sideeye

Yes, bedside manner is hugely important to me. It doesn’t score higher than skill, but BAD bedside manner will absolutely result in me leaving. I find that bad bedside manner is closely related to people who see patients as either idiots or widgets. I am sometimes going to want something explained in more detail, and “I’m the Doctor, you’re the patient, you’re going to have to trust me” is not going to fly with me. when the bedside manner is poor because someone’s socially awkward or genuinely doesn’t know they’re initially coming off poorly, that’s something I can work with. Arrogance is not.

A liquids-tracking app! I didn’t download one prior to surgery and vaguely recall woozily trying to find one post-surgery. For some reason my nurse wasn’t tracking it at all and I definitely wanted a record. I found one and used it, but wished the whole time I’d prepared. Also audiobooks. Best to download something you’ve already read and loved, or something that goes in short bursts like BBC sketch comedy. Post-hospital my MVP was the two king-sized pillows I used to make my bed into a BarcaLounger. I never, ever sleep on my back, but those wedged me into position so I didn’t roll while I was still full of holes.

I ate s’mores. Microwave s’mores. No regrets for the ones I ate, but I’m 3 lbs over my usual zone so I’ve now hidden the box with all the ingredients in the back of the cupboard. See you in late January, s’mores!

Has anyone else just eased into a life that makes you think “wait, this is what everyone else was experiencing all along”? I don’t particularly track or restrict my diet, but I stop eating when I’ve had enough, which used to be unheard of for me. I can tell when I’m three pounds over or under my average weight just through body awareness, which again, I used not to be able to feel physically or predict. I’ve nailed the social interactions bit and no longer feel guilt for eating little or anger at splitting a check when my portion was much smaller (I see it as paying rent for the restaurant space and good conversation, rather than an exact percentage of food ingested). I can gauge food intake and plan for events almost unconsciously. When my coworkers order an Uber, there’s no weirdness around where I can sit, because I can be the third in the backseat and we can all still buckle up. i can sit in the middle, even. That constant mental calculation is gone, as is the paranoia when I catch someone looking at me, as is the constant obsessing about food. I realize my experience isn’t everyone’s, but it really is like I broke a chemical addiction and am now experiencing life like the majority of people do. And it’s INSANE to think of the gap in understanding between people who are obese and people who never have been. One side can’t understand how the other lacks an iota of understanding or sympathy, while the other side genuinely has NO IDEA and no life experience to remotely contextualize the reality of obesity, but THINK the human experience with food in general is universal and so feel comfortable basing their reaction on what they know. Like right now, in this moment, I can sympathize with some of my past tormentors who just said in exasperation “well, stop eating when you get full!”. Because for them, it was truly that simple. In fact, it was so alien to them to keep eating past that “full” trigger, so it seemed like anyone obese had to actively and obstinately keep pushing past that trigger deliberately. Hell, it’s easy for me NOW to obey that trigger, but it used to just be invisible. I like this life much better. It’s easier, it’s mentally more healthy, I get a constant wash of approval from society for conforming. But it also constantly reaffirms that obesity is rarely a choice, should be treated as a disease, and society needs to shift to stop valorizing weight conformity as a sign of personal willpower and control. Some people luck out with their factory setting when it comes to food. You don’t get a gold star for taking the easiest path and obeying your programming that happens to regulate caloric intake well, while the person whose factory setting has no “I’m full” switch and who also constantly gets bombarded with marketing messaging and economic incentives to eat large quantities of high-calorie food gets cast as some sort of slothful glutton. Again: life now is good. But there aren’t many of us out there who have genuinely experienced both obesity and the factory-reset of bariatric surgery, and it’s surreal to realize how few people on either side of that divide know what the hell is happening here.

Re: starches - I got where I was not because of content of food but because of quantity. So for me at least, I can eat potatoes, bread, etc because I know exactly how much of it I can eat. And by that I mean “before I feel too full”, not counting calories. We all had different triggers that got us where we were, and mine was that I actually got a rush when I overate. I know some people had sweet tooth issues or craved pizza or another food-specific addiction, but my problem was quantity. My system was making me feel GOOD when I had too much food in my stomach, didn’t matter what kind and I had no particular allegiance to a specific food group. That feeling is entirely gone for me now, which was a very weird realization and resulted in a lot of 3-month-out rants about people saying “you’ll eat to satisfaction” (because as far as I was concerned, I have never felt that “satisfied” chemical rush after surgery). It was only after talking to other people that I realized the endorphin rush was not a normal or universal thing, and that most people do not see a chemical mood boost as the natural end to a good meal. Who knew? So for me at least, it really isn’t the content of the food that’s a problem. I can eat a small amount of pasta in a meal and it has no knock-on effect, because in my case it wasn’t the taste of the food I was addicted to. The real problem for me would either be eating too much (no longer possible) or grazing (still very possible and the thing I have to watch out for). But it’s important to know your triggers when adding food back in. Some of us can (and do) eat anything. For others I know there’s a much more slippery slope that likely involves an addiction to taste or comfort memory.

