The Other Side

Aug9

 

There are days, like today, where I feel like I woke up with a new body. I’ve spent part of the morning going through clothing and separating out what’s wearable and what’s not, even though I already did this at my lowest weight before surgery. And I am not back to that lowest weight, yet, although I’m very close. (Hopefully, I’ll be in a loss situation by next week’s blog.)

While I’m a big believer in non-scale victories (NSV), I also tend to get hung up on what the scale says. I also tend to still think of myself as obese — not in the stinkin’-rotten BMI sense of the word, but as someone who’s grossly overweight and carries the social stigma of being considered as other. Someone who lives on the far side of an invisible barrier that few get to cross.

I felt something different this morning; an excitement as I realized that my body has continued to change, despite not yet being at my lowest. That number was back in the spring, before knee surgery, before physical therapy, before a temporary increase in weight (and the process to re-lose those pounds), before working my legs to strengthen one after surgery and the other before the next, before hitting my stride again with walking.

Nah, if it’s too *big*, I’ll get rid of it!

I was quite surprised to find that I could lay aside more clothes for the donation pile, and move some up from my too-small drawer (which is looking pretty scant these days). I also tried on a dress I bought back in the spring that was too small, then, and now needs to be altered to fit on top, and a few dresses that have hung in my closet in excess of a decade, waiting for wearing.

Well, the waiting is over! All I need is a few occasions where I can wear them and I’m set. I can finally cut those clearance tags off. (Yes, I’m bad about leaving tags on clothing that doesn’t fit, yet — maybe as a “well, it wasn’t THAT expensive!” thought to console myself for blowing money on something that doesn’t fit.)

I’m at the point, now, where I have a few items that are still too small; a couple pair of jeans, a dress I bought as a goal dress back around 15 years ago, and a leather coat that has been around for almost as long that I should be able to wear this winter with no problems. In short, the number of things in my home that are too small is probably the same number of too-small clothes normal women have.

Maybe even less!

Every single thing is in a regular size; no more plus sizes, with very few exceptions. And those exceptions are items that ran very small to begin with. I actually cut through the plus-size section of my local Walmart the other day, saw something cute hanging up on the wall, and then realized that I don’t wear those sizes anymore.

I’m no longer other; the only one who treats me as if I am… is me. I need to give myself permission to allow myself to enjoy normalcy without forgetting the lessons I’ve learned over previous years. My life is on the other side of that invisible barrier, now. I intend to stay.

On a related subject, when I went into my orthopedic surgeon’s office last year to see about getting on the list for knee replacement, I hit a wall thanks to a PA who regarded me as other. He told me to come back when I lost weight. I had to delay surgery because I didn’t lose the weight and there’s a part of me that has always thought well, he won that round. Later, I was able to lose the weight and had to weigh in to prove it, but I did it.

Yesterday, I had my two-month post-surgery follow-up with my surgeon’s office. I didn’t expect to see the surgeon — or, for that matter, the PA who disregarded me the first time; I hadn’t seen him since that day last year. Until yesterday. He was very professional. I no longer felt as if he regarded me as he did, before. Neither did the surgeon, but he’s the one who helped me find other ways to accomplish my goals. My weight is no longer a factor with their office; no one has asked me to step up on a scale to make sure I’m within the right BMI range.

So here I stand, perfectly normal, and I’m no longer other. Sometimes, it’s like a fairy tale, where I’ve been given the gift to relive my life. I can never forget, though, that this is a gift I worked hard for and gave to myself.

 

Fall In Line

Aug2

 

When I started this journey nearly five years ago, I did it only for myself. Not for my husband, not for my loved ones.

And certainly not for the health insurance company, although you’d think they’d be pleased with my success.

If you’ve been reading my blog over the last year or so, you know I’ve already had some weight-related issues that at first made me ineligible for knee replacement surgery; the dreaded BMI, no doubt a requirement of my insurance company. I slew that dragon, and it won’t be a factor in my second knee replacement surgery.

But now, our insurance company will only extend a “wellness benefit” if you cough up certain information, including — you guessed it — a BMI. They have already said that by next year, any BMI over 30 will automatically require the insured person to participate in a weight loss program (supplied by an insurance company vendor, of course!) or they will not be eligible for the wellness discount.

Whoa, wait a minute. These two things are NOT the same!

