These is basically just for me to vent over my private thoughts about something that went down recently. I still have some leftover frustration despite maybe personal messages cheering me on and supporting me in my line of thought so rather than make a forum thread for all to see begging for reassurance I just thought I would make a personal blog entry for me to come back on should I ever find myself in this situation again, because I think that spending most of the day in self reflection I have more or less worked out my real feelings about all this.
I've been known as the mean girl at many points in my life because I have always been active in organizations, clubs, and jobs in positions of power. I have always sought excellence, I was never happy to just be a member of a club, I jumped in head first and ran for president, you know? It's just my personality. I don't do a lot, but what I do decide to do, I do it to the absolute best that I possibly can. Now, this certainly is not to say that I do not have my days, and my screwups but I am not the type of person to screw up and then go post about it online looking for people to tell me it's OK. I track like I eat like all of us know we should, so there is never any question about whether or not something was alright or not. I'm in the green or I'm in the red, and when everything is black and white like that it's pretty obvious what to do about it.
This brings me to the heart of the matter, and what I seem to be continually butting heads with people over - I do not understand what people are looking for when they make posts about massively veering off course for a diet, let alone how we should be eating postoperative. I can understand it when people want to know if this or that is acceptable, but when people have gone and had 150 grams of carbs, 80 grams of sugar, and probably blown their fat and calories out of the water for the day too, I just don't understand. I know its not easy to stop, and I would never ever sit here and claim to never mess up. Hell, at two weeks post op I had frozen yogurt with my husband, and at three weeks post op I had a smallish serving of Outback Steakhouse's blooming onion, arguably one of the worse appetizers in the country. I make mistakes too, but what I do not understand is posting about it looking for nothing but hand-holding and reassuring comments.
I don't know what to say to someone who does that, especially when its over and over again, not just in posts but in comments to over people as well. And let me be clear - while this last episode that prompted me to really examine myself was obviously in response to a particular person, this is extremely common, which is why I felt the need to check myself.
I want to say something that I never said in all the back and forth, because it had not really occurred to me, and towards the end of all that, I was genuinely hurt by some of things people said and wasn't thinking clearly about the topic at hand. Enablers will not ever help you. Telling someone who has issues with food that their bad behavoir is fine and that tomorrow is a new day is not only a load of BS, its destructive in the worse sort of insidious way.
You will NEVER change if you don't wrap your head around the abuse that you inflict on yourself. Never, it doesn't matter how much of your stomach they take away, it doesn't matter how many ounces of food you can eat in a setting, you will find a way to ruin this gift to yourself.
I know this. I already HAD surgery once, and like so many of you out there, when I messed it up for myself day after day, week after week I came onto YouTube and forums like this looking for "support" when I really needed someone to tell me to stop what I was doing to myself. Some people act like they don't really have a problem with food and they might be true for a small minority of people on this site but the harsh reality is that no one makes it to 250 pounds, 300 pounds, and BMIs through the roof that merit weight loss surgery without unhealthy ideas about what is OK to eat, what isn't OK, and little ways we kid ourselves into thinking it's fine, it'll be better next time, I'll jump back on the horse tomorrow...... It's all a crock, and we kidded ourselves up to shameful sizes with that mentality.
I'm not saying that we should suddenly go at things with a level of intensity that we cannot maintain, and through empathy out the window but what I am saying is that when a simple suggestion that doing the hard mental work that needs to be done might require therapy or counseling of some sort, and that sparks a rage in people burning so hot that they threaten to leave the site and throw all class and dignity out the window, that does not bode well for the state of this community.
It would serve people well to sit up and take note of the state of things around here. When all that is offered is platitudes and hand holding, nothing good will come of that. We have to change our minds to change our bodies and sometimes that means growing a spine, and taking some honest criticism and self evaluation. No one is doing you any favors is everything they tell you is comfortable and unchallenged
If none of what I said applies to you, then you have to take some responsibility for what you post. If you make a semi-dramatic post every time you do something wrong but you have it under control, you have no right to get indignant when people notice. Some things are more appropriate in blog format not public forums.
