tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15543429731510041462024-03-14T04:51:25.644-05:00On The Bandwagonstrategies for success with the adjustable gastric bandJeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.comBlogger196125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-2046580894829737432014-09-04T11:35:00.000-05:002014-09-04T11:36:25.419-05:00Sometimes I forgetSometimes I forget the details of life as a morbidly obese woman. For example, always wearing elastic-waist pants. Then something silly reminds me. For example, the other day I realized that I'd pulled my pants down instead of unzipping them before sitting on the commode. That's a little reminder of my old wardrobe, and also an indication that those zippered pants might be a little too big. Very hard to wrap my mind around that concept, let me tell you. Especially when the pants are a size 4. Yes, I said 4 - SIZE FOUR.<br />
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The sun was in my eyes when this picture was taken, so I look like I just swallowed a quart of vinegar, but that's a genuine SIZE FOUR outfit.<br />
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Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-10553851034764297372014-07-22T12:51:00.001-05:002014-07-22T12:54:26.298-05:00Does this make my butt look big?Ah, body image. The bane of my existence. But I know I'm not alone in that struggle. Jema fights it too.<br />
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<br />Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-22388576146091169192014-05-06T14:02:00.001-05:002014-05-06T14:08:25.800-05:00COME TO MY PITY PARTY!<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Self-pity is a popular commodity in
the WLS community. I often say things like, “You want <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> pity? Sorry, you can’t have it. I’m saving all of mine for a
truly deserving person – like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>.” Let’s
see how Jema and her dog deal with self-pity in today’s Jema & Alice
cartoon, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Come to My Pity Party!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Admit it. You know what self-pity is,
at least well enough to know it at a glance as you trudge on and on towards
your weight goal. So take a look at this cartoon and see if you recognize
anything about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;">In today’s episode of
the WLS adventures of Jema and her faithful dog, dark clouds hang over their
heads and rain a deluge of self-pity onto Jema’s life. What climate condition
started that rain? The cause is an emotional meteorological phenomenon commonly
known as envy. Jema has been comparing her WLS journey to everyone else’s and
comes out crying because they’re all so successful that she’s a failure in
comparison. Or so <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she</i> believes….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;">I understand how Jema
feels because if I let them, envy and self-pity walk hand in hand through my
life. They trample right over the good stuff and cultivate the bad stuff. The
kind of stuff that gets me nowhere near my goals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Jema’s problem today
is that she attended a support group meeting and left it thinking evil thoughts
about another bandster who’d reported a 50-pound weight loss already. Jema had
"only" lost 35 pounds. What was wrong with her? Why was Debbie
Doolittle but not Jema blessed with superior band success? Jema’s been a good
girl too, in fact, a very hard-working and deserving girl. As our heroine wails
in today’s cartoon, “It just isn't fair!” So she throws herself a pity party while
Alice plays the violin. And then?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;">And then, she dries
her eyes and moves on. She decides to use her rival’s weight loss success as
inspiration instead of punishment, Debbie Doolittle might even have some tips
to share at the next support group meeting. Somehow, some way, Jema’s going to
find the silver lining in her dark cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;">OK, party’s over.
Back to work!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-87852916817928074522014-05-06T14:00:00.000-05:002014-05-06T14:10:19.513-05:00DARK CLOUDS in TODAY'S FORECAST<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-77603514782587554782014-04-15T11:35:00.002-05:002014-04-15T11:35:13.224-05:00Still amazed!<br />
Even 6.5 years after the start of my WLS journey, I'm still amazed when I see photos of myself - and that's both before <i>and</i> after photos!<br />
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<br />Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-68020899504455972332013-10-20T15:52:00.001-05:002013-10-20T15:52:44.549-05:00Weight loss + age = ughI'm very, very happy about my weight loss, but that in combination with advancing age is not a pretty sight. Yesterday I had my husband take a photo of me when I got home from work, mainly to show how Jack, one of our new strays, has gone from fearing human touch to seeking it (especially when the human is holding a dog biscuit in her hand). I was interested to note that I have a backbone, but not so happy to see the stuff going on in the vicinity of my neck and chin. Jack is the dog on the left, and our longtime resident Blackie is the one on the right. I'm the one wearing purple, in case you were wondering if that was me or ET.<br />
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Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-44488398804854464522013-09-03T11:09:00.001-05:002013-09-03T11:09:22.515-05:00Back to School
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">September’s here,
and it’s back to school season. Back to the basics, back to reading, writing,
and arithmetic. Actually, any time is a good time for a band refresher course.
It’s easy to lose your focus and take a few too many side trips to the land of
potato chips and chocolate while you trudge along the bandwagon trail. When
bandsters ask how to get back on track, the most common response I’ve heard is
a very sensible one: BACK TO BASICS. So I suggest that you re-read the basics
in Bandwagon: the 21 rules for success (chapter 6) and the 15 band eating
skills (chapter 12). You don’t have a copy of Bandwagon? That’s easy enough to
remedy. You can order both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon </i>and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon Cookery</i> by clicking on one
of the ordering options on the left hand side of this blog page. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon Cookery</i> print version is
available on Amazon, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon’s 2<sup>nd</sup>
edition</i> is now available in Kindle format on Amazon: Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DVAYK4I/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_pop_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Jean+McMillan&search-alias=books&text=Jean+McMillan&sort=relevancerank" target="_blank">HERE</a> to go to those Amazon listings.</span><br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">THE 3 R’S<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While you’re waiting for your copy of
Bandwagon to arrive, let’s talk about the 3 R’s: Readin’, ‘riting, and
‘rithmetic. What are the 3 R’s of band success?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">1.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>R is for
Reading</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> – learn to read your body’s signals about hunger, satiety, and
restriction.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">2.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>R is for (W)riting</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> – keep a food
and exercise log. Studies show that people who keep a food log lose more weight
than those who don’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">3.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>R is for (A)rithmetic</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> – weight
loss, as hard as it can be to achieve, involves very basic arithmetic. As long
as you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. This doesn’t
mean that you have to count calories to lose weight, or count calories for the
rest of your life, but if you’re struggling and not sure why, try calorie
counting for at least one week. Online tracking programs (like such as those at
sparkpeople.com, livestrong.com, and choosemyplate.gov) make it easy to log
your food intake and calculate your calories. And by the way, calorie counting
is meaningless if you’re not weighing and measuring your food. Yes, more
arithmetic!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">YOUR REPORT
CARD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I haven’t seen a report card for some 38
years, but I clearly remember the looming importance of each semester’s report
card. In elementary school, we were graded on effort as well as achievement.
Tell us honestly: what’s your WLS effort grade today?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve seen 2 different trends in other
bandsters’ WLS journeys:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">1.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Weight loss is relatively easy in the
beginning, when you’re at your heaviest and also most gung-ho, but eventually
it gets harder as you get smaller (and burn fewer calories), the novelty of your
band wears off, and your underlying eating issues (like stress eating,
emotional eating, etc.) aren’t addressed.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">2.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Weight loss is hard in the beginning, when
you don’t yet have enough fill in your band, but eventually you and your band
click and the weight loss gets easier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Both situations #1 & 2 require extra
effort on your part sooner or later. Neither situation is better or worse, but
your awareness and understanding of your situation can help you deal with it
with less “poor me” and more “go me.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ll illustrate this with an example from
a frivolous but always fascinating aspect of life: hair. I have straight, thin
hair, and not a lot of it. I wish it were thicker, curlier, shinier, but it’s
not. With the help of my hairdresser, I can make my hair look better, but
agonizing about it does not do a single thing to make my hair curl. And I’m not
going back to my 1980’s poodle perm, thank you very much.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Similarly,
I have an inborn intolerance for idleness and am easily bored, especially when
it comes to food and exercise. I wish that weren’t so, but it is. With the help
of my dietitian, food magazines, and cookbooks, I manage to plan and prepare
healthy, delicious, interesting meals. With the help of my fitness instructor,
I manage to participate in a wide variety of fitness classes that are never
boring.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">SOME ROOM FOR
IMPROVEMENT?<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the back of my report card was a space
for my teacher to write comments about areas in which I exceled or (more often)
I needed to improve. Mine usually had to do with talking and clowning during
class too much (what a surprise). So, what opportunities for improvement await
you this semester? Mine is to back to planning and logging my food every day. Further,
I need to start paying more attention to the resulting nutritional data rather
than logging and moving on. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If I don’t pay attention to the data, I
can’t evaluate the quality of my food intake, but I’ve been logging about 1200-1300
calories a day without taking the time to notice some major inconsistencies in
my macronutrients, especially protein. I need to pay attention to my protein
intake not just because my body needs good-quality protein to repair the
muscles I stress during my daily workouts, but because low protein intake often
represents maladaptive eating. Rather than slow down and eat carefully so that
solid protein doesn’t cause me problems, I take the easy way out and eat the
easy stuff, almost always in the form of carbs that don’t offer much satiety
value.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></o:p> </span><br />
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-59743134948011841012013-08-16T10:16:00.002-05:002013-08-16T10:16:21.657-05:00One Year LaterToday is the one year anniversary of my VSG surgery. The good news is that I've lost 47.2 pounds since then. This morning I weighed 117.6 pounds (14.4 pounds below my weight goal, and 113.4 pounds down from my highest recorded weight) and recently I discovered that I can wear size 7 jeans. I can't remember ever wearing that size before. (I do remember that when I was in high school, I hated that I couldn't shop at a mall clothing store called 5-7-9. For sure, I wasn't smaller than a size 5 then.) <br />
<br />
The bad news is that I still miss my band and I'm still finding it hard to live with my sleeve. But in a way, that doesn't matter. I've said in the past that if gastric bypass was the only bariatric surgery available to me in 2007, I would've had gastric bypass surgery despite the risks and compromises it might involve. Similarly, if I was considering WLS for the first time today and the sleeve was the only procedure available to me, I would have VSG surgery, even knowing what I know now. I feel very lucky that I was able to have Lap-Band surgery. It set me on a path to a life of health and mobility that's more wonderful than I ever could have imagined.Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-23883783724164701312013-07-27T18:54:00.001-05:002013-07-27T18:54:31.044-05:00Scrawny?The other day I got my already short hair cut even shorter - a crew cut. When I told my aunt T. about it, she requested a photo. This morning before I left for work, I had Mr. P. take a few pix of me. The first one was focused on my chest (funny how guys focus on that part of the female anatomy, even after 25 years of marriage), so I made him take 2 more shots. The 2nd is me in a classic BBTB pose (born-to-be-bossy). The 1st one makes me look scrawny, which is hard for me to wrap my mind around. A few weeks ago I had gone down to 12 lbs below my goal weight, but now I'm back to 10 lbs below that. When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't see the thinness any better than I used to see my fatness. It's a bizarre situation for a former fatty to find herself in.<br />
