I Can't Believe I'm Still Fat.

[crosswind 134]

I shouldn't do this.

I have been sleeved for ten months and I have lost 94 pounds ( well actually I think I went back up and it's 93 pounds....) and that is a LOT of weight in nine months and I am happy about it.

But I'm still fat. I'm fitting into size 12 lately and thinking about summer and how I have 40 more pounds to go, and I gotta say I am just so BORED of this. Not being at goal. Not being close to goal.

It's funny because I spent close to a year refusing to care about this too much, being patient and not killing myself over a slow loss, which i knew was going to happen because I just couldn't face some punishing diet ever again.

But now that I'm under 200 the glimmerings of my old Body Dissatisfaction are beginning to appear. I spent today wondering if I should plunge into lowcarb and lowcal fatstripping and I *know* I should not, for the simple reason that if I go the deprivation route and start just staring down that scale -- when I *do* get to goal I'll be flipping out over bit of food I put in my mouth.

I did it today; started worrying about my calories and wondering if I was gaining weight....and thinking about how much longer it's going to take to lose another 40 pounds and just, you know, *bothering myself*.

I *know* I am running at a caloric deficit every single day. I *know* it has to keep going down and I *know* there is no way that my level of intake and exercise can support a weight of 195. It *has* to go down still, no matter how long it takes. I plan to be done losing weight six months from now, which seems like a reasonable period of time to lose another 40 pounds. I'm just sick of this already and I'm ready to do a boot camp or some other radical thing.

Six months....six months ago I weighed 240. And the thing I can't believe is that if I think I'm fat *now* I must have been huge before..and before that. How did I let it get this bad?

[missmeow 156]

You've lost nearly 100lbs. That is great!

Maybe you might consider trying to let your body and your mind adjust to the changes and not focus on the goal but the journey? Sometimes the brain takes awhile to catch up and you might still be seeing your old self in the mirror because you're so focused on the scale.

[MegInNOLA 531]

Oh, Crosswinds, I've been doing the exact same thing this week! My goal of 190 is completely arbitrary-- I set that for myself because I remember weighing that in grad school (I'm 6'2" and that's near the top of a "normal" BMI for my height). I hit the 190's back in November, I think, and I'm STILL HERE. I've been bouncing back and forth between 191 and 194, panicking a bit when I was 195 this morning.... yet I haven't changed my eating habits or anything else.

I'm starting to worry that "this is it," and when I say worry, that's kind of a relative term--I'm in a size 12/14 and get tons of compliments daily--I feel great. But now I'm wondering if this is where I'm going to be and what if I should aim lower and if so, what do I need to do differently to get there, etc. etc. etc.

And I'm checking my body and not liking what I see all that much--still have weight that could go, you know? I am so much smaller than before--I definitely was HUGE at 306. And some of what I hate is loose skin, but some of it is definitely NOT just skin.... ICK! I have never been good at "diets," which is why I ended up where I was, and I absolutely hate having to think about what I'm eating. I have had to eat mindfully for the last few months because of my picky small sleeve, and I just do it because I have to, but I've gotten into a groove with this eating plan--and thinking about adjusting it again to continue to drop weight (and all the hassles that involves with new foods/possibly not acceptable to my sleeve foods) gives me serious pause.

I don't know; I just don't know. It's so strange to try to rationalize and plan something like this.

[Suzannesh 376]

I shouldn't do this.

I have been sleeved for ten months and I have lost 94 pounds ( well actually I think I went back up and it's 93 pounds....) and that is a LOT of weight in nine months and I am happy about it.

But I'm still fat. I'm fitting into size 12 lately and thinking about summer and how I have 40 more pounds to go, and I gotta say I am just so BORED of this. Not being at goal. Not being close to goal.

It's funny because I spent close to a year refusing to care about this too much, being patient and not killing myself over a slow loss, which i knew was going to happen because I just couldn't face some punishing diet ever again.

But now that I'm under 200 the glimmerings of my old Body Dissatisfaction are beginning to appear. I spent today wondering if I should plunge into lowcarb and lowcal fatstripping and I *know* I should not, for the simple reason that if I go the deprivation route and start just staring down that scale -- when I *do* get to goal I'll be flipping out over bit of food I put in my mouth.

I did it today; started worrying about my calories and wondering if I was gaining weight....and thinking about how much longer it's going to take to lose another 40 pounds and just, you know, *bothering myself*.

I *know* I am running at a caloric deficit every single day. I *know* it has to keep going down and I *know* there is no way that my level of intake and exercise can support a weight of 195. It *has* to go down still, no matter how long it takes. I plan to be done losing weight six months from now, which seems like a reasonable period of time to lose another 40 pounds. I'm just sick of this already and I'm ready to do a boot camp or some other radical thing.

