Necessary Mutilation

Weight: 206.4 lbs.

Hey, this thing seems to be working! I am finding myself less hungry, more focused, getting full quicker, and LOSING! It is so heartening to be seeing my weight drop, and not rebounding again, that I could cry. It has been a very long time since I lost like this, and I am so hoping that it isn’t like before where as soon as I eat or drink even a wee bit more, it’ll go back up or something. I have actually begun looking forward to my morning weigh-ins again, and I can hardly remember when this was last so.

As importantly, this has infused me with a sense of hope that my pouch is indeed intact, and that perhaps I can do this. My appetite has dropped, as have my fantasies over food. I am not restlessly munching and grazing as I was before, and I haven’t had any hypoglycemic episodes either. I guess that this is showing me that I was in fact eating too many carbs and poorly before, as by comparison, I feel much better on all accounts now. I’d like to think that this is a cleansing and detoxifying process as well, as I feel “lighter” and bouncier (for lack of a better word!).

Interestingly, when I finally could eat yesterday morning, and after having looked forward to eggs for two days, I prepared three soft boiled ones, nearly forgot them on the stove, and then settled down to eat them despite no longer really caring as I had anticipated. Visually, they looked like the tiniest bowl of sustenance, and I initially felt that even three could hardly be enough. But, I slurped a few spoonfuls and was shockingly full in few minutes, and left the rest!  I don’t think that I have done such a thing even right off the operating table! This is unheard of for me, and I am myself stymied by the difference…and only hope that it continues.

I think that I am realizing that I have great difficulty differentiating hunger from every other emotion, and in registering satiety. Even now, “full” is only a somewhat vague sensation rather than a “god, I’m stuffed or in pain” feeling, but I think that I am trying much harder to tune into this channel, and react properly to it. I am now realizing that I likely was not doing this before, and only noticing “full” when the volumn was turned up full blast - ie: I was stuffed. Plus, I now think that I was eating for reasons other than true hunger, and blurring the lines so much that like before surgery, visual, emotional or olfactory cues were driving me to eat rather than internal ones, such as hunger itself.

So…I am hopeful that armed with these new awarenesses and working to make better distinctions, combined with a biological shift or edge that this “test” seems to be affording me, that I hopefully can get back on better track. The key, of course, will be in staying there. I keep thinking of a time, back in 1994, when I developed a mysterious case of encephalitis, and was hospitalized for a week and in a coma for the first few days. I was quite altered and brain damaged afterwards for some time, and it took me months to regain my “normal” ability to think, perceive things, process information and the like. What is relevent here, is that my sense of hunger and appetite was also effected, and while recovering, for instance, all I wanted to eat for some strange reason, was cream of mushroom soup. Meal after meal. And I needed others to make it for me, as I had coordination and sensory difficulties that made this difficult at first.

Anyway, I had an awareness, even then, that I had a window of opportunity in which to experiment with new eating habits and break myself of old. I was profoundly unhungry, unmotivated by food, and whatever compulsions I had lived with regarding food, seemed to be gone. Perhaps the part of the brain that stimulates these feelings, had been damaged or altered by the encephalitis.

Unfortunately, I consciously and knowingly choose to resume my previous bad habits regarding food, and can remember the moment with clarity, when I nearly forced myself to eat more and worse foods than I wanted, even though I realized that this would likely put me right back on this track. And I did it anyway, even while realizing that the window of opportunity was rare and precious, and perhaps an amazing chance to reinvent myself.

The moral of the story is that I was knowingly “stupid” then, and I fear the same, now. The brain can be mightier than the stomach, and I’d love to be one of those optimistic, “I’m never going to eat like that again” type people, but unfortunately, I guess that I am not. Whether I am a realist or a pessimist is yet to be seen, but whatever it is called, I will remain tuned into my inner voices about such things, and continue to try and do my best to flush them out and stomp them, when necessary. And, no doubt, with your help!