According to the stats and charts, a BMI over 30 is considered obese. It makes no difference if that person is a bodybuilder or a couch potato; just punch your height and weight into the calculator, and voila! You’ve been reduced to a number that means nothing to anyone except an insurance company that wants to hold it against you. (I’ll also add that they want waist measurements, as well as some other health-related things that are all in the name of lowering our health risk.)

I’m not going to debate whether these are necessarily good things in the long run. Any positive move toward health is a good thing in my book. What bothers me is being told not just to lose weight — but how to do it. If I don’t manage to make the statisticians happy, I will be instructed on what’s best for me, despite having solidly proven that I already know what works best for me. When it comes to weight reduction, there is a lot of bias.

While I think getting under a BMI of 30 is achievable within the next year, I also resent the entire idea that it doesn’t matter what your body composition is. I likely have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 pounds of excess skin, and that will be held against me. Remove that skin, and I am already under their “healthy BMI” number, or nearly so.

Personally, I refuse to do anything that will jeopardize my success. I am far too close, now, to allow for the whims of a nondescript entity — or anyone else, for that matter — to dictate my health to me.

I am the one in control. I am strong. And I will not simply fall in line.

 

Size Matters

Jul27

 

All jokes aside… does size matter?

According to Racked.Com, 68% of American women wear size 14 — and above. And that number is steadily increasing.

The average woman is 5’3” (a mere inch taller than me), weighs 168.5 pounds, and wears a size 16-18.

I find these stats surprising; not because of whatever research resulted in these numbers (and its validity), but because, according to Racked, I’m pretty darned average these days. I’m a little bit shorter, I still weigh a bit more than their average number, but I actually have a few clothing pieces around that say size 14 on the tag.

Normal? Average? Me?

I have a cedar chest that holds the largest size clothing I ever wore. That includes a pair of jeans in size 32. At that time, that was the largest size the clothing store Catherine’s sold. I was absolutely horrified when I realized that — and yet, there I was.

And here I am. I’m thrilled to death to be under conventional plus sizes; regardless of how the industry looks at it, I go by what the clothing stores generally offer: up to 18 in regular sizes, plus sizes in 16 and up. (Racked considers everything 14 and up to be “plus” sizing, whether it’s marked that way or not.) Not because that number on the tag really means anything — other than price, availability, and style. For whatever reason, a lot of stores still consider anyone in plus sizes as dowdy, old, and shapeless.

The number on the tag doesn’t mean much to me. I know vanity sizing is a big thing; what used to be a size 14 years ago is probably a 10, now. It sells clothing when people think they’re in a smaller size, which just goes to show what a mental game size really is.

Right? RRRiiiigggghhhttt????!

Me, I’m more concerned with the actual measurements of the clothing. Like pretty much every other woman in existence, I have clothing in three or four sizes and they fit the same. There’s not much in the way of consistency. That’s not my point, though.

I don’t think of myself as average. As normal. There may never come a day when I am totally free of the mental idea of being a large sized woman, no matter how much weight I eventually lose. Maybe that’s a good thing, in the long run; I’ve stopped flogging myself for my clothing size, but a little reality check keeps me honest. I know when my clothes get snug that I’d better do something to keep the situation under control.

There are times when I feel like I’m in disguise, passing as a normal person. As if I’m really someone else, and if people look hard enough, they’ll see the real me instead of the poser in front of them. I sometimes feel as if I need to bring up my history as a morbidly obese woman as a way to establish myself. Maybe even apologize. What for, I have no idea.

These days, I make a big effort to fight that part of me that feels like a fraud in this body. Every day, I feel a bit more like I imagine everyone else feels; it just took me a lot more effort to get here. I often take a deep breath, remind myself that I don’t owe anyone an explanation for my existence, and push forward. I am who I am; take me or leave me. After all, we all have a history.

So yeah, in a different way, size matters.

(PS: hubby will be thrilled that I’ve included yet another country song.)

 

A Change Is Gonna Come

Jul21

 

Hopefully, you know, by now, that this blog is not as much about weight loss as it is about gaining health. In light of that, I celebrate what many in the diet world call “NSV” — or Non-Scale Victory.