I weigh two or three times a week, wireless scale that reports to my phone. It’s been a good way to break apart the psychological element of weighing myself - I actually don’t pay a ton of attention when I do it most of the time. But sometimes, I’ve actively been thinking that I feel a little heavier than I should, and then weighing myself has been a good thing to reconnect the number on the scale with how my body feels. Now it turns out I’m pretty sensitive to as little as a two-pound shift, which NEVER would have happened when I was heavier. And then if I realize I’ve been consistently feeling heavy, I’ll go look at the graph on my phone and if the trend is not good, I’ll taper back or cut stuff out for a while. But since I’m pretty much maintaining at this point, the biggest benefit has been the body/number awareness. I’m pretty sure I had some body dysmorphia going on when I was heavier, so this low-stakes awareness is a huge improvement.

I have job-related drinking too, and find that two drinks is now my limit for a night. And I deliberately eat before I go, which I used to do to make sure I could soak up booze, and now do because it ensures I drink verrrrrry slowly. I also do booze-water alternating, so if I do finish that first glass, the second one is water. And I order a lot of Shirley temples now at work events, which amuses me and always makes other people laugh when they ask what it is. And then they usually get jealous and get one themselves.

Speaking of milk... I’m perfectly ABLE to drink it, but 18 months out I’m realizing that it smells/tastes odd a lot sooner than the expiration date. I mean, within about two days of purchasing milk with a date well in the future, I start thinking it’s gone off. It’s not actually off, but I have a hard time drinking it straight up unless it’s JUST been opened. I was a huge milk drinker before and very able to tell when milk was turning, so this is bizarre.

Yep, that was pretty much the diagnosis: lie by omission, and an omission that he should’ve damn well realized was a problem if he’d prioritized me the way I’d expect him to. Once you realize that someone isn’t prioritizing you in a relationship, it’s time to reassess, usually harshly. But as you say, it was a reentry into dating and well worth the time. Onto the next conquest, hopefully more local this time!

I’ve got the iron sleeve too - nothing bothers it based on ingredients, but I have to pay attention to quantity. Some foods I can eat quite a lot of without problem - others I can have a few bites and that’s it, I’m done. I don’t have dumping syndrome that I know of? Most important is paying attention to how you’re feeling as you’re eating, and tracking any negative/full sensations. Like fries - I can eat them, it won’t make me sick, but I eat ten and I am done for the entire meal. Meanwhile if I start with the burger, I can eat the majority of that without feeling full. If you measured mass I’m sure I’m eating way more burger than fries, but for some reason the fries fill me up. As a rule, anything sugary or fatty will fill me way faster than an equivalent mass of protein/carb/whatever. It’s actually been really convenient since I have a couple spoons of ice cream and I am genuinely done. The trick is not eating through the full feeling, or artificially spacing the food out to ensure you can eat more of it.

Abandon. The reason he is blindsided by how much he likes me is because he omitted some things in prior conversations, and that’s a no-go with me. So while it was not an acrimonious break, I made it pretty damn clear that the romantic side of this would not continue. And too late he has registered what that means. Eh, life.

We are having opposite weeks! VacationBoo has apparently accidentally fallen deeply in love with me but is unwilling to abandon his unconventional relationship lifestyle (and also it’s totally impractical, we live on opposite sides of the world). So we had a fantastic couple of weeks of vacation but he is now leaving borderline heartbroken. I’m... fine with this? I mean, he’s great and I like him LOADS, and it’s clear that the strength of his feeling for me has somewhat snuck up and walloped him, but that’s sometimes just how the chips fall. Apart from that, his visit has had the usual diet and exercise repercussions and I lost the 7lbs that had crept up since I last saw him. I’ve also discovered that one of my favorite elements of dating is going to restaurants, tasting my date’s food, and giving him half of what I ordered. I don’t think I took this much delight in watching other people enjoy food before surgery.

The vacation boo vacation has commenced. We have left the house briefly, mainly for food, over the last 2 days. I am using him as a cheat food vehicle - he orders a chocolate shake, I get some of it. We order a sub and he eats 4/5ths. He is a willing participant in this scheme. This is excellent.