Six months....six months ago I weighed 240. And the thing I can't believe is that if I think I'm fat *now* I must have been huge before..and before that. How did I let it get this bad?

Hi,

You DID NOT put this weight on over night. I does take awhile to get it off. It took me 14 months to lose 105 pounds. Stop putting yourself down,that only makes it worse. Go back to tracking just what you are putting in your body. I know it takes time, but aren't you worth it? I kept my calories at about 800 per day and NO more than 20 to 25 carbs per day. You might be shocked if you track everything you put in your mouth just how many calories you are eating everyday. Bump up your exercise and do some other kind of exercise.

Change things around, find new ways to cook so of the things you eat, stay busy and stop thinking about what you are NOT doing and think more about what you are doing.

If you are older it takes longer to lose the fat, if you are a woman it slows down the closer you get to the goal you have have set. Just tell yourself that you have the time to get the weight off.

Hugs,

Suzanne

[CHELL 41]

I'd be over the moon if I could get down to a size 12!!!!! LOL I can remember being a size 12 and weighing 165 lbs. at age 19. I thought I was fat then. I look back on pictures and I was skinny as a rail but still wore a size 12. Go figure. If I thought I was fat then, you can imagine how I feel now!!! I can't wait to be a size 12 again!!! I personally think you are doing great! You have the rest of your life to get to goal. Just look at where you were this time last year. That should put it all in perspective. I will never complain about a size 12 again if I can get back there after I have this surgery.

[clk 3,519]

I hit a few Patches where I was so frustrated it was making me nuts. I stalled out for about nine weeks twice. I really thought I'd be at goal in nine months. I got down to 165 pounds, yes, about that size 12 and I was just..burned out.

It's hard because we spend all that time pre-op and post-op daydreaming about being at goal, being thin, being able to do the things we couldn't do as seriously overweight people. And it's frustrating and disheartening to see that we still have SO far to go, to watch other people reach goal much more quickly and to have to readjust our expectations.

The reality is that you'll get past this hump. You will lose more weight if you keep trying. I fell off a bit for about four weeks while stranded in the 160s. I didn't gain anything but I stopped trying to lose. I had to get to the point where I realized I was still a success and that a year earlier I would have daydreamed about being a size 12, not whining that I wasn't as small as I wanted to be!

It stinks but the closer you get to goal the longer it takes for those last pounds to fall off, too. It took me six months to lose the last 20 pounds. Once they came off I quit trying to get smaller immediately and went right into maintenance, even though I had previously entertained the idea of dropping my goal down ten more pounds. It's a hard journey!

You only have forty pounds left, though, and you've lost that more than twice over since surgery! Keep on going. It's too late to beat yourself up for letting yourself get heavy in the first place. You did something to change it, and you still have the power to do it. I've said it about half a dozen times in the past few days, but there is NO magic window of weight loss with this surgery. Your sleeve is getting close to it's final size and unless you put a lot of effort into it that thing isn't getting much bigger. It's still restricting you. The rest is up to you - making those good food choices and doing the right things, even when it's boring and feels like you're not getting anywhere on the scale. I never would have made goal if I hadn't kept on trying. There were weeks where I didn't see any change in weight at all, so if I had allowed myself to get discouraged and quit I'd still be in those twelves.

Chin up. Keep going!

~Cheri

[janerose 109]

I have had my sleeve for only five weeks - so I am still learning what works for me and what doesn't. I have lost 30lbs (but am on a long stall right now).

I have not set a weight goal for myself nor did my Doctor - I went into this only to feel better - to walk without having to stop every 30 seconds - to fit into clothes that are not from Lane Bryant or the Avenue - to stop the pain of Arthritis that runs up and down my body - walk on the beach with my friends and family - carry my granddaughter without hurting.

I like all of us here have gained and lost many pounds over the past - I look at the sleeve as my guide to good health and a good life - not to be thin.

I don't care what the scale says - I just want to be healthy and feel good -

[crosswind 134]

These are all great responses.

I know, you guys.

The first thing is -- you know how you see a commercial for some diet program - or an ad -- and it says: " Dierdre lost 40 pounds!!!" and there's a before and afer shot and she looks like a movie star in her after picture? Well, okay, I lost ninety plus pounds and I still don't look like Dierdre. That is just so annoying.