<br />
What do you think?<br />
<br />
The other thing I keep focusing on is my turkey neck. Fortunately the bossy pose minimizes that!<br />
<br />
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Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-4606071695670933322013-07-24T05:49:00.000-05:002013-07-24T05:49:06.695-05:00Immortal
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Until I
turned 50, I never had a sense of my own mortality. My elderly mother had been
reminding me that she wasn’t going to live forever, but somehow I thought that
she and I were both immortal despite the fact that I was morbidly obese and troubled
by a host of health problems. I had undergone more surgeries, medical
procedures and treatments, and taken more prescription medication, than my
mother had in her entire life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In the years
that followed that milestone birthday, I lost a lot: my job, my 90-year-old mother,
100 pounds and my old lifestyle. At the same time, I learned there is truth in
the old saying, “You’re only as old as you feel.” That truth wasn’t always
rejuvenating. I often felt lost and confused. I had attained an age that was
unimaginable to me as a 20-year-old. Other than perfunctory contributions to
401K and IRA funds, as a young woman I had made no plans for my middle and
later years. That might be just as well, because in truth, my expectations for
myself at age 20 were far smaller than my expectations are now, as I hover on
the edge of my 60<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> birthday. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">A few years
ago I told a young coworker that I was 56 years old. Now I don’t remember why I
shared that information with him, but I hope I never forget Garrett’s response:
“You are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> 56!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I offered to
show him my driver’s license. He shook his head and said, “You don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">act </i>like you’re 56.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Although for
much of my life my mother had admonished me to act my age, I took Garrett’s
comment as a compliment. One benefit of being 50+ is that I care a lot less
about what other people think of me, not because I want to act outrageously but
because I want to be true to myself, because I trust myself enough now to worry
less about the mistakes I might make, and because I know I will learn from them
as they happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Friends,
family, and business associates who’ve known me for 10, 20, 30 years tell me
they’ve been surprised by my new lifestyle. I shut the door on a high-paying,
high-stress, mostly sedentary business career that sent me all over the globe
as I worked 70- to 80-hour weeks and ate myself into obesity. I joined a
fitness center; took a low-paying, lower-stress, part-time retail job; wrote and
published five books; and recently joined the board of directors of OutsideIN, a
new non-profit business that provides jobs and training for chronically
unemployed workers who rely heavily on public resources for their survival. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">My
non-profit work pays me not in monetary income but in what Mom used to call
spiritual income. Although we welcome volunteers of any age, I believe I have far
more to offer now, at 50+, than I did in my youth. It’s work that draws on all
my past work experience and allows me to use my unique talents, some of which
had lain dormant for decades. It also requires me to stretch and learn new
things. I’m especially happy about that because I believe that the moment we
stop learning is the moment we’re ready to go home forever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The photo below
shows me at the fitness studio wearing a favorite t-shirt. Its imprint describes
my new identity at 50+ years. One of the most surprising things about being 50+
is that I’ve evolved from being a fearful, pessimistic Miss Rainy Day, to an
upbeat, optimistic Little Miss Sunshine. Even as the aging process challenges
me, often slows me, and sometimes pains me, I wake up every morning eager for
the new day. Perhaps time is becoming more precious to me as my fund of new
days dwindles, but for now I’m going to go on believing that I’m immortal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-40637342427654210922013-07-16T10:32:00.000-05:002013-07-16T10:33:10.087-05:00Let's Make a Deal!<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">C’mon
down! Let’s make a deal!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">But not a deal for a new refrigerator or a
Florida vacation. Let’s make a deal to stop trash-talking ourselves.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A study done at the University of Arizona
found that men and women whose self-talk is negative (such as “My butt is so
big,” “I’m so ugly”, or “I just can’t stop overeating”) experience more
depression and lower self-esteem than those who don’t indulge in self-denigration.
That kind of self-talk adds to your sense of helplessness, not just in eating
but in every aspect of your life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Trash-talk is hard to avoid in a society
that deifies thin celebrities whose weight is often higher than their IQ (Aach,
Jean! Talk about trash talk!). I don’t know about men, but conversation amongst
women tends to stray into fat talk all too often. I know I've commiserated with friends who’ve gained enough weight that they can’t
fit into most of their wardrobe…a problem I've faced myself many times, both before and after weight loss surgery. We could moan about that kind of thing for hours, time that would be better spent on coming up with a solid
action plan to deal with weight gain, and end the trash talk with a pep
talk. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In my job as a bra fit specialist, I hear
women slam their own bodies day in and day out. Their breasts are too big, too
small, and/or one is bigger than the other. Their breasts sag from weight loss,
weight gain, pregnancy, nursing, aging – all perfectly ordinary life events
that somehow end up damaging the woman’s self-esteem even if everything else in
her life is going well. From time to time I’ve heard briskly myself tell an unhappy
customer, “OK, now that I know what you don’t like about your girls, let’s talk
about what we can do to make them look better,” because I just couldn’t bear
hearing another word of self-hatred.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Maybe you feel as helpless to change your
thinking as you feel about changing your eating behavior. The field of
cognitive behavioral psychology is based on changing maladaptive thinking in
order to change your behavior. Maladaptive thinking is thinking that seems to
help you adjust to a problem. So if your 42DDD bra is too small, you think,
“There’s nothing I can do about it, it’s all because of having those three
babies in just three years.” Cognition is the process of acquiring knowledge
and understanding (about yourself, your world, other people, events) through
thought, experience, and your senses. If you can shift the way you interpret
all that data, you can begin to change the way you react to it (your behavior).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">That’s different from the good ol’ Freudian
psychodynamic approach that places blame (or gives credit) to your unconscious
mind and personality for the things (dysfunctional or not) going on in and
around you. I’m not against that psychodynamic model, <em>per se</em>, but it seems to
me that changing the way I interpret data has got to be easier and more
successful in the long run than trying to change the innermost, essential Jean.
I’m not sure I even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want </i>to change
her, and I don’t have the time or money to spend 130,000 minutes a year (50
minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 10 years) musing about the meaning of a
random dream. That weird dream could be full of important symbolism, sure, but
it could also be the random result of tired and jangly nerve endings as my
tired old brain tosses a mixed dream salad (ask me for the recipe!) out of
disparate moments of the day that just ended.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In the context of weight and eating
management, the difference between these two psychological approaches is that
the cognitive behavioral one asks, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How</i>
do I eat?” while the psychodynamic one asks, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Why</i> do I eat?” I’ve benefited from psychodynamic therapy in the
past, but none of the insights I gained about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i> I eat has done much to change <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> I eat. In other words, you can change your behavior without
knowing all the why’s and wherefores that led to that behavior. They’re
interesting, even fascinating, to know, but that knowledge doesn’t necessarily
make the work of behavioral change easier or more effective or longer-lasting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">First, here’s a short example of cognitive
change. In my fat days, I loved to eat. Eating gave me great pleasure; all too
often, it was my only pleasure. Nowadays, I love to eat. The food still tastes good
(my experience of it), but the way I think about that food (my cognition of it)
has changed. Now it is only one of many pleasures in my world. The change in my
cognition of food has changed my behavior around it. I’m less likely to overeat
it because it’s competing with so many other good things for my time and
attention, things that are also important to me and interest me and are often
healthier for me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Now I’ll give you a different example, ever
so slightly exaggerated for the purpose of making my point crystal clear. After
9 years of intensive, twice-weekly psychodynamic therapy, you come to
understand that you overeat candy because your mother spanked you for wetting
your pants at church during Easter service when you were 5 years old, thus
shaming you and sending you right straight to the delights of your Easter
basket, all of it consumed in just 15 minutes as soon as you got home and raced
into your bedroom closet to suffer and gorge in peace, which of course made
your sore bottom feel sooo much better. Of course, since then you’ve several
times been tempted to smack your own child for misbehaving in public, and
you’ve come to see that your own mother was actually a saint compared to your
evil sister-in-law, but here you are on Good Friday evening, gazing with rapt delight
at the contents of your children’s Easter baskets and wondering if they’ll
notice that all the chocolate crème eggs are gone come Sunday morning. Is
thinking about your mean mommy going to stop you from unwrapping one of those
yummylicious treats and popping it into your mouth while you remind yourself
that crème eggs only come once a year and how can you possibly survive a whole
year without eating at least <em>one?</em></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
</div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So in conclusion to an article on a topic that pretty much has no end, I will paraphrase Camilla Mager, a clinical psychologist in New York who specializes in the psychology of women and eating disorders. Mager suggests the following steps for improving body image and self-esteem: </span></div>
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</div>
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1. Avoid reading magazines or looking at images (on television, online, billboards, etc.) that reinforce your body image problem.</div>
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</div>
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2. Pay attention to the tone you use when talking to or about yourself. Would you talk that way to anyone else? Probably not. Try to be less critical of yourself. That doesn't mean you should pat yourself on the head, say, "There, there, honey," and dish yourself up a gallon of ice cream. That means something more like, "Try, try again."</div>
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</div>
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3. Focus on what your body is capable of - your strengths - instead of weaknesses (often more perceived than real) or what it's not doing.</div>
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</div>
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4. When you find yourself in a fat talk conversation with friends, commit to not engaging in that kind of discussion. Change the subject, give a friend a pep talk, or announce that it's time for you to head over to the gym.</div>
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Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-17024997625476612512013-07-08T07:07:00.000-05:002013-07-08T07:07:01.264-05:00Wherever You Go
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">One of my novels (unpublished)
tells the story of a young woman who hates her life. She decides to change it
by staging her own kidnapping and escaping to a new life with a new identity.