I don’t think that it’s completely true that you don’t feel restriction with water. If you haven’t had any food in hours and only have liquid, maybe, with the funnel analogy it goes right through. But if you have ANY food in your stomach at all, meaning there’s food in the narrow part of your funnel, then I don’t see how the liquid would jump the line. Surely it acts as a stopper and your stomach expands with the liquid being piped in. Basically, if you eat two pieces of sushi and half an hour later chug a bottle of water? I definitely feel that water back up. Doesn’t anyone else feel this during meals?

I was a chugger, polished off pint glasses in one go, but haven’t since surgery. Can’t. Drink too much and I can feel the restriction, possibly more than with food. Ive ended up freezing water in bottles, then sticking them in the fridge. The meltwater is ice-cold but only a few mouthfuls at a time, which seems to tick the box. I can do ~14 oz of liquid over 15-20 mins, based on tea/coffee intake. But honestly I just don’t pound liquids like I used to. Bothered me at first, now totally fine.

Totally fine, it was actually fine in the moment - more than anything she shocked herself, I think she thought she was over that sort of knee-jerk reaction. But after a week of seeing me in summer clothing (both fitting into it and being completely nonchalant about it) I think she was on a satisfaction high and let down her guard a bit. It’s weird, because many of our family and friends are so thrilled with our changes in huge, comprehensive ways, that the possibility of reversal can hit them hard and viscerally. It’s not just the weight - they panic about the personality change reversing too.

I wore a wrap dress today, and two things were notable: 1) the wrap now fits me so completely that I don’t have to pin the bodice and I also don’t have to worry about gusts of wind - if the first panel flies up, the second one wraps all the way to my hip and has me covered 2) I completely forgot about wearing anything on my thighs, so when I hit the street and felt how muggy it was my heart sank, imagining friction burns on my inner thighs by day’s end. But after 2 miles of walking? NOTHING. even with the extra skin, NO CHAFING AT ALL.

I was on vacation last week, and at the end I casually mentioned it to my mom: “I think I’ve gained some weight, maybe two or three pounds” and she had this completely over-the-top, horrified reaction! Like, so ABSURDLY reactionary that I stopped in my tracks and turned to look at her, and she got all flustered trying to backtrack. It was so weird! I was unfazed when saying it, it was mostly just a casual observation, but her exclamation really blindsided me. Now, the nutty thing is that I was right - 2.5 lb increase, based on total inactivity and steady booze/ice cream intake (no regrets!). This is a weird victory for me, both in that I am apparently familiar enough with my body at this point to be able to gauge weigh correctly just by gut feel, and that I felt absolutely no shame or guilt in the observation. But mom’s reaction was a strange blend - it reminded me that she did react constantly to anything related to my weight when I was fat, but the SCALE of the response was much more connected to a real horror of me reverting. I love her to death, but yikes. And I think she was just as taken aback by her response as I was; she’d mostly stopped actively bugging me about weight a few years before surgery (she attended a psych lecture and during the presentation realized that all the “don’t do this” things around body image were things she’d done while raising me, and apparently had to leave mid-presentation and cry in the car). She was very careful after that, and then thrilled after surgery, so this was more like her behavior to teenage me suddenly popping up out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box. Anyone else seen weird throwback behavior from friends or relatives?

Honestly, if I ever had any expectation of vacation boo becoming a more solid thing, the whole damn thing would be different. But since geography and circumstances and frankly life philosophies make that practically impossible, I have a very low bar for this entire relationship. We text daily too, but I don’t hold him to any of the standards I would hold an actual boyfriend (communication wise). And when we’re together it’s good, so - live in the now! And be totally aware that if a guy comes along who is more practical, he gets the spot! But right now? This works. My clock’s not ticking and he is VERY good at MANY things, so status quo is maintainable. If I get bored I’m out, which I think is a reasonable stance when there are a lot of other asterisks in the relationship. In other news I’ve been holding steady for the last 5 months, which is fine but also has me a little concerned. I might drink too much iced coffee with cream, among other things. Steady is fine, regain is not. Every time I see this guy I lose 10 lbs, crossing my fingers that witchcraft works again...

I have an ongoing allergy to posting photos online so its unlikely I can post proof of vacation boo’s visit, but he’ll be here for two weeks living in my apartment with me. There are mini vacations planned as well. He’s volunteered to cook (he knows that I rarely do, since solo meals are so tiny post-surgery that hours of prep aren’t worth it), he’s entertaining himself while I’m at work (touristy stuff I exhausted eons ago), and will probably do a few days or remote work himself. I’ve had a really intense few months at work that have only just let up, so it’ll be really nice to have him round to hang out with. But honestly it’s also just going to be massively NC-17 pretty much all the time, and I am VERY much looking forward to that. @GreenTealael what’s up with your long-distance guy? Still going?