In my opinion, NSVs are more important than actual weight loss stats. A few I’ve had over the last couple of months:

  • I feared my knee replacement surgery might be delayed because of elevated blood pressure. To my surprise, my blood pressure was entirely in normal ranges, and obviously, I had surgery.

  • Part of my mile walk yesterday.

    Before surgery, the farthest I managed to walk in one stretch was about a mile. It took me about a year to get to that point. Roughly seven weeks after surgery, I woke up yesterday and walked a mile.

  • I’ve got plenty of really great goals for the rest of this year. I’ve got a lot of work on my plate, a dear friend and I are taking a trip and we’re having a blast planning it, another great friend and I will keep our annual trek to a cabin at the lake to write (this annual tradition has become one of my favorite times), my husband and I are planning to camp during Thanksgiving break, I have a concert to rehearse for, and a bunch of events strewn out over the course of the fall. And it’s only July. There was a day not long ago when I wouldn’t really have been able to consider most of these things.
  • Thanks to working my way down through clothing I have kept until it fit, I’ve now got more drawer and closet space than I’ve ever had.
  • People who don’t know my history with weight actually treat me like a normal person. There is a huge difference in how people treat the morbidly obese from the merely overweight, and at some point, I’ve crossed into normal territory. (Physically, if never mentally!)
  • I no longer feel as if I must explain myself to people that don’t know I spent so much of my life as a morbidly obese and physically limited person. For one thing, if they don’t know, that’s fine with me; I am who I am regardless of my physical appearance. For another, it’s really no one’s business unless, for instance, there’s a medical reason to discuss it. I rather like walking through life as a normal person.
  • Back when I lost weight years ago, I felt like I had a point to prove; and not just to other people, to show them they were wrong about me, but to myself. I never quite lost the idea that I was different from everyone else. I don’t know that I ever will entirely lose that; it’s important that I always carry the lessons I’ve learned with me, but I don’t have so much of a chip on my shoulder these days. I’m much more concerned with my own journey and not so concerned with what other people think.
  • Better clothes. 😛

It’s easy to get lost in physical stats; how much weight, how many inches, how big of a drop in clothing size. The diet “experts” will use these as indicators of success, but the longer I am on this journey, the more solidly I believe that this process is about the changes made and the resulting improvement in quality of life. After all, no one knows my weight, how big my waist is, or what size I wear, unless I tell them. But just about everyone can tell a difference in desire, attitude, and ability.

This journey should be about enjoying life as a healthier person, looking toward the future, and less about self-flogging over small goals not met in this moment. It does you no good to physically improve but mentally slide backward or become obsessed. With effort, change will come.

 

Sometimes It Rains

Jul12

 

I admit that I am pretty horrible at self-care. When I actually do take time, I usually feel guilty for doing it — which, of course, helps nothing.

Between an active recovery from surgery and enduring seemingly endless hammering outside my house, I really needed a break; some time that wasn’t devoted to getting to or from physical therapy, recovery, or listening to construction workers put siding up. I have a ton of work to do and I work from home. I’m one of those people that work best when I have some peace and quiet.

So we took off for the lake, despite regular daily temps in the high 90’s, a drought in the area, and a fire ban at the state park where we chose to camp. We can cook, but that’s the only allowable fire. Honestly, I wasn’t sure this would be any less stressful than the previous several weeks, although I was prepared to spend a good part of every day tackling work projects.

Sometimes, though, when you’re going through a drought and you need some mental recovery, you have to make it rain.

Along with the work, I’ve had time to breathe in, breathe out — and move on. Enjoy a breeze off the lake. Watch geese and ducks on the water. Listen to mockingbirds call to each other in the morning. Watch the clouds float across the sky and reflect down across the lake.

Great Blue Heron by our campsite after the storm.

 

Taking time to do these things has allowed me to get my thoughts in order for the many things I face over the months to come; lots of work, quite a few events, and eventually, another surgery before year’s end, as well as a new addition to the family. Taking a breather means I have more of me to give to all of these things, and I’ve already been making great strides this week.

I wish I could remember this lesson; I’m much more likely to run myself completely out of gas and then beat myself up for not meeting expectations. This does no one good; not those I serve and certainly not myself. Restoration is vital to growth, and the older I get, the more important it becomes.