It’s a very intriguing idea, one that has occurred to me as an option (or
cop-out) for me from time to time, but there’s one serious flaw in it that my
book’s heroine soon discovers.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And
that is something my friend Shannon mentioned a few months ago: </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4f6228; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: accent3; mso-themeshade: 128;">WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE</span></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>The
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">wherever you go, there you are </b>statement
is so true and so inescapable that it can hurt, and until you make friends with
yourself and accept your past misdeeds as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">past</i>,
you’ll be mighty cranky when the naughty parts seem to stalk you wherever you
go. Many times in the past I’ve done something major to improve my life, like
take a new job in a different part of the country, only to find myself reacting
to my boss, my coworkers, and work situations in the exact same dysfunctional
ways as I had in the previous job. At times I’ve wanted to tell myself, “Just
leave me alone!”, but I’m stuck with me. My job now is to figure out which
parts of me are worth keeping and which parts need revamping or discarding. As
I wrote in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon, </i>I will always
have a short, fat girl inside me, just waiting to get out. One day, I hope to
live with her in harmony. In the meantime, I sometimes ask her, “Who invited
you, anyway?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">HAVE SHELL, WILL TRAVEL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZ4j5MlBFlInElm5UElXr39biEzYS7elykKIXYyKBX0HcZFm0fmeLpwnxdy2RUtNOWlJLZ-HLFGgTmJrW2xLlLtuaqcil7ONs8GLTiELzHXOAPzQA7oDpaYPoFU1kM20dD_p8XFM3qG5R/s1600/turtle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZ4j5MlBFlInElm5UElXr39biEzYS7elykKIXYyKBX0HcZFm0fmeLpwnxdy2RUtNOWlJLZ-HLFGgTmJrW2xLlLtuaqcil7ONs8GLTiELzHXOAPzQA7oDpaYPoFU1kM20dD_p8XFM3qG5R/s200/turtle.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Like
it or not, adult humans tend to carry a carapace of beliefs and behaviors
everywhere we go. The carapace thickens and hardens as the years go by,
becoming a portable home that protects our soft inners from weather, injury,
and predators. That shell may not be beautiful, but it’s safe. The idea of
shedding it is scary: imagine a poor vulnerable turtle without its shell; but
as our needs and goals change, our shells may need to change also. If an entire
layer of your shell was formed on the assumption that you’re doomed to fail at
weight loss, or that food is the only thing that can comfort you when you’re
hurt, it’s not going to serve your weight loss journey very well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I’ve
never done well with giving up a belief or behavior all at once, cold turkey,
but then, I haven’t had to deal with something the size and strength of a heroin or tobacco
addiction. On the other hand, peeling away the protective shell layer by layer
could try the patience of a saint. As you’ve heard me say before, I prefer to
tackle the easy stuff first, so that I have enough confidence to sustain me
when I get to the hard stuff. For example, instead of switching from whole milk
to fat free, I switched to 2%, then 1%, before I was able to enjoy fat free
milk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It
is possible, though, to make big changes fairly fast if the reward (or
punishment) is significant. In the past, one of my jumbo-sized bad behaviors
was speeding when driving. Eventually my speeding ticket collection sent me to
traffic school, with a one-year probation period during which any moving
violation would automatically revoke my Tennessee driver’s license. We live out
in the country, in an area with no public transportation, so my speeding habit
got a very quick makeover. Now I’m a slower, safer driver, and I still have my
license.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">LIGHTEN THE LOAD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sometimes
giving up or changing a negative or dangerous behavior feels far scarier than
living with the unpleasant consequences of continuing the behavior. This is
especially true of eating behaviors, because the basic act of eating is
essential to our existence, so anything that threatens that takes on enormous
importance. If I need to give up compulsive shopping, I’m going to be
miserable, but I’ll survive. If have to give up compulsive eating, I feel like
I’m going to die because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all </i>my
eating is compulsive, and without eating, I’ll perish. Of course, to lose
weight in a healthy manner, I don’t have to give up eating altogether, but it
sure feels that way at times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">One
of the reasons I approve of (if not enjoy) pre-op diets is that they require
you to alter your eating behavior RIGHT NOW, so you can ease into the practice
of healthy eating and not have to begin an overwhelming job the day after
surgery, or the day after the first fill, when so many other things in your
post-op life are still so strange and new. Waiting until the very last minute
to jump on the nutritional bandwagon seems to me like a set-up for failure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">LAYER BY LAYER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">One
special challenge in changing our turtle shells is that sometimes the really
tough layers are completely invisible to us, and they’re difficult to
acknowledge (never mind change) even when another person, or the evidence of
our own senses, finally shows them to us. I went through a period in my late
20’s during which I carried a big chip on my shoulder and did my best to be a
bitch. It may have been an overreaction to the preceding period of depression
and submissiveness. At the time, I lived in an apartment with an upstairs
neighbor who worked at a bank every day and partied hearty every night. I wore
a track into the carpet with my trips up the stairs to knock on his door and
complain about the noise. After a few months of that, I was furious when this
banker had his 5 year-old daughter (on loan from her mom for the weekend) lean
out the window as I walked through the parking lot and yell in her sweet girly
voice, “Look at the bitch! Look at the bitch!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
happened to have a friend then who socialized with the banker sometimes. I told
her the “Look at the bitch!” story hoping for insight about the banker, or at
the very least a nice dose of sympathy, but it didn’t work out the way I wanted
because my friend said in a reasonable tone, “But Jean, you ARE a bitch.” After
which I decided I was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">proud</i> of being
a bitch rather than trying to find a way to get along with the banker better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I
hope I’d handle a situation like that better nowadays. I’ve been gradually
chipping away at the bitch layer of my shell for years now, but it’s still
there, traveling with me wherever I go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">TO GET WHERE YOU WANT TO GO…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A while back, my friend Tom quoted a wonderful post from the marcandangel.com
blog. It was a list of ten daily reminders to keep your mind centered and your
spirits lifted. Number 3 on the list is this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sometimes to get where
you want to go, you have to do what you are afraid to do.</b> You must be brave
and push forward. Miracles occur when you give as much attention and energy to
your dreams as you do to your fears.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In
my case, the most fearful thing I had to do in order to succeed with my band
was not drinking skim milk, surviving a liquid diet, or giving up bread. The
most fearful thing was giving up my emotional attachment to food. In the nearly
6 years since I was banded, I’ve made a lot of progress with that, but the
attachment is still there. It forms one of the innermost layers of my turtle
shell. Working on that layer will probably be a lifetime job for me. At times
I’m not even sure I truly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want </i>to get
rid of it altogether. At times I’m afraid that if I shed my shell completely, I
won’t be able to survive. On the other hand, I seem to be doing fine without
that thick old bitch layer. So I’m going to pay attention to my dreams rather
than my fears and pray for a miracle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-71767314859728549322013-06-18T12:32:00.000-05:002013-06-18T12:32:37.836-05:00From this day forward
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">June is for
weddings, isn’t it? Sunshine, blue skies, white gowns, white flowers. I was
married the first time 38 years ago. After a four year courtship, Joe and I exchanged
our wedding vows in front of a Catholic priest, a Presbyterian minister, and 40
guests consisting of family and friends. We walked out of the church and into
our married life with “until death do us part” in our young minds. Six years
later, we divorced. Eventually each of us married again, this time to the right
partner, and we’re all still happily married today. As the saying goes,
practice makes perfect.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It’s practice
that will make your “marriage” to your adjustable gastric band perfect, or as
perfect as any human endeavor can be. When you wake up in the recovery room
after your surgery, you won’t be magically endowed with all the knowledge,
experience, and habits you’ll need to succeed with your band. Even if you did
tons of research, faithfully attended every pre-op educational class, and
listened closely to and made detailed notes of everything your bariatric team
told you, some things – important things – you’ll have to learn through the
everyday experience of living and eating with your band. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When you leave
the hospital or surgery center after your surgery, you probably won’t be headed
for your honeymoon quite yet. That will come later, when you’ve had enough
fills to achieve optimal restriction and you begin to feel that your band is
really working. The excess weight will start coming off and you’ll walk around
in a dreamy pink haze, delighted with your new life partner. You might even
give your band a silly private pet name, the way my husband calls me “Love Bug”
(which always makes me think of my first car, a chubby yellow Volkswagen
Beetle).</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Then one day, the
reality of banded life will wake you up. You’ll think, “Who is this creature
I’ve married?” And like Jenny, a former coworker of mine, you’ll realize that
while the engagement, wedding and honeymoon were exciting and fun, the
day-after-day business of marriage isn’t exciting or fun 24 hours a day. It’s
hard work. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It’s humdrum. Jenny left her new
husband after only three months of marriage not because she didn’t love him,
but because she didn’t love being married to him. Being a wife isn’t nearly as
fun as being a bride.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I suspect that
Jenny just wasn’t old enough or mature enough to be a wife. Neither was I when
I married the first time. One of the reasons most bariatric surgeons and
insurance companies require a patient to have a pre-op psychological consult is
to evaluate the patient’s understanding of what they’ll have to do to succeed
after surgery. Are they ready for a lifetime commitment? Do they have
reasonable expectations? Can they follow instructions? Are they capable of
learning the new behaviors they’ll need for a productive, peaceful partnership
with their band?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">HABIT FORMING</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">New bandsters
need dozens of new habits – something like 60-70% of my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon</i> is devoted to explaining those
habits, so I’m not going to try to cram them all into a blog entry (anyway, I’d
rather you buy and read the book!). I’ll pick one at random. Hmmm…how about EAT
SLOWLY? How are you going to turn that behavior into a habit that will serve
you well for the rest of your life?</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So Dr.
McMillan tells you, “Eat slowly,” and you nod your assent while thinking, “Get
real! I’m too busy to do anything slowly. I have 3 kids and 2 dogs, I work 2
jobs, I take care of my elderly Aunt Bertha, I coach my daughter’s softball
team, I have a house to run and a spouse who’s always on the road…” Well, you
get the idea. Dr. McMillan has just told you to do something that’s very simple
and yet impossibly difficult, you think Dr. McMillan needs to wake up and smell
the coffee, and a door in your mind slams shut.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Actually, Dr.
McMillan is already awake, has had a cup of coffee, has tended to all 11 of her
dogs and all 3 of her cats, is about to leave for the fitness studio, and when
she returns she will deal with a home renovation project while running her
home-based publishing business off the kitchen table; tomorrow the fun will
start all over again, including a 5-1/2 hour shift at her retail job and a trip
to the supermarket. She’ll do the laundry, pick another batch off ticks off the
new dog, cook several meals, and get someone to come look at the leaking French
doors. Dr. McMillan’s friend Nina calls her the “Tennessee Tsunami”, and
despite all that, Dr. M. still manages to eat slowly every time she sits down
to a meal. As a pre-op, it took her maybe 5 minutes to hoover her way through a
meal that would feed a farmhand, and now it can take her up to 5 minutes to
chew her way through the first bite.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The EAT SLOWLY
habit (or any other habit) doesn’t become a habit overnight. It takes many,
many repetitions to turn a new behavior into a habit (a British study found
that it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days of daily repetition to make a new
behavior “automatic”). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know it’s a big
challenge, especially when you’re also trying to learn a few dozen other new
behaviors and turn all of them into habits while somehow conquering the dozens
of bad habits you already had, but I assure you, it’s worth the effort!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-46171238253082233932013-06-11T11:25:00.000-05:002013-06-11T11:25:31.211-05:00Heavy Baggage
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A few years
ago, I started my JCPenney workday with an unpleasant customer encounter, so
unpleasant that it took me an hour or so to turn myself around. I hate letting
something like that set the tone for my whole day, but if I discard the memory
too quickly because of sheer discomfort, I miss an opportunity to learn
something. Of course, it’s not always obvious what the lesson is, so forgive me
if this article seems befuddled. Befuddlement is a common brain condition in
older people whose minds are cluttered with far more experience and data than
they know how to use.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">S</span>o anyway, back to Wednesday morning at
JCPenney. I was happily tidying the lingerie department, setting its disorder
to right the way only I can (and only I enjoy), when a middle-aged female
customer stomped up to me and declared, “JCPenney used to be so good. It used
to be I could come here and find a dozen bras in my size. What happened? Why
can’t I ever find my size now?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I glanced up at the woman and made a quick
assessment of her, not to judge her but because things like body
language and dress give me clues about customers and the best way to handle
them. This one was obese, well-dressed in a stylish but individual way. She had
a southern accent but not much west Tennessee twang to it, which told me that
she had probably traveled more widely than is common in this area (the Kentucky
border is about 15 miles from here, but I know local residents who’ve never
been to Kentucky). Finally, I noticed that the woman had a grim, even fierce
facial expression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">On the basis of all that, I quickly decided
that a humorous approach (my favorite) was not going to work with this
customer; nor was my fallback “You just let me take care of you, honey,”
approach appropriate. I asked her in a neutral tone of voice, “What size are
you looking for?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The bra size she named is an odd one, but
hardly surprising considering this woman’s size. I was an odd size too when I
was obese, so I felt that I was speaking compassionately when I asked her what
features she prefers – underwire, wire free, wide straps, thin straps, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">She pointed at what I call a fashion bra
(as opposed to an everyday, purely functional one) that I knew isn’t made in
her size. “Never mind all that. I want something like this one. Do you have it?