But. The whole reason I got the sleeve was because I knew there was no way i was ever getting under 200 pounds again without serious hardcore medical help. At almost 300 pounds I was upset every day. I tried not to let it get to me -- lots of people are fat and have lives and it's not a moral failing, and some people just have crazd metabolisms, and you can still be healthy and happy and fat and all that -- and I told myself all that but at the same time...I would just look in the mirror and realize I had two choices and one of them was to do something about my weight .And if i did, it was going to take a loooong time....a year, a year and a half.

The other choice was to do nothing because I knew nothing would work, and part of the problem was that it is really hard enough to be on a "diet" and lose 40 pounds like Dierdre. Spending eighteen months on a fat problem is really just beyond most people because most of us just don't have that much determination and concentration. I am not saying it's not possible, but in eighteen months anything could happen; the world could end and there you'd be punching your points into a calculator and counting the potato chip you ate as a carb and buying coconut oil and eating it with a spoon to try to fire up your metabolism because this is what it said to do in Women's Week.

At some point it stops being hard and becomes something even worse: utterly stupid.I know what it's like to have the Tall Girl Problem. My BMI is under 30 but I'm still bigger than everybody else; so the sizes sort of lie in my case. Size 12-14 might look okay on a lot of people but on me, well, I look sort of beefy. Beefy is better than obese, I know this. But it doesn't feel that much better when I look in the mirror.

The one thing i know with the sleeve is that I can't fail. It would be impossible for me to get to 240 again -- I mean I suppose it would be possible but I would have to try *really* hard. Having a tiny stomach is an enormous advantage and I paid for it for that reason.

There is something that fat people do that thin people don't know about. At least I think it's more than me who does this. We wait. We stop ourselves from doing certain things because we are too fat. I am not talking about getting a job or into a relationship but that's also true and I've done that too. But I'm talking about traveling on an airplane, for example, what a pain in the ass when you're three hundred pounds. I want to ride a horse! But I would never do this at 300 or even 250 or even 210 because, you know -- poor horse.

Rollercoasters.

Hang gliding.

And then theres other stuff -- putting your picture on match.com, going to your high school reunion....there was so much I stopped myself from doing because I was too fat and some of it wasn't even in my head. But some of it was.

Sometimes I just feel like my life is going by and I'm still waiting.

[thinoneday 445]

crosswind, don't feel badly, I'm the same way. . . get how dumb this is. . . next monday I go to my WLS doctor for my annual exam and weigh in. . .i've gained about 5 - 6 lbs. . so this morning i started only Protein, no carbs, no soda, no alcohol, then next sunday night, i'll take a potent diurectic and flush my blessed kidneys down the commode just so that i'll weigh a few pounds less then what i did last year. . . . good lord I know how to play the game. . . . isn't that sad. . . .but of course I don't need a doctor going on and harping on me for 5 minutes over Water weight or whatever female gain it may be. . . . .soooooooooo

[beth0905 0]

Wow 100 pounds!!! Good for you!

I have lapband and I lost almost 100 the first year (wanted to lose 180) and I was feeling stressed that I had 80 pounds left. Then my band got overfull or slipped or something and all the Fluid was taken out. I never was able to get back to the feelings of fullness or able to eat heavy Proteins (only sliders) and gained 80 of it back.

So my suggestion is to try to look at the amazing positive you've accomplished. Don't be so hard on yourself for the 40 left. Consider it sculpting which can be a little slower but is incredibly satisfying.

I'm so jealous you only have 40 pounds left!

I was submitted for a sleeve revision from the lapband and I've been a stress ball waiting to hear back if it was approved. Keeping my fingers crossed!

[christin 54]

The more I read on this forum, the more I realize how similar we all think toward ourselves. The years of struggle and self hate have really gotten the best of many of us and it is hard to give ourselves credit for our accomplishments. You have achieved so much in 10 months! You have every reason to feel amazingly proud! Let yourself feel it even though you aren't where you want to be yet! It takes time to truly transform a body after all the damage we have done to it! But it is within your reach if you stay the course.

An important part of this journey for all of us is learning to be kinder to ourselves. Don't forget to enjoy where you are on the way to where you are going!

[Pookeyism 1,143]

Are you keeping up with a support group? These are the things we need to look out for - and you are lucky to be headstrong enough to recognize them for old patterns.

If you need it, this is one of the things the counseling will help with - but you need to also find strength - we all do that differently.

Good luck - and perhaps stop looking at summer as some end all goal - you have 40 lbs to lose and a WHOLE SUMMER to fill full of activities to burn it off in, while being amazed at what you can do now that you couldn't last summer. Maybe look at it like that?

I was 279 last January. I am 212 now. From size 26-ish to baggy 18 some 16 - and I can't wait for summer! Literally! I am going canoing on the Colorado River for the first time in FOREVER in April!