Late yesterday, a storm blew up while we were at the lake. My husband had to hold down the dining canopy to keep it from flying off while I held on to an awning support to the camper. Our dog was inside, scared out of her wits; just before I came out, I felt the whole camper rock. Granted, it’s a small camper, but that’s never an easy feeling. We had to wait the storm out and then clean up afterward, but now that the storm is gone, we’re left with moderate temperatures and beautiful weather on the lake. The dog is happy, again, and the sky is blue.

It’s better to take the break and let the rains come than to build up to a storm. Simply put, there are times when we just have to make it rain.

 

Coming Home

Jul5

 

It’s easy to forget the pain.

We all do it. As a woman and a mother, I’m convinced that if more women remembered the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, there would be a lot more only children in this world. But as time goes by, we forget.

The same holds true for my knee surgery. It was only a little over 5 weeks ago, but I set the date for my other knee to be replaced in my follow-up appointment earlier this week. Just like any other choice we willingly make to go through pain, for whatever reason, we do it because there’s a promise of something better on the other side.

Back to the familiar and wonderful feeling of being in control.

Despite going through many years of often excruciating knee pain, that memory is already fading — perhaps because it was temporarily replaced by post-op pain and healing. Before, I knew there was only a limited amount of improvement I could possibly see; now, every day brings a noticeable improvement.

Forgetting pain is a good and natural thing. Forgetting the lessons, though? The things you swear to yourself you’ll never, ever do, again? No. I caused irreparable harm by allowing myself to become so overweight that I damaged parts of my body. Typically, people who need total knee replacements are at least 10 to 15 years older than I am, and my doctor first brought it up with me roughly 12 years ago.

We’re humans, though, and we often tend to forget the lessons learned in times of stress and return to our previous norms. So when, by necessity, I had to change my normal way of eating because of surgery, and I gained weight because of it, I feared that part of me that might see that as a return to normal — the normal I knew for most of my adult life.

I found myself yearning for the feeling I have when I am totally in control. That’s where I feel the best. It’s my comfort zone, and where my body and brain moves toward. The best part? That’s the normal I’ve come to know over the last nearly five years, rather than the destructive normal that came before.

Sometimes, the lessons learned aren’t enough to keep us from repeating mistakes of the past, but every day, this feels a bit more like coming home. The path to home isn’t far away, now, at all.

 

Am I The Same Girl

Jun29

 

My recovery is finally at a point where I’m sick and tired of being cooped up in the house. When I leave, it’s for physical therapy, or for brief trips out; at the moment, I feel caged up and I’m ready to fly the coop.

It’s got me thinking about the things I am looking forward to doing — not just because I’ve got a new knee that doesn’t limit me like the old one did (well, to a point, it still does; I’m not quite at 100%, yet), but because I put in the hard work to lose enough weight and get in good enough shape that I’m on the verge of being able to do a lot of things previously off limits. These are just a few of the things I’m looking forward to doing.

Top of Pinnacle Mountain — I’ve been there.

Hiking. A couple of my friends post photos of their hiking trips. Mountains, waterfalls, woodland trails. These are all things I absolutely loved doing, once upon a time before my body became my enemy. I long for the outdoors, being able to hike without limitation and thought.

Swimming. I grew up across the street from a lake and I spent the vast majority of my first 16 years of life on the lake. Any chance I could, I was was swimming, canoeing, sailing, and in the winter, ice skating. I must have been a fish in a former life; I live to be near water. My best vacations are waterfront somewhere. A gym I used to belong to had a pool, and it was a sad day when I realized that swimming was out; my goto swimming stroke is the breaststroke and the frog kick put sideways pressure on my knee to a point where it buckled.

There’s not much scarier than having to fight the natural reaction to a buckling knee: gasping. You don’t gasp when swimming — not without water in your lungs. For my own safety, I had to stop swimming laps. I hated that; it was like a piece of me, gone. There has always been something ethereal to me in the ability to slice through the water, suspended and floating. I imagine it’s much like flying.

Dancing. I can’t say I’ve ever been a good dancer, but who says you have to be good at something in order to enjoy it?

Thinking less. This is the big one. Until you’ve been physically limited, it’s hard to understand how much active thought goes into just existing. As an example, we were part of a group of friends who played bar trivia every week at a restaurant that set aside their bar area for trivia. It was popular, so unless we got there early, finding a place to sit could be a real challenge.