Do you have my size?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I was about four words into my, “No, but
let me suggest…” explanation when she burst out angrily, “Just show me! Show
me! Where are the size 44’s?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">For a moment I was taken aback by her rudeness.
Then I felt my mother’s school-marm manner come over me. I lifted my right
index finger to signify, ‘Just one minute’ and said sternly, “If you’ll let me
finish my sentence, I’ll tell you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The instant that sentence left my mouth, I
wanted to grab it back. But as my husband likes to say, you can’t unring a
bell. My mind searched frantically for something that would rescue the
situation. While I floundered, the customer said, still angrily, “You don’t
have it, do you? I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knew</i> it! Well,
that’s fine. That’s just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fine</i>. Thank
you very much!” and stomped away toward the exit door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I thought, “Well, that went well,” and went
back to sizing push-up bras.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The worst part of that massive failure to
communicate was that I truly felt compassion for that woman and did understand
her frustration in searching for clothing to fit and flatter an obese body. I
wished I could run after her and say, “I wasn’t always skinny!” but that was my
baggage to carry, not hers. I could read all I want into her expression, convinced
that I recognized her weight struggles and her desire to blame her obesity on
everyone, including JCPenney, but herself – but we were strangers and had no
real knowledge of each others’ truths. I’m not even sure of my own truths all
the time, never mind truths belonging to a stranger.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">TRAVELING
LIGHT<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My encounter with the angry fat lady that
day reminded me that my weight loss surgery helped me lose more than 100 pounds
of body weight. It also took some heavy emotional baggage off my hands. I’m not
convinced that the baggage leftover from my travels in the land of obesity is
entirely and permanently gone. I think it’s stashed away in the attic gathering
dust and cobwebs. The keys to all those bags are in a small box in my dresser
drawer. They’re unlabeled and jumbled in with house keys, car keys, and a few
luggage tags containing defunct addresses. I don’t dare throw that mess of keys
out for fear I’ll need them again some day…kind of like my fear that I’ll need
my size 24 jeans again some day.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">But I’m traveling light these days. A
handful of keys that weighs maybe three ounces is a much lighter burden than
the beliefs and feelings I used to carry along with those 100 extra pounds.</span></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-37543209952642076492013-05-25T19:00:00.001-05:002013-06-26T12:34:23.776-05:00You eat anything you want and you still lose weight!My brother (18 months my junior) is a highly intelligent man. This was proven decades ago, when IQ tests performed while his teachers and parents tried to figure out why he was such a miserable little bugger showed a genius level IQ. I know that sentence sounds unsympathetic to my brother, but we were <em>all</em> miserable - our parents, his teachers, me, and my brother.<br />
<br />
When I first talked with him about weight loss surgery, many years later, this highly intelligent and (by then) well-read man said, "Wow! So, you have the surgery, and then you eat anything you want and you still lose weight!"<br />
<br />
Well, no. Not really. In fact, nothing like that.<br />
<br />
During the 6 years of my weight loss surgery journey, I have (over and over and over again) witnessed bariatric patients who came out of the operating room after surgically successful procedures still wondering why they couldn't eat anything want and still lose weight. Their disappointing weight loss was and is a perpetual puzzle to them because somehow they had not grasped that behavioral change is required for weight loss success.<br />
<br />
It's easy to label those patients as stupid or ignorant or deluded, or to blame their bariatric team for failure to properly educate those patients about what would be required of them both pre- and post-op. All of those things could be a factor.<br />
<br />
In March 2012, almost 6 years since the start of my own WLS journey, I attended 2 sessions of a required pre-op nutrition and education class. My BMI then made me obese, but not morbidly so. I had gained weight after a complete unfill and was preparing to say goodbye to my beloved band due to medical problems aggravated by my band, planning to revise to vertical sleeve gastrectomy in the same procedure. <br />
<br />
The dietitian leading the class was a perky, pretty 20-something girl, adorably pregnant, who had clearly never struggled with her weight before. Her slightly condescending attitude was hard to take, but about halfway through the class I thought I could understand her attitude. She had just named a long list of foods we should not eat after surgery (fried foods, candy, baked goodies, soda, alcohol, salty snacks, etc.) when I heard a woman nearby say bitterly, "I don't know. That seems like an awful lot to give up."<br />
<br />
Since I had known the before and after of WLS, I was strongly tempted to respond to her, but I held my tongue (wisely, for once).<br />
<br />
I don't know just why so many people think that WLS is magic, that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight, that you don't have to give up a single food or behavior or attitude in order to succeed. Maybe we can blame that attitude on the media, or maybe we can blame it on the deeply-entrenched denial that tends to go along with obesity. But the fact is, you can't eat anything and still lose weight unless you're dying of cancer or AIDs or some other fatal disease, and probably don't want to eat a single bite of anything anyway. And I'd trade dying of cancer for WLS sacrifices and success any old day.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-85678303696659097652013-05-10T11:34:00.001-05:002013-05-10T11:34:38.297-05:00A Victim of Obesity
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I’m seeing a disturbing
proliferation of victimhood these days. Every day the media broadcast reports
about victims of crime – of scams, fraud, theft, murder – and victims of acts
of God, like weather, fire, and floods. My heart goes out to those victims
because I feel a kinship to them. I too have experienced violence, loss,
trauma, and pain. But I am not a victim. I’m a survivor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A DAY IN THE (VICTIM)HOOD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Before
we get into the meat of this article, I want to ask you a question: are you a
victim?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">D</span>on’t
tell me the answer yet, but keep it in your mind while you read the rest of
this article.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Victimhood
can be alluring. It garners attention, assistance and pity that you can milk
for the rest of your life if you play the role well. You don’t have to be
responsible for rebuilding your life or restoring what you lost. That doesn’t
appeal to me, though. It sounds boring and tiresome, and it discourages
laughter, which I find even more healing than tears, so why does victimhood
continue and even proliferate? Let’s take a closer look at how obese people
like us become victims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGTzxXywH_EJvEwuVn0qvPrEXuPr-9O0Q8Vd2HsTB-RRsGYJAHwlSDX-En2L5dt62L10fzGzvaeGvA6EJWACpKsXp1Yk5cSYXMSxL93_5EOUbn3LhfwNBFMoLeIN9JCAme8MIaBGmx_mxp/s1600/Villain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGTzxXywH_EJvEwuVn0qvPrEXuPr-9O0Q8Vd2HsTB-RRsGYJAHwlSDX-En2L5dt62L10fzGzvaeGvA6EJWACpKsXp1Yk5cSYXMSxL93_5EOUbn3LhfwNBFMoLeIN9JCAme8MIaBGmx_mxp/s1600/Villain.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">WHO ARE THE VILLAINS? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Every
victim needs at least one villain. Who or what are your villains?<span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?num=10&hl=en&biw=1280&bih=838&tbm=isch&tbnid=np-Clgn5FvMCAM:&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villain&docid=OjXZvp-Ap77atM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Villainc.svg/220px-Villainc.svg.png&w=220&h=301&ei=MXwFUM3xM4uC9QS3g-nWBw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=181&vpy=164&dur=265&hovh=240&hovw=176&tx=95&ty=92&sig=110906020905834066002&page=1&tbnh=138&tbnw=101&start=0&ndsp=29&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:142"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Me
– I got a lousy genetic legacy. I inherited every strand of obesity DNA my
mother’s gene pool had to offer (plus the ones for thin hair and crooked
teeth). We won’t discuss the humor genes I also got from her, though. Humor
doesn’t enhance my victimhood. But that’s okay, because I’m actually <span style="color: maroon;">not a victim.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">While
we’re blaming obesity on our ancestors, we need to look at the flip side of the
nature versus nurture coin. I got a raw deal there, too. Neither of my parents
encouraged exercise or sports. In fact, they ridiculed physical fitness programs
and encourage scholarship and mental fitness instead, so I ended up being a
very smart, very fat intellectual. And that’s fine, because I have a college
degree and an impressive resume as a result. And anyway, <span style="color: maroon;">I’m not a victim.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Another
popular villain nowadays is addiction. Addicts will do anything to support a
drug or other destructive habit. We need ever-increasing amounts of our
substance just to prevent withdrawal, never mind to get high. For my brother,
the substance is methadone. For me, it’s food, especially sweet or salty or
fatty or chocolatey or otherwise nutritionally evil food, and it’s even easier
(and cheaper) for me to score a hit of my substance than it is for my brother
to score some of his. Baskin Robbins, McDonald’s, Lays and Duncan Hines are
just a few of the virtually inescapable pushers I know. It’s sad but true, but
I can overcome it, because <span style="color: maroon;">I am not a victim.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Let’s
not forget our celebrity-worshipping society and the flood of images of
impossibly buff men and skinny women that wash over us every single day. The
media and the likes of Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and Angelina Jolie
constitute a vast and powerful band of villains. The siren song of “Thin Is In”
sounds all around me, but it doesn’t matter because I can shut my eyes, turn
down my hearing aids, and remember something important: that <span style="color: maroon;">I am not a victim.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In
addition to obesity, I suffer from another incurable, chronic, debilitating
disease that’s scientifically been linked to obesity. The pain and fatigue of
fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome haunt me every day, with villainy
that threatens to suck all the joy out of my life. But I’m not going to let
pain get the better of me, because <span style="color: maroon;">I am not a
victim.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">VICTIM OR VICTOR?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Now
let’s go back to the beginning of this article, where I asked if you’re a
victim. I want to hear your answer to that question now, after you’ve read the
article. Think carefully before you speak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">Okay</span>,
here goes. Are you a victim? Really, truly, a victim?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">No?</span>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">That’s
great! Neither am I. Like you, I’ve chosen to win the weight loss battle,
conquer the villains, and emerge the victor. I’m not going to settle for
anything less than that, and neither should you. So grab your swords, my
friends, and fight back now!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-73645548406484641932013-04-23T10:25:00.000-05:002013-04-23T10:25:42.641-05:00Ask not what Jean can do for obesity...
