctors and nurses were right. I didn't fully inhabit my physical being. Instead, I lived mostly in my head. I've written before about how, once upon a time, I got very good about ignoring my body's hungry and full signals. I got away with that because my focus was always on thoughts-- planning, plotting, outlining strategizing, imagining.
Binge eating, or bingeing, is defined as an episode of uncontrollable eating. During a binge eating episode, a person consumes large amounts of food. During the time the person is eating, he or she "spaces out" and loses track of how much is being consumed, or he or she simply cannot stop eating.
That doesn't mean that everyone who pigs out sometimes has a problem with bingeing. A binge eating disorder is not diagnosed unless the person experiences frequent episodes of binge eating that lead to physical or mental health problems. During the binge, or immediately after, the person with a binge eating disorder often feels significant guilt or even self-hatred. Yet unlike people with bulimia, people who binge make no efforts to "purge" such as vomiting, misusing laxatives, or over-exercising.
First of all, if you're considering weight loss surgery, don't let this post discourage you. I don't for one moment regret having a gastric sleeve. I'm slimmer and healthier right now than I have been in more than a decade, and it's a great feeling.
I hope, however, that this post does inform you. In spite of my surgeon's best efforts, I was somewhat naive when I had my procedure. If I could go back and have a talk with my pre-surgery self, there are a few things I would like to tell her.
Continue reading "5 Things I Wish I'd Known Before My Gastric Sleeve" »