Yaaaaaargh I finally got back in the pool. Like any former swim team idiot, I figured I would do just a segment of a workout I remembered from high school and wing it. Turns out you’re just fine in the water, it’s the returning to gravity that really does a number on you. Also turns out that I’m bad at reckoning distance when vaguely recalling the number of laps that would be “reasonable” to start with after a few years away. That said, whole different ball game now I’m both slimmer and overall more cardiovascularly active. I live in a city so walk about 3 miles a day, and if you’ve spent a number of years doing any activity there’s a certain amount of muscle memory involved, but there is no way that I would’ve just jumped in the pool and swum a mile from scratch at my highest weight. Or that recovery would mostly be a Sunday moaning irritably and drinking Gatorade rather than being immobile. Also the vacation boo is coming to visit. The swimming regimen is unrelated, but will certainly not hurt.

If sweets entered my house, I’d demolish them in a day or two. Now? I’ve had a cupboard full of Girl Scout cookies for five months. I have chocolate left over from my Christmas stocking. I had to throw out Japanese mochi because I forgot about it and it went hard. I keep an emergency tube of cookie dough in my fridge for kid visits and it’s been untouched for two months. That’s not even getting into all the pasta I’ve similarly not touched. It is crazy that my brain doesn’t go for those things for stress eating anymore. These days it’s cheese, coffee, Crystal lite or cashews... which now I’ve written it is weird because it all starts with “c”. Odd. But one of the ”c”s is not candy or cookies, which is remarkable!

Welcome back, though I’ve been gone a while and only just found out you had a surgery! Did something happen to prompt the revision?

Yes, see a therapist. You know that your current reaction to a bunch of stimuli results in you feeling strong emotions that you don’t like - generically, that’s exactly the situation where a therapist comes in handy. I’ve been where you are, I lost something like 70lbs about a decade ago and felt ALL the stuff you’re feeling. I was angry ALL THE TIME. And while it’s bad enough to have those feelings washing through you, let me tell you what’s worse - gaining the weight back as a blended “eff you” to shallow humans and as a protective measure to stop other people saying this stuff to you. I gained all that weight back and once I realized what had prompted that behavior, I went to a therapist because whoa, that is not acceptable. I was not down to staying overweight just so I didn’t have to deal with people basically confirming fat bias I’d suspected for years. I felt so, SO angry for overweight me who’d been gaslit for years, being told that all of these micro behaviors and omissions were just gaps in my self-confidence or me projecting - skinny people have no idea. They’re clueless. My own mother was one of them, and only accepts that I know what the hell I'm talking about after I’ve lost significant amounts of weight multiple times and can do a historical comparison. Anyhow, I was seriously worried that I’d have another freak out reaction after bariatric surgery and had a therapist lined up just in case, but looks like the initial months of therapy did the trick and realigned my thinking. I can now react to people’s comments and changed treatment with a measure of bemusement and, I don’t know, anthropological distance? There’s a lot of social engineering dictating their responses too. But it doesn’t do any good for you to have all those emotions wearing you down. Definitely see a therapist. It’s housecleaning for your brain - whenever someone else cleans your house, they dust the spots you neglect and suggest more effective ways to do things. Allow someone uninvolved to come in and assess whether your current mental setup is actually working for you, and if not, how to change it. PS - 100% co-sign on @GreenTealael‘s note about not being the same person. It’s not just physical, you’ll be mentally different too, and behaviorally different. My sister showed me videos from a family gathering two years apart and it’s shocking how different my behavior is. My participation is different, my volume, my ease, where I am in the crowd, the way I’m interacting with others. Sure I’m thinner and wearing better clothes, but it’s like an engine has been switched on inside me. An outside observer, coming across this bunch of genetically similar-looking people, could easily conclude that I was two entirely different cousins.

My uniform these days is jeans (Levis skinny), tops I bought in Australia (because no one else has them here, dammit) and Rothys. Sometimes wedge heels. Lots of delicate jewelry. But tomorrow I’m working from home so it’s likely going to be leggings and a flashdance 3x top or just my Natori robe, right up until someone makes me do a videocall and then I’ll put on a bra and a nice shirt and brush my hair. But not one moment before that! I have to admit I cycle through the same 15-20 items of clothing; everyone sees me in something they very likely saw me in last week, and possibly even a repeat from the day before. Meanwhile I own 3999 items of clothing and need to just donate them already.