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">…But what obesity can do for Jean?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The
overeating I’ve devoted so much of my life to can be called a coping skill, and
the excess fat it created cloaked me like shield, cushioning me from life’s
blows even as it caused me a host of other problems including shame. I couldn’t
admit to shame over what had happened to me (shame because I believed I had
caused the abuse), so in effect I transferred that shame to my weight. As if
there was a gremlin living inside me who insisted on hanging out a sign for all
to see: IT’S ALL JEAN’S FAULT. If I couldn’t be angry at my family, I could be
angry at myself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">At the
same time, the act of overeating helped to keep me numb, so I didn’t have to
feel deeply all of the stresses in my life. (I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know</i> I’m not alone in that one, because even people with a happy
childhood turn to food for comfort and numbing.) If I’d been fully conscious of
the all the distress in my life, what would my alternative have been? Probably
suicide, either directly (via carbon monoxide) or indirectly (like a single-car
crash or an “accidental” drug overdose).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Coping
mechanisms help us adapt to stressful situation, reduce or eliminate a
stressor, and/or change our own emotional reaction to a stressor. Not all
coping mechanisms are negative (that is, harmful to us or the people around
us). Proactive coping helps us reduce the stress of a difficult challenge by
anticipating what it will be like and preparing for how we’re going to deal
with it. Social coping helps us find support from others, and meaning-focused
coping helps us focus on the meaning of and lessons learned from stressful situation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Good nutrition, exercise and sleep all make it easier
for us to cope with stress. And humor (a personal favorite) helps us turn
around a painful experience.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Another
benefit obesity has offered me is bariatric surgery, because taking such a
“drastic” means of reducing my weight put overeating on the shelf long enough
for me to get a clearer picture of my life, my problems, and what I need to do
about all of that. It’s as if obesity was the slow train to clarity, delivering
me to the weight loss surgery station with 90 pounds of baggage (to say nothing
of the emotional baggage). And there, without a mountain of food before me
every minute of every day, the coast was clear and my vision (internal and
external) also became clear. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">At the
time, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. When I promised my surgeon
to exercise for 30 minutes every day, I thought it was just for the sake of
burning calories. Little did I know that exercise would one day be at the top
of my list of stress- and depression-reducers. I won’t claim that surgery
erased all my bad habits, but for once in my life I was able to acknowledge
that they were indeed bad, unhelpful habits, and then to work on ways to change
them. This will sound oversimplified, but I can’t change a behavior until I
understand that it’s not working for me any longer. It’s the time-honored first
step of the 12-step tradition: first, I had to admit that I was powerless over
food, and that my life had become unmanageable because of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">If I had
my life to do over again, would I again choose overeating and obesity as
survival techniques? Of course not. But I think I’ve done enough self-blaming
and punishment for my eating and obesity, and if I can gather together a few
crumbs of knowledge and understand from my bad old fat days, all the better. I
agree with Socrates than an unexamined life is not worth living. While it’s
gratifying to see that my books and articles help (or at least amuse) other
people, their greatest benefit is to me. Writing them is a form of the
meaning-based coping skill that I mentioned above. Meaningless events are
frightening to me. Reflecting on my experiences and deriving some meaning and
purpose from them reduces their power to hurt me. Although I joke that I’m the
World’s Greatest Living Expert on Everything (a title I inherited from its
originator, my mom), when I write articles like this one, I’m learning as I go
along. That’s a life-affirming action for me. When I run out of things to
learn, it’ll be time for me to rest forever.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I’ve been
sniveling a lot in the past 6 months because my life with the sleeve has been full of
surprises, many of them unpleasant. One of the things that’s making it possible
for me to keep putting one foot ahead of the other, painful as that might be,
is my belief that there are some lessons for me to learn from this experience.
And like many life lessons, I may not get the punch line until the end. Better
late than never.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-70361237679241224382013-04-14T07:39:00.000-05:002013-04-14T07:40:26.056-05:00It does get betterMy friend VA, who had band with plication surgery in June 2012 and has lost 113 lbs so far, gave me permission to share her Before and Now pix, and a great blog entry she wrote a few days ago.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">It is hard to really make someone who hasn’t been there yet believe that is does get better.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">Most people get to the first few days, think it is too hard and therefore they are doing it wrong and just give up. <strong class="bbc">Well, it IS hard</strong>. Sorry, I know that is not the answer you want, but it is the truth.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">You just have to remind yourself that the habits you are trying to break are ones that you have had for years – do you really expect to break them overnight and for it to be a piece of pecan pie?</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">I can tell you though that it is so, so worth it. Once you get past those first few weeks and you are feeling amazing and loving the changes your body is going through, you will look back and thank yourself for pushing forward.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">You just need to start. Set small and <span class="bbc_underline">realistic</span> goals and make one change at a time.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">The main reason you should be doing this is for yourself and for your health. There are going to be negative people no matter what you do. Well sadly you can’t stop them having that opinion, but who cares what anyone thinks.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;">Make the right decision for you and I wish you all the luck.</span></span></span> <!--IBF.ATTACHMENT_25768--> <br />
<br />
The first line of this entry is very powerful: It is hard to really make someone who hasn't been there yet believe that it does get better.<br />
<br />
It's also hard to make others understand that weight loss requires hard work (with or without surgery), but that all that hard work is so worth it. VA's Before and Now pix will give you visual evidence of that. The change in her physical size is amazing, but even more amazing is the avalanche of changes going on inside this wonderful person. You're right, VA, it is so worth it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimC4R0G4uZ0aY1ycB90klQlK9hNR0bE_VM73UGdWY881vs0cQUjwBW4_WY4l1FyI3ozVEcgKXE2VbQdVPW_s9BmKgoC_ljGzbb730gB0KnbQWNF8c2Xq502tR4UWfxyk8ecibi0nPxvboe/s1600/VA+B&A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimC4R0G4uZ0aY1ycB90klQlK9hNR0bE_VM73UGdWY881vs0cQUjwBW4_WY4l1FyI3ozVEcgKXE2VbQdVPW_s9BmKgoC_ljGzbb730gB0KnbQWNF8c2Xq502tR4UWfxyk8ecibi0nPxvboe/s320/VA+B&A.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-85339603207361374762013-03-29T10:06:00.000-05:002013-03-29T10:06:22.470-05:00Did my band fail me, or did I fail my band?
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The
first time I heard the catchy title of this article was in a magazine article
written by fellow bandster and author Cher Ewing. Her article told the story of
losing weight at a great rate at the start of her band journey, then slowing to
a halt for month after month. She wondered if her band had failed somehow, but she
was also honest enough to take a good hard look at her behavior and realize
that actually, she had failed her band. She had become a happier, busier
person, and also a somewhat complacent one. She decided to jump back on her
bandwagon and finish her journey.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">That article made a big impression on me.
The idea that we can and do fail our bands was quite new to me at the time.
Since then I’ve seen ample evidence of the truth of this, and many people have
criticized me for talking about it. It sounded to them like I was blaming
unsuccessful bandsters for their weight loss failure. I’m sorry that it came
across that way, but I stand by my conviction that when any human enterprise
fails, we must look for the causes (and the cures) in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">every</i> nook and cranny. Your bandwagon stalls at the side of the
road. First, check the fuel supply – is it adequate? Next, check the tires –
are they inflated? And the driver – what about the driver? Is the driver
properly trained and motivated? Perhaps the failure can be blamed (if blame you
must) on a combination of factors: the driver forgot to fill the fuel tank; the
wagon ran over a nail that pierced a tire; or maybe the driver should have
chosen a different wagon altogether – maybe a jet ski or a skateboard?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sometimes, no single or obvious cause for medical
failure can be found. It’s very, very frustrating. Doctors deal with dilemmas
like that every day, when all the examinations and tests reveal nothing clear
or significant and yet the patient is still sick. Even diagnosing a medical
problem can be complicated, never mind curing or treating it. For those of us
without formal medical training, who are relying on what we read or hear from
our doctors, friends, and online acquaintances about band problems, it’s an
overwhelming and baffling business. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">That was certainly my experience when my band problems began 15 months ago. For months I struggled to keep my balance in my ever-shifting WLS journey. Eventually I gave up trying to identify and understand every little detail, because doing that was taking too much of my energy when I needed to devote my energy to figuring out what to do next and then doing that. During that time, I lost my band and eventually had VSG surgery, and for the next 6 months or so, I had to concentrate on adapting to and dealing with my disappointment with my sleeve. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Although both my band and my sleeve were/are successes in that they helped me lose my excess weight, I'm not sure if it's even possible to call one a success and the other a failure. I'm trying (again) to get used to be a thin person and to adjust my expectations of myself and my sleeve. I'm often tired and struggle to decide what task to put at the top of my to-do list, but I pledge to make my health a top priority going forward. It's not something I ever want to take for granted.</span></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-35283024447996675202013-03-20T10:57:00.002-05:002013-03-20T10:58:05.526-05:00The Secret to WLS Success<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtB8UMbFvDWrr89d41njODxmodhMIO2JgXgdryFwPrLb-Mzx32wNV_8tg2KdQ-2u_cMkYXrtqTRInGZSN05B7GuobTJH7nV7x8H76Jtr2fTtg-3K_hJQv2PWqYWbHHc26C8FTQf0vdP9_Q/s1600/WLS+success+sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtB8UMbFvDWrr89d41njODxmodhMIO2JgXgdryFwPrLb-Mzx32wNV_8tg2KdQ-2u_cMkYXrtqTRInGZSN05B7GuobTJH7nV7x8H76Jtr2fTtg-3K_hJQv2PWqYWbHHc26C8FTQf0vdP9_Q/s200/WLS+success+sign.jpg" width="200" /></a> </div>
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<span style="color: #003399; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
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<span style="color: #003399; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What
is the secret to being a weight loss surgery success? </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">When aspiring
writers ask me, “How can I become a writer?” my answer is invariably, “Be one. Write.”
I’m a writer not because want to be one, but because I write. I’m
constitutionally unable to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> write.
It’s not always easy, but I always do it. Writing keeps me alive and vital. In
that sense, it’s a big part of healthy living for me.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So, do you want
to know how to be a successful WLS patient? </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The answer is:
“Be one.” Make your health a top priority, not because you’re so ridden with
medical problems, but because it will help you thrive.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Sounds so
simple, doesn’t it? But exactly what does that mean? It means that I write
every day. Other than finding or making the time to do it, it’s not hard,
because I <span style="color: #006600;">love</span> to write. So to be a writer,
I <span style="color: #003399;">practice</span> the art of writing every day.