I hated going there because of the crowd. I felt claustrophobic there. I knew that once I was seated, I wouldn’t even be able to get up and use the restroom, because that would mean asking any number of people to move so I could get out of my seat — and then back to it. I honestly felt like I wouldn’t be able to get out in an emergency. I felt literally trapped.

My physical limitations — both my size and my knees — meant I was constantly having to think about things those without these issues likely rarely think about. Will that chair hold me? The hostess is sitting us in a booth — will I fit? Can I walk that far, and if I can’t, how can I break up the walk so I have a place to sit and rest?

This has been a constant and ongoing process for me, and although I was able to leave the size component behind, the physical limits caused by bad knees are about to be behind me. My right knee was in very bad shape; my left will also be replaced but isn’t as bad. My right one would randomly buckle, lock, or twinge so badly that I’d nearly fall in an attempt to get weight off of it. Not so with the other, and while I don’t know yet when it’ll be replaced, it’s not going to hold me back in the same way the right one did. (I’ll likely schedule the second surgery next Tuesday, at my one month follow-up.)

I am excited to test that out. We’re going camping in a little more than a week; while I’m still recovering and I know I’ll have to take it easy, it’s still going to be different for me. I can actually trust my knee, now, to not do stupid things when I put my weight on it. There’s huge power in just knowing that joint isn’t going to suddenly do something stupid. I can put one foot in front of the other, and unless I’m testing out some dorky dance moves, I should stay upright and moving forward like a normal person would.

Me? Normal? How cool is that?

This is what I wanted: living life with fewer limitations. There are always limitations for everyone, but if I can do something to improve, that’s what I want to do, because handicapping myself was the dumbest, most oppressive thing I ever did to myself.

I’m still that same girl. Just better.

 

Bridges

Jun22

 

I’m making large strides just about every single day, now — including a return to my normal way of eating.

That’s right. After being off plan for roughly a month, and enjoying it at points, I’ve come to accept that I don’t feel mentally comfortable or physically right when I eat things that differ from the way I’ve been eating for the past nearly five years.

I’ve felt this way for a while; when I’ve gone on vacation, I’ve allowed myself to change what I eat. Those seem to be the real tests; when I come home, will I keep eating in a way that’s detrimental to my body? That’s the time I’m most likely to go off a diet and not get back on.

May this bridge burning be permanent!

These days, I think differently. I may deviate for a bit for specific reasons, but my normal is the way I eat when I feel my best, and that’s the way I eat when I’m actively pursuing health goals. My body feels better. I drop water weight, which is always a relief. This week, five pounds of water have vacated the premises. I still have a way to go before being back at my low weight, but I already feel much better after just a few days of returning to my normal.

It’s a crucial difference from my previous 50+ years on this earth. I always saw diets as temporary things, as punishment in a way, as something to get through and then, of course, stop doing at some point. Mind you, as many of you know, I was quite successful on a previous attempt; but instead of keeping the goal of health in mind, I finally drifted off course and gradually regained all of my weight, including an additional 35 pounds or so.

Failing on purpose is never the answer to finding success. Sure, we all fail, and those failures have something to teach us; I am glad I learned from that experience, so it wasn’t wasted, but we should never choose to fail. I was entirely too hardheaded and unwilling to bend, so I kept trying the same things over and over. And in my mind, my way of eating and my physical exercises were merely a way to get to an end, and I convinced myself I’d eventually be able to stop doing what I was doing.

That’s really not how this works, but it took walking this journey to figure that out. It took truly accepting that my changes needed to be both sustainable and permanent. My old normal was always moving toward how I had been living before whatever diet I was on. My new normal is being in command of my body, being in control of how I feel. It’s not deprivation, which is how I viewed every single effort before this one; it’s the fulfillment of goals, it’s the reversal of damage, it’s the mindset of success.

Over the last few weeks of recovery after knee surgery, it’s been easy to get lost in the process; I’ve been in pain. I’ve been dealing with all the things people deal with after a major surgery. I didn’t concern myself so much with what I ate, especially since I was at the mercy of hospital dining options and then in consideration of what was easy for my husband to fix while I wasn’t able to be up and about. Working through this has reminded me of how important it is to me, both mentally and physically, to be in charge of how I fuel my body.