Good luck.

[circa 333]

This is one of those glass half full/glass half empty thing - except you threw out the glass and spilled the milk! You are doing GREAT! You've already lost 1 and a half Olson twins and a Kate Moss!

I think you need to find something new to make it interesting again. Have you tried zumba or some other interesting workout? Maybe take a cooking class to find out new fun recipes you can work on for healthy food.

[crosswind 134]

Thin One Day -- I know exactly about playing that game. I'll tell you how this started -- whole the whole thing started; actually how being insecure about my body turned into a heeeeeeuuuuggge emotional problem and it started out just like that.

In about 2001, I was in a bad marriage and a crappy place in my life. I got up to about 278 and when I look back on it now I know the reason was that I was just a housewife with a little kid who didn't get enough exercise and then, you know, got depressed. Not an uncommon story. But I kept going on lowcarb and blowing it, and one day I gave up on that and just let myself get fat. There was something tied up with 911 in all this, in my little boy getting older...etc. Anyway, so then I decided I was going to get back on lowcarb and get really *serious* about it -- weighing about 280 -- and I lost it ALL and got down to 158.

And in the course of that ended up getting a divorce from the husband, becoming a single mom and getting involved in a long distance relationship with someone who had never seen me fat. Now he was a really shallow person and also naturally very thin; and as time went on he began to get really pissed off at me because I "ate meat" and ingested caffeine. He told me my diet was terrible and I was killing myself with animal fat and all this, and because it was a long distance relationship this is what I started to do:

I would see him for a week. I would diet like hell to stay under a certain weight ( though it was creeping up and the rest of my life when I wasn't on these stupid sex vacations with the guy my life was completely miserable) until the extended date with him was over and then I would just *fall apart* dietetically. I did things I had *never* done before, like go to the drugstore and stock up on like Swedish Fish and Licorice allsorts and chocolate cake, and kill bottles of white wine by myself because I had deprived myself for several months to be worthy of this person's affection.

Then it would start over. I would have gained twenty pounds. He would want to see me again. I would calculate how much time it was going to take me to get back to Attractive and then..you know...one day I just got tired of that. I started not wanting to see him but also thinking I wasn't going to live like that anymore no matter what. I was working two jobs, my mother was dying and I had a teenager.

So then there was this period where the long distance guy decided he really wanted to "help me" with my weight. So he would take me on these diet and fitness retreats and lecture me about eating salt and all this stuff. He would put me in these cooking classes to learn how to make milk out of almonds. The guy was just naturally thin and one inch shorter than me.

Anyway, so then right after my mother died, he came to see me. I weighed 265. The entire time she was actually dying I was trying to eat lowcarb and it wasn't working at all because you know your sleep and stress schedule is outrageous when someone you love is dying of cancer. Well actually by the time he came I weighed 245 because I while I was burying my mother I was actually *on an even more stringent diet* because I knew he would show up eventually to "comfort" me. I sprung for Medifast.

When he came he bitched instantly that I was eating "frankenfood" and the first night he was there when we were lying together in bed he said to me; " It's your job as my so to stay attractive for me. And you're failing."

Lol.

. Annnnnyyyyyyway.....THAT's how I got tired of dieting. And you know, the day our divorce was final -- the *very day* -- I was in Mexicali Mexico getting my stomach cut out. And I thought, that's enough already. I am done hurting myself over this. I got my stomach cut out, and that's enough pain now.

But I still do it to myself. Try not to but I do. And here's something even weirder:

This week, a couple days ago, I got down to 195.8. And I think I actually freaked out and started to *try* to slow it down. I bought a bottle of wine and killed it one night. I ate a whole bag of microwave popcorn. My calories jumped from about 1200 to 1700 a couple of those days.

And the whole time I was doing that, I was thinking...okay just today, and then I'll get back on the train tomorrow. Just today with the popcorn, but then I gotta get serious, I'm 40 pounds overweight! 40 pounds, how long is that going to take, it'll be forever....etc...

There is a freakin ghost in my head, man. I am serious.

[purple tulip 2]

I am happy with how far I've come and obviously am glad I am here instead of obese. However, I am constantly struggling to feel proud of accomplishing large weight loss because in my head I should have never been that large to begin with. So the shame of it often continues to overshadow my joy. Like when someone compliments me...I have a hard time just accepting it graciously. Like, why should I be complimented on "looking like a weight I should have already been?" It causes me anxiety to the point that I need to keep setting larger fitness goals (races, half marathons), so that I can feel proud of myself on this journey in some way, not just because I lost weight that I never should have been there in the first place. It's such a head game.