What I write varies, just as what you eat varies, depending on how much time I
have and what I’m in the mood for. Within 15-30 minutes of getting up each
morning, I write something. I write e-mails to my accountability partners,
telling them about my eating, exercise, and perhaps some funny, or infuriating,
or interesting stories about my daily life. I write down the thoughts I have
about magazine, newsletter and blog articles. I write lists of things to do and
things to think about. At some point during each day, I write sentences or
paragraphs or chapters of articles, essays, stories and books. I write journal
entries that help me muddle through puzzling situations and relationships.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I also<span style="color: #073763;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #006600;"><span style="color: #073763;">love</span></span><span style="color: #073763;"> </span></span><span style="color: #073763;"></span><span style="color: #073763;"></span>being slim and healthy, so I <span style="color: #003399;">practice</span> the art of being slim and healthy every
day. This too varies, but within 15-30 minutes of getting up each morning, I
practice my healthy lifestyle. I update my food log and report my food plan and
eating behavior to my accountability partners. I get dressed in workout gear
and spend 45 minutes at an exercise class, 5 days a week. I write a weekly menu
plan and I write my grocery list. Even when I’m doing something that isn’t directly
related to weight and health, I’m practicing. I see a plate of home-baked
cookies on the break room table at work and think about whether I want to eat
one or if I’ll regret doing that. In a short 15 minute break, I practice good
eating skills as carefully as I can despite feeling hurried. When I get in my
car to go home and notice I’m thinking wistfully of Chicken McNuggets or Dulce
de Leche ice cream, I take a deep breath and ask myself if I really need those
things or just want them as a quick fix. I try to see myself driving home and
preparing the healthy meal I’ve planned. I try to remember how good I felt when
I did that the day before. I think about how happy my dogs will be if I get
home on time (anybody who claims animals can’t tell time has clearly never
lived with a dog).</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The key words
in the two paragraphs above are <span style="color: #003399;">“love” </span>and <span style="color: #003399;">“practice”</span>.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">If you’re
thinking, “But I don’t love to diet!” maybe it’s time to adjust your thinking.
Instead of thinking, “I hate dieting,” try this on for size: “I love being a
WLS success.” </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">And it’s
definitely time to discard the notion of being “on a diet”. A diet is something
you do for a finite period (a week, a month, 3 months). It’s temporary, and
when it ends, your eating goes back to the way it was before the diet, and lo
and behold, the weight you lost comes back, and often it brings all its friends,
and its friends’ brothers, sisters, and cousins. I know that for an absolute
fact because it’s happened to me so many times since I was 14 or 15 years old.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Being a weight
loss success means <span style="color: #003399;">practicing</span> healthy eating
every day of your life, for the rest of your life. Some days may be healthier
than others, and that’s OK. You’re just <span style="color: #003399;">practicing,</span><span style="color: #006600;"> </span>right? It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has
to be regular and ongoing. I don’t think about weight loss and health and all
that good stuff every waking minute, and not all my thoughts are virtuous. I
spend quite a lot of time thinking things like, “Why doesn’t that pickup truck
just pass me rather than riding on my tail?” or “If he spits toothpaste on the
bathroom mirror one more time, I’m gonna be one happy widow.” But thoughts
about weight and health go through my mind every day. I’ve heard WLS patients
say they never want to have to think about that stuff ever again. I don’t think
I could succeed that way, and those thoughts are not a burden for me. The real
burdensome thoughts I bear are ones like, “I should have hugged Mom more often
before she died.”</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Oh, I know
that “shoulda, coulda” thoughts are a waste of time and energy. That’s probably
why they’re so hard to bear. But that’s a topic for another article.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So, do you
want success? I want to hear you say it, loud and proud:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I WANT TO BE A
WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I WILL BE A
WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">AM</i> A WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS!</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">And give
yourself three cheers for your effort, even if you feel you haven’t yet
achieved success. Sports teams get cheered at every game, whether they win it
or not. When they win, they want to win the next game, and the next. When they
lose, they go back out on the field to <span style="color: #003399;">practice</span>
the next day, and to play another game the day after that. They don’t do that
just because they owe it to their coach and teammates. They do it because they <span style="color: #003399;">love</span> to practice, play and win.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“But I’m not
an athlete!” you say? Me neither. But I do <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #003399;">love</span></b> being a WLS success!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-70323681645534406722013-03-13T13:01:00.000-05:002013-03-13T13:01:07.017-05:00Why Does WLS Fail?
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Bariatric surgery can
fail. No one wants to talk about that, especially when we’re filled with hope
about what bariatric surgery can do for us. Why does weight loss surgery fail,
and what does that mean for each of us?</span></strong></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In the bariatric
community, we spend a lot of time debating about which WLS is the best – that
is, which one yields the best outcome (my own definition of that is optimal
weight loss with minimal complications). I think we can all agree that there’s
no such thing as a perfect or one-size-fits-all bariatric surgery. If we’ve all
fought weight battles long and hard enough to need or choose WLS, we can surely
agree that obesity is tough to overcome. And that is, I think, the grounds for
further agreement, about why WLS fails.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Here’s my premise:
weight loss surgery fails because of obesity. If you’re thinking you need not
read further because you already knew that, please wait until I explain a bit
more. And those of you snickering in the back of the room, simmer down. I’m a
natural blonde (duh) as well as an old fogey who needs time to make her point,
but like Ellen DeGeneres, I do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> a
point.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">OK, let’s continue. Some
disappointment or failure can be attributed to the inadequacy of a bariatric medical
device or surgical procedure or surgeon or patient, but underlying all that is
the basic reality of obesity: it’s a chronic and currently incurable disease,
caused by a mixture (unique to each patient) of genetics, behavior, environment
and biology. Weight loss surgery may address some aspects of those factors, but
not enough to cure obesity. So it fails because of obesity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In the past, I’ve
given a lot of thought to how genetics, behavior, and environment have
contributed to my own case, but no more than a passing glance at the biology of
it. I’m the daughter of a gifted scientist who passed on not one single gene of
scientific aptitude to me (instead, I got his nose and the name McMillan).</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I realize that saying
that WLS fails because of obesity is like saying the ocean is wet because it
contains water, but as with many obvious facts of life, it’s easily overlooked.
We go into WLS believing or at least hoping that surgery will fix enough of
what’s wrong in us to help us lose weight and maintain that weight loss, but we
need to remember that no WLS will cure our obesity. We need to remember that
our obesity is at least partly caused by factors that are invisible to us.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Those factors were
invisible to me until a few months ago, when I was asked to write a magazine
article about some recent research studies that found a link between obesity
and fibromyalgia. I’m uniquely qualified to write that article because I’m a
veteran of both wars.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When I began
researching the article, I was astounded by the dense mountain of information:
scientific data, theories, probabilities and conjectures that I’d heard little
or nothing of before despite my exalted status as the World’s Greatest Living
Expert on the Adjustable Gastric Band. I’ve had WLS, talked to dozens of
bariatric medical professionals, attended three bariatric conferences, read
countless books, articles, blogs and reports, but suddenly I felt like a babe
in the bariatric woods. Why hadn’t either of my bariatric surgeons (never mind
my primary care physician) mentioned any of this to me? Are they unaware of it?
Are they hiding it from me and the rest of their patients? Is there a
conspiracy afoot?</span> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This information is
of enormous importance if only because it knocks a big hole in the old-school
blame-the-patient approach. The paranoid in me wonders if the information is
hidden to protect an industry or to further a political cause, but I put those
thoughts aside and instead considered the very real possibility that bariatric
surgeons are well aware of the obesity mountain but are practicing a form of
medicine that circumvents it. They don’t climb the mountain and they don’t hike
around it. They cut right through the middle of it.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">THE OBESITY OCTOPUS<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To explain myself
now, I’ll have to resort to another simile. In a sense, bariatric surgeons
treat obesity by stuffing a many-armed octopus in a sack and bludgeoning it
with an axe. I’m not criticizing the surgeons. Surgery of any kind requires a
breathtaking degree of confidence, skill, and audacity. Although surgery
doesn’t address every waving octopus arm, it is the only effective long-term
treatment for obesity available in the United States today, and I’m very
grateful that I was able to have WLS and lose my excess weight as a result of
it. At the same time, I sometimes worry about the future. This spring, treatment
of a medical problem required removal of my band. I’ll soon have vertical
sleeve gastrectomy surgery, but what if obesity takes over my life again in
spite of my band and all my hard-won lifestyle changes? Are researchers working
on an obesity cure now that can help me with that in the future?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA_uRuKF92iPYCCRz_JwEe5pWMrCP7mo8DM0DEbjIrKi5SKo-p-MEGVBAdqmCfa9Em6uIIn-rl_dvVxyGls1Rb77htIXZ6GhB7fxqDt1XCA4M6fyAwu_SIwDhdRTE_EG61RYtZqPMCc7Rl/s1600/Obesity+Octopus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA_uRuKF92iPYCCRz_JwEe5pWMrCP7mo8DM0DEbjIrKi5SKo-p-MEGVBAdqmCfa9Em6uIIn-rl_dvVxyGls1Rb77htIXZ6GhB7fxqDt1XCA4M6fyAwu_SIwDhdRTE_EG61RYtZqPMCc7Rl/s320/Obesity+Octopus.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>WHAT CAUSES OBESITY?</strong><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It turns out that
researchers have indeed been busy searching out the causes of obesity in the
hope of finding a better way (or ways) to treat it, prevent it, and/or cure it.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">As I mentioned above,
several studies have reported a link between obesity and fibromyalgia. It’s
easy to get caught up in a chicken & egg debate about that – does one
disease cause the other? I don’t want to go down that road right now. Instead I
want to talk about some factors that are associated with (and may be contributing
to) both conditions. They are:</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Non-restorative sleep </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">– Sleep affects the production of
hormones (leptin, grehlin, cortisol) that are key to the experience of hunger,
appetite, and satiety. Poor sleep tends to decrease leptin (satiety hormone)
production and increase grehlin (hunger hormone) production. It also seems to
increase sensitivity to pain. If you have sleep apnea or another type of sleep
disorder, or even subclinical sleep disturbance, it’s likely that your physical
hunger is increased and your sense of satiety is decreased. The adjustable
gastric band can intervene on your behalf, but it doesn’t correct the hormone
production problem.</span> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Neuroendocrine dysfunction</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> – the nervous system (neuro) and endocrine system (glands) control all
physiologic processes in the human body. The nervous system works by sending
messages through nerves, as if it’s a hard-wired telephone system. Nervous
control is electrochemical in nature and is rapid. The endocrine system sends
messages by the secretion of hormones into the blood and extracellular fluids.
Like a radio broadcast, it requires a receiver to get the message. To receive
endocrine messages, a cell must bear a receptor (a receiver) for the hormone
being sent in order to respond to it. If the cell doesn’t have a receptor, it
doesn’t “hear” or react to the message.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Researchers studying neuroendocrine interactions discovered (among other
things) that in fibromyalgia and obesity patients, certain cells have damaged
or malfunctioning receptors for the leptin, the satiety hormone. It’s the one
that tells your brain you’ve had enough to eat. So one of the reasons you
rarely feel satisfied by a reasonable amount of food (or in my case, an
infinite amount of food) may be that satiety messages are going astray because
your cells’ in-boxes are locked or absent.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Dysregulated HPA</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> is a factor contributing to both obesity and fibromyalgia. HPA stands
for hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal, three glands (part of the endocrine system)
that are crucial to healthy functioning of many bodily processes. The HPA axis
is a grouping of responses to stress. When you experience stress (whether it’s
physical, like an injury or illness, or mental, like a fight with your spouse),
your body produces a biomarker (messenger cell) that stimulates your HPA axis.
Your hypothalamus (in your brain) then sends a message to your pituitary gland
(also in your brain), where it triggers the release of ACTH
(adrenocorticotrophic hormone) into your bloodstream and causes the adrenal
glands (on your kidneys) to release the stress hormones, particularly cortisol.