In a little more than a week, I’ll have my follow-up with my surgeon — and will likely set the date for replacing my other knee. I am proud to have made it this far, and to have tackled the first surgery with gusto; while there is still plenty of healing to do, I think the second surgery will be less of a catharsis, and I’ll be meeting it head-on and strong. I’ve made myself promises I plan on keeping.

I’m over the bridge and I get closer to where I want to be every single day. I work hard every day to burn that bridge and never cross back over it to the other side.

 

Two Steps Forward – One Step Back

Jun15

 

Over the past week, my progress has accelerated somewhat — to a point where my physical therapist moved me from a walker to a cane, and the walker is being tucked away for my next knee surgery.

When you’re in recovery, it seems like the process moves in slow motion. While I saw a little improvement each day, I have spent an embarrassing amount of time over the last 17 days crying, in pain, arguing with myself about whether I’ve been lying to myself about my abilities. Beating myself up for not preparing better before surgery. Wondering if I’m really cut out for this.

Just keep moving forward.

Until this week, anyway. I knew I was making progress when my physical therapist kept trying me on new things to see how I’d do instead of repeating the same training over and over again. I’ve never been quite as happy to be able to step over a plastic cup by actually bending my knee enough to do it, rather than compensating in some way. It’s simple things, but they’re big, too.

Some might see this as a form of regression; I spent a long time using a cane before I could reliably and steadily walk around my neighborhood. And here I am, again, actually happy to be moved back to a cane. I know this time it won’t take me nearly as long to get my stability back, and once the pain from newness wears off my knee, I’ll be able to build back up to the amount of walking I was doing previously — and surpass it.

Likewise, I finally stepped on a scale and I know how much weight I’ve gained. Yes, it’s a setback. No, I’m not thrilled that I’ve put on a few pounds. The good news is that instead of letting the old voices that used to screw with my head convince me that I should just keep eating and ignore weight gain, to my detriment, I know with certainty that I’m in control. I didn’t come this far, after all, to let recovery defeat me.

A lot has changed in 17 days; even more will change in the weeks to come as I learn, train, and test myself on the way back to where I was before I started this process. I know some finding it frustrating to make progress and take steps backward, but I see this as a necessary part of moving forward; even losing one step for every two taken is moving forward.

 

Baby I Kneed Your Lovin’

Jun7

 

One of my knees is 56 years old, and the other is 11 days old.

The last week has been devoted to my nifty new body part, basically giving it an introduction to life at La Casa by punishing it into submission. Its first days of life have been spent being strapped into an apparatus that automatically bends it 6 hours a day, taking it for walks — whether it likes them or not, forcing it to bend more and more in routine sessions, and taking it to visit to people who specialize in making it do things it doesn’t presently feel all that cheerful about doing.

I want my new knee to know this isn’t typical life around these parts. There’s about a week and a half more to go of the bendy thing and the ankle stranglers will be cleaned and relegated to a box early next week, waiting for the next time. After that, we’ll settle into a normal lifetime of exercising, walking, occasionally visiting Those Who Bend and Straighten, as well as letting my brain do other things than calculate how much time I’ve got left to be strapped into the bendy thing before I can chill out with the ice packs. (CPM machines are marvels of therapy, but they aren’t much fun.)

Not my knees, but I don’t take any bologna.

I’ve come to have a nearly zen relationship with ice packs. There is nothing more comforting on my baby knee than to be wrapped in something cold after being subjected to exercise bikes, leg lifts, calve raises, hamstring stretches. It’s the equivalent of a cold beer on a really hot day.

In the opposite direction, my baby knee has introduced me to the wonderful world of People Giving Us Food, which is awesome, but somewhat unkind to the scale. It’s been hard to wrap my mind around that my body currently needs more nourishment than it usually requires, thanks to baby knee; hubby lost weight after his second surgery. I have not done the same. Far from it. But next Monday comes a marking point: as my baby knee and I make the transition in the third week of recovery, I’ll be returning to my normal way of eating.

I have absolutely adored and appreciated the kindness of others, but my hips have been enjoying it far too much, so the shift back to sane eating is now in countdown mode. Goodbye, cruel carbs!

After that? Perhaps a normal life for a bit, working at losing the weight that’s come to revisit in recent weeks, all in prep for introducing another baby knee to the world. But that one ought to be a bit easier.