Cortisol increases the availability of the body's fuel supply (carbohydrate,
fat, and glucose), which is needed to respond to stress. However, prolonged
elevation of cortisol levels can cause havoc: muscle breaks down, your body’s
inflammatory response is compromised, and your immune system is suppressed. If
you’ve ever taken a corticosteroids medication like Prednisone to treat an
inflammatory problem (like an allergic reaction) or disease (like lupus),
you’ve probably learned the hard that it can turn you into a bad-tempered
eating machine.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Inflammation</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">, as mentioned above, is another culprit in both chronic pain and
obesity. A European study of showed that obese rats have chronic low-grade
systemic inflammation that sensitizes them to pain. Immunological vulnerability
is common to obese and chronic pain patients and contributes to pain, fatigue,
sleep disturbance, and depression. All of those are factors that can prevent us
from exercising and are associated with the neuroendocrine dysfunction
described above.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Mitchondrial dysfunction</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> may also play a role in both chronic pain and obesity. According to
Karl Krantz, D.C., “mitochondria are the power house of the cell. If energy is
not being produced, logically it can lead to or contribute to chronic fatigue
and pain.” A Finnish study of identical twins (each pair including a normal
weight and an obese twin) found that the fat cells of the obese twins contained
fewer copies of the DNA that’s located in mitochondria. This DNA contains
instructions for energy use by the cell. The lead researcher of the study says,
“If one were to compare this cellular power plant with a car engine, it could
be said that the engine of the fat individual is less efficient.” So it’s no
wonder that obese people are not able to burn or use all the calories they
consume. Some medical professionals believe that chemical toxins (such as the
preservative sodium benzoate, used in many soft drinks) and biotoxins (such as
mold) can damage the mitochondria, increase inflammation, and aggravate both
obesity and chronic pain.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><strong>WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Your own brain may in
overload now after working its way through all the biological business I’ve
ineptly but earnestly tried to explain. Even if nothing else is clear, I hope
you’ve grasped the message that the causes of and factors in obesity are
extremely complicated and well beyond the means of any currently existing
medical device or surgical procedure to cure. I also hope you can see that
blaming yourself for your obesity doesn’t go very far in treating it. You are
not in conscious control of your neuroendocrine system. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But neither are you entirely helpless</i>. You have, or will soon have,
a bariatric tool that when carefully used, can bring your appetite under better
control and increase your sense of satiety. You can learn as much as possible
about the factors that can improve your overall health and counteract the
misbehavior of your nerves, hormones, and immune system. For example, I know
for a fact that regular exercise helps me manage not just my weight but my
depression and pain. You may feel defeated by the very idea of that, but
according to an article in the July-August 2011 issue of IDEA Fitness Journal,
as little as 5 to 15 minutes of exercise a day can yield health benefits and
also increase your self-control when it comes to food choices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">At the end of the day, I
still suffer from obesity and fibromyalgia, both puzzling and difficult to
treat, but I try not to think of myself as a victim of those diseases. I can
curl up in a chair with a box of chocolates and weep about my situation, or I
can go on learning about my medical conditions and experimenting with ways to
improve my health and quality of life. The author of one of the
obesity-fibromyalgia studies, Akiko Okifuji, recommends that patients adopt
healthier lifestyles and take more positive attitudes toward symptom
management. That may sound condescending, but as Dr. Krantz wryly pointed out,
“every person in America would benefit from that approach.” I know that’s
easier said than done, but I’m willing to try it…are you?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-39591977967383740592013-03-08T06:54:00.003-06:002013-03-26T11:45:06.177-05:00My Band-to-Sleeve ExperienceA lot of people (especially those considering first-time bariatric surgery or revision surgery) have asked me about my band-to-sleeve revision, and how my sleeve compares to my band. Below is a summary of my experience so far. I'll warn you in advance that I'm not happy with my sleeve. I do know several sleevesters (band-to-sleeve patients) who love their sleeve, but I have a strong suspicion that they feel that way because their experience with the band was unhappy, not because the sleeve is intrinsically better than the band. When they had their band removed and revised to the sleeve, the euphoria they felt was a bit like the relief you feel when you stop banging your head against a wall.<br />
<br />
I was banded in September 2007. I lost 100% of my excess weight (90 lbs) in one year. I had a minor band slip (cured with a complete unfill and 6-week rest period) and a port flip (fixed with outpatient surgery) and loved my band. When it was properly adjusted, it drastically reduced both my physical hunger and my appetite (desire) for food. Food just did not taste as wonderful to me as it had in the bad old days. I also experienced the early and prolonged satiety that is the band's #1 claim to fame.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, I lost my band in April 2012 because of damage from 20+ years of silent reflux, which my band may have been aggravating. My surgeon and gastro doc agreed that my band had to come out, so I opted to revise to the sleeve in the same procedure. That didn't happen because my surgeon couldn't pass the bougie (the sleeve "calibration" tool) through my esophagus because of an undiagnosed stricture, so I was bandless until my 2nd attempt on August 16, 2012. I had the stricture dilated during an EGD in May 2012.<br />
<br />
I had thought that the sleeve would be a good 2nd choice for me because I wasn't crazy about the malabsorption aspect of RNY or DS, because one of the best features of the sleeve is that the reduced stomach size drastically reduces production of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, and because the idea of a surgery that wouldn't require fills to achieve optimal restriction was appealing.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way for me. I am now ferociously hungry on an hourly basis no matter what, how much, or when I eat. I have to eat 8-10 times a day in order to keep my blood sugar steady. I've had to start taking metformin for my type 2 diabetes after easily managing it with diet and exercise for 7 years. I've discovered that sleeve patients can dump just like gastric bypass patients. The official term for dumping is rapid gastric emptying. My surgeon says that my sleeve is too small to hold food long enough for the stomach to start digesting it, so it passes rapidly into my intestines, causing my blood sugar to spike and then dive. It gives me miserable symptoms of nausea, dizziness, drenching sweats, and fatigue. That happens not just when I eat something with sugar in it but also when I eat so-called healthy foods (protein bars, milk, cottage cheese, yogurt, protein shakes, many fruits). And it happens when I eat too fast or too much.<br />
<br />
At 6-1/2 mos post-op, I'm still trying to learn my satiety signals. They are not as clear as the stop eating signals I got with my band. All I've identified so far is that when I start feeling slightly nauseated, I've probably eaten one bite too many. Other sleevesters have told me that with their sleeve, they never have a stuck episode or a PB (productive burp or regurgitation). With my sleeve, 2 times I've felt like I was ready to PB, but I didn't. My strategies for dealing with all this are to serve myself half of my planned portion of food, eat that, and if I still feel physically hungry, I eat the rest. When I was banded, I used a salad plate (8") instead of a dinner plate (10"). Now I use a small bread plate (6").<br />
<br />
I've become anemic and have to take an iron supplement twice a day in order to give me enough energy to function. Turns out that micronutrient malabsorption isn't unique to RNY & DS patients (anemia and other conditions related to micronutrient malabsorption have been documented by scientific studies; to read an abstract of one study, click <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22952172" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
<br />
Also, a few months after my sleeve surgery I developed a gastric bleed. When doing an EGD to locate the source of the bleed, my gastro doc discovered a gastric polyp (probably the cause of the bleeding) and duodenitis (inflammation of the duodenum), neither of which were present when I had an EGD 3 months before my sleeve surgery. He theorizes that those were caused by surgical trauma.<br />
<br />
I'm not able to be objective about my sleeve at this point, and it's probably too early for me to decide it was a mistake. But even if I decide it was a mistake, I'm never going to get that missing chunk of stomach back. It's gone forever. I do know that I absolutely refuse to go back to the land of obesity, and I'm grateful that my sleeve has helped me avoid that. I've lost the 30 lbs I had regained after losing my sleeve (plus another 7 lbs), and that is wonderful thing.<br />
<br />
One difference between my band surgery and my sleeve surgery is that my sleeve surgery was much harder to recover from. It wasn't more painful, per se. My port site was very sore because my surgeon used the incision she had made to remove my port in order to remove the big chunk of stomach she had cut off, but my port site was the most uncomfortable incision from my original band surgery, so that was no surprise. My surgeon says that any revision surgery is difficult because she's not operating on a "virgin" belly. I thought that the slow recovery was due to my age (59) because an older friend (age 61) who revised to the sleeve at the same time also found it difficult, but I met a younger woman (mid 30's) in my surgeon's waiting room whose sleeve was her 1st (and we hope last) WLS was also finding it difficult. I think the length and ease of recovery is also related to the patient's age, pain tolerance, general health, and amount of time spent under general anesthesia. My surgeon keeps band patients overnight in the hospital for one night, and sleeve and RNY patients for 2 or more nights. I hate being in the hospital but I was a mess even after 2 nights there. After my band surgery, I felt fine after one night in the hospital and was bored and restless and ready to go back to work (I worked at home then) within 3-4 days. After my sleeve surgery, just lifting a glass of water to my lips was a struggle. I felt like I'd been run over by a truck, and I needed the whole 3 weeks my surgeon insisted on off work, and even then I was dragging.<br />
<br />
The other thing I want to say is that while my food capacity now is small (depending on the consistency of the food), my desire for and enjoyment of food is like it was before my band surgery. I feel like I get way, way too much pleasure out of eating. I believe that food tastes good for a reason (to keep us eating enough to survive and perpetuate the species), but that extreme enjoyment is a very mixed blessing. I constantly have to fight with myself to not take another bite so as to prolong the pleasure of eating. With my (adjusted) band, I did have some intrusive food thoughts, but nothing like it was in the bad old days. Now I think about food far too often than is good for my weight management.<br />
<br />
I wish I had a happier story to report. I've been told that I'm not trying hard enough to like my sleeve because I loved my band. That may be true, but I sincerely wanted the sleeve and sincerely wanted it to work. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. Ask me again in a year or so, and I may be waving the sleeve banner. And as the advertising hacks would say, "Your mileage may vary."Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-36100568954960543992013-03-01T11:31:00.001-06:002013-03-01T11:31:08.675-06:00STOP EATING SIGNALS
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The band gives almost instant feedback
about your eating behavior. The feedback comes in the form of Soft Stop and
Hard Stop signals. In order to learn and recognize your own stop signals, you’ll
need to slow down and pay very close attention to how your body feels when you
eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you usually eat with a crowd
(family, friends, coworkers), you might need to try eating by yourself so you
won't be distracted. Full signals can be subtle and they can come from
unexpected parts of your body. It's better to heed a gentle reminder than wait
for a hammer to hit you on the head.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">SOFT STOPS<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Soft stops are your early warning
system, gentle reminders from your body that it's time to stop eating. Because
they don't hurt much, they're easy to ignore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Your job is to recognize them (even though they may vary by the meal or
the day) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">heed them every time you
recognize them</i>. They can include:</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mild
queasiness<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fullness
or pressure in the back of the throat<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Difficulty
swallowing<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Burping
(or the urge to burp)<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
urge to take a deep breath<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
urge to cough or clear the throat<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
sigh<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Hiccups<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pressure
in the chest<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Watering
eyes<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Runny
nose<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Left
shoulder pain<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
sneeze<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Excess
saliva<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
full feeling just below the breastbone<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
sudden distaste for the food you were enjoying a moment before <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">As soon as you notice one of these
signs, stop eating. If you go on eating past this point, you won't be changing
your eating behavior and you're likely to get into trouble…that is, a hard
stop.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">HARD STOPS</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hard stops are the equivalent of
running into a brick wall. They can happen without any apparent warning, but
usually you have sped heedlessly past a soft stop before you hit the wall. Hard
stops are the painful and sometimes embarrassing reminders that you have eaten
too much, too fast, in bites that were too big, without chewing enough. They can
include:<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Chest
pain or tightness (note: this sensation is happening in your esophagus, not
your heart, but if you experience any symptoms of cardiac arrest, such as severe,
squeezing pain that radiates down an arm, put down that fork and dial 911)<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Feeling
like you have a rock in the back of your throat<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Food
stuck in stoma (for me, that involved pain between my breasts, and when the
food moved on through into my lower stomach pouch, it felt like a drain that
suddenly opened)<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Productive
burps (PB's or regurgitation)<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sliming
(excess saliva and mucus that's so profuse that you have to spit it out)</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do not go on eating after you
experience a hard stop. When the hard stop is over, you may feel fine and want
to go back to your meal, but you have irritated your upper gastrointestinal
system and will just be perpetuating the PB or other response if you continue
to eat. You’ll end up in an endless cycle of eat-pain-eat-more pain. I strongly
recommend following a liquid diet for 12-24 hours after each and every hard
stop experience. For me, that alone is a motivator because after surviving my
post-op liquid diet, I never wanted to drink a protein shake for the rest of my
life!<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-68090193762828683372013-02-23T13:35:00.001-06:002013-02-23T13:35:25.919-06:00HOW TO EAT LIKE A BANDSTER
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span><strong><span style="font-size: large;">...and other things you need to know about WLS but are
afraid to ask...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I wonder sometimes if
bariatric professionals forget to emphasize the importance of good band eating
skills because they they've never had to live with a gastric band. Of course, a
few bariatric professionals are also bariatric patients, and thank goodness for
that.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I also wonder if
bandsters are unaware of the importance of good band eating skills because
their brains slipped into neutral during that part of their pre-op education.
You'll have a hard time convincing me that's never happened to you, because I
am the Queen of Lists and Note Taking. In high school and college, classmates
would pay me for copies of my class notes. (Not only were they thorough, they
were neatly penned in my prize-winning handwriting and decorated with cunning
cartoons depicting my teachers and professors in embarrassing situations.) I
take a notebook and a list of questions to every medical appointment, I ask
questions, I re-read my notes, but despite all of that, my brain tends to shift
gears when I see or hear something that strikes me as unimportant or
irrelevant. And aside from being The World's Greatest Living Expert on
Everything, what exactly qualifies me to make the unimportant or irrelevant
judgment? Nothing. Nada. Nichts. Niente.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">During my pre- and
post-op patient education, which was tailored for bandsters and
administered by well-prepared bariatric dietitians, nurses, physician's
assistants, and so on, I must have heard the eating skills lecture a dozen
times. I was told that if I didn't eat carefully, I would end up in pain or
with my meal in my lap. I nodded my understanding each time I heard that and
could repeat the lecture verbatim, but it wasn't until I took a huge bite of a
grilled cheese sandwich 24 hours after my first fill that I truly understood what
all those folks had been telling me. And that’s not an experience I’m likely to
forget.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Take Tiny Bites!<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I talk about good
eating skills a lot. Why do I go on and on about that? Is it because I like the
sound of my own (editorial) voice? Well, sure - that's no secret. But for what
reason besides that?</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Important information
bears repeating, and repetition is one of the ways that we acquire new
information and learn new habits. If you doubt that, pay attention to how many
times the Geico lizard appears on your television screen each day. Good band
eating skills must become a habit if you're going to succeed with your band and
avoid side effects and complications. The fact that some side effects and complications can happen to even the most conscientious bandster does not excuse us all from doing our best to avoid them. You'll need good band eating skills
every hour of every day, not just as a new post-op or after each fill, but
every day for the rest of your life.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">That sounds like a
pretty tall order, doesn't it? Don't panic, though. A well-ingrained habit
doesn't take as much conscious thought as a brand-new one. Your own behavior
has already proven that if you've ever found yourself with a half-finished
Twinkie or a cigarette or a beer in your hand and couldn't remember how it got
there. It works the other way too. Your healthy new habits will eventually dig
themselves into your life and using them will get easier as you go along.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">When you forget your
band eating skills, your band will give you a loud reminder in the form of side
effects like PB's, sliming, or stuck episodes, but I beg you not to rely on
your band's built-in warning system on a regular basis, because doing so will
send your bandwagon skittering down the road to complications like esophageal
dilation, stomach dilation, band slips and even band erosion.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">One of the problems
with the band's alarm system is that the truly destructive behaviors it reacts
to may trigger relatively mild warnings so long before the damage is done that
it's easy to shrug them off. For example, let's say that you often take big
bites, don't chew very well, eat quickly, and/or eat beyond your soft stops
(soft stops are gentle stop-eating signals, like hiccups). Each time you do
those things, you experience mild discomfort. Nothing horrific. It happens, you
think, "Oops," and you go back to whatever you were doing before the
discomfort happened. Eventually this mild discomfort becomes just a part of
your post-op life - the same as the way you sneeze when you pet a cat, pass gas
when you eat beans, or get a headache when you don't wear your eyeglasses. Hey,
that's just the way it is, right?</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">But one bad day after
dozens of ordinary days you can't even swallow your own saliva. You rush to the
doctor, who does an upper GI x-ray and tells you your band has slipped.
"How can that be?" you cry, "Everything's been fine until
now!"</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In fact, everything
has not been fine, because your careless eating has been pushing, pushing,
pushing at your band's limits, until finally it pushed your band up your
esophagus or down your stomach. I don't like finger-pointing any better than
you do, but whose responsibility is that band slip? Is it your surgeon's, for
not stitching it on there well enough? Is it the band manufacturer's, for not
making your band slip-proof? Or is it yours?</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">There can be a happy
ending to your story, though. Even if the band slip is clearly your fault, you
won't get sent to prison to sip brackish water and gnaw on stale bread for the
rest of your days. Your surgeon can unfill your band (or, less likely, re-operate
to reposition your band), and you can revamp your eating skills, lose weight,
and live happily ever after. Or better yet, you can avoid the pain,
inconvenience, financial and emotional costs, and pay attention to your eating
from now on.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I ain't gonna lie to
you...acquiring and practicing this new habit won't be easy, but I can think of
a lot of things that could be worse. A lot worse.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>The official
Bandwagon® Eating Skills are:</strong></span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">1.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don't drink while you eat or for 30 to 60
minutes afterwards.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">2.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Take tiny bites.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">3.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Chew, chew chew.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">4.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eat slowly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">5.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eat the protein first.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">6.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Learn your stop signals.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">7.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pay attention to problem foods.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">8.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eat only when you're hungry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">9.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Avoid liquid calories and slider foods.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">10.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Use a small plate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">11.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Plan your food in advance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">12.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don't watch TV or read while you eat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">13.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don't put serving dishes on the dining table.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">14.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eat sitting down at the dining table.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">15.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Follow the HALT rule (don't eat when you're
too <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">h</b>ungry, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">a</b>ngry, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">l</b>onely or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">t</b>ired).</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’ll find full
explanations of each skill in Chapter 12 of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bandwagon,
Strategies for Success with the Adjustable Gastric Band,</i> by yours truly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1554342973151004146.post-37263322531067097372013-02-18T11:30:00.001-06:002013-02-18T11:32:14.468-06:00The Top 10 Things to Know About the Adjustable Gastric Band (according to Jean)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">1.
You will <em>not</em> wake up in the recovery room at your goal weight.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Average weight loss with the
band is 1-2 pounds per week, and virtually no one loses weight at a nice steady
pace of (say) 1.75 pounds per week. Some weeks you’ll lose, some weeks you’ll
stall and some weeks you’ll gain, but as long as the overall trend is downward,
you’re doing great!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2.
Slower weight loss with the band does not prevent sagging or excess skin. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">How your skin reacts to massive
weight loss depends mostly on your genetics and your age. As we age, our skin
loses elasticity. If the possibility of sagging or excess skin worries you,
start tossing your change into a plastic surgery piggy bank <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now!<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">3.
Weight loss surgery (of any type) does NOT cure obesity.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Obesity is a chronic and incurable
disease characterized by relapse and recurrence. Although bariatric surgery is
currently the most effective way of treating obesity, obesity is something
you’re going to have to manage for the rest of your life, with or without
surgery. For most of us, a tool like the adjustable gastric band makes that a
lot easier, but it’s not effortless, either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">4.
Many eating problems after band surgery are due to user error, and can be
prevented</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> by
using <em>good band eating skills</em>. Come back soon to read an article about those skills.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">5.
In order to decrease your weight and increase your health, </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">you must decrease your food
intake <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and </i>increase the quality of
your food choices <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> the time you
spend exercising. While you may be able to lose weight for a while by just
eating much smaller portions of Chicken McNuggets, potato chips, and candy
bars, eventually that approach will stop working, and at the same time it will
start biting your health in the butt. Though it may be difficult for you to
exercise at first, each pound you lose will make it easier, and each additional
hour you spend exercising will not only burn calories but improve your physical
and mental health. And remember: exercising doesn’t necessarily involve
athletic skill or Olympic effort (though it may seem that way at the start).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">6.
No weight loss surgery procedure will cure</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> eating disorders, eating demons, emotional eating,
boredom eating, stress eating, celebratory eating or food addiction. Changing
those behaviors is your job. If it’s too hard to tackle yourself, consider
getting some counseling with a therapist experienced with eating disorder and
WLS patients, and/or joining a 12-step group like Overeater’s Anonymous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">7.
The band rarely works without fills.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
Even if you initially lose weight with one or no fills, sooner or later, you’re
going to have to face the fill needle. And if you’re too needle-phobic to
tolerate a fill needle, why did you choose band surgery in the first place? But
consider this: adjustability is one of the wonderful things about the band.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">8.
The restriction “sweet spot” is a myth.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> There is no such thing as “perfect” restriction, or
if there is, you can’t count on it to last more than one hour, one day or one
week. This is because the band is an inert silicone object implanted in a
living, breathing human body that changes constantly in reaction to the time of
day, time of month, time of year, hydration, illness, medication, stress, you
name it. Restriction variability is part of the gastric band package.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">9.
There is nothing magic in the band that makes you lose weight.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Changing your eating and
exercise behavior is what makes you lose weight. All the band does is make that
work easier for you by reducing your physical hunger and increasing your
satiety (specifically by providing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">early
and prolonged satiety</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>YOU are responsible for your weight loss.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Not your band, not your surgeon,
and not the server at McDonald’s who invariably asks you, “Want to supersize
that?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Jeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061037789190055324noreply@blogger.com1