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For all the progress I've made in this process, I am sometimes surprised to see how easy it is to slip back into old thought patterns. This week I got on the scale as usual and I was up which is not usual. I weighed 181.6 - a gain of 1.6 since last week.
Now I don't believe it was a real gain. It happened that weigh day and TOM came knocking on the same day. Here's a bit of TMI. I have an IUD which typically contribute to very short, very heavy periods. I love my IUD anyways because it offers trouble free birth control for 10 years and of course I love having TOM around for only three days or so. But I could do without the heavy part. But I digress.
I don't usually gain weight when TOM comes around. Except Heavy Day isn't usually Weigh Day. So I am assuming that is the issue. Tomorrow I will weigh again to test my theory.
Also I hadn't had a BM in two days when I weighed. I told you, TMI.
But what is interesting to me about all this is that I am kind of freaking out. I am racking my brain for the foods I ate and trying to figure out if I went overboard somewhere and didn't realize it. I made a comment on Tuesday that it was such a relief to know I'd never have to diet again. Now my brain is screaming at me that I'm a fraud and that 180 lbs. is the lowest I'll ever see and that I'm now going to start gaining until I'm 280 lbs. again.
Before I was banded, I lost weight excruciatingly slowly. Every diet attempt was practically an exercise in futility. My last serious diet effort lasted six months and I lost 25 lbs. After my surgery I realized that I hadn't been eating enough protein and that my daily allotment on Weight Watchers with banked and exercise points had me eating about 1,800 calories a day which was too much for steady weight loss. But what if I'm back in that nightmare again?
Because it was a nightmare. I couldn't even think about dieting. It was such a painful subject for me. I didn't understand why I couldn't seem to lose weight anymore and yet I'd gain steadily while eating what most people would consider a healthy diet. I exercised every day. I tried to talk about it, but I felt like all I could offer was excuses. I didn't think anyone would believe me that I didn't eat crap all the time. I felt like a fraud.
So here I am. Freaking out. Feeling like my body has turned against me again. Even though the rational part of me knows it hasn't and that I haven't been successful for 10+ months to suddenly start gaining for no reason. So I am sincerely hoping tomorrow will give me a better number. And maybe someday it would be nice to not have to listen to my brain freaking out inside of my head when I don't see what I want there. Like maybe I could still be okay with myself no matter what I weighed?
12 comments:
Wow. Great post. I think all of us feel this way and we all freak out... especially since we've gone through all this trouble to get banded only to fail??? No. Not us. We won't fail. YOU won't fail. You're doing great. Even in maintenance, you will have small gains. It's just the way the body works. It's how we react to them this time that will make the difference.
it's a rough process and that little peice that tells you your failing sucks. I have only had my band for a week but with pre-op included i have lost 23lbs and I feel like that if I eat anything i'm not supposed to no matter how small all of that weight will just come pileing back. It's a way of life for most bandsters to be consumed with the scale and not how we feel. I don't know if I will ever be there but this community is a great one to be part of for that reason. hang in there everything will be fine.
I think you have the advantage of long term sustained changes in eating and exercising patterns. I like how you have actually incorporated exercise into your daily routine...There is nothing gimmicky or temporary about your weight loss...it's here to stay...that doesn't mean you won't be working at it; but now you have many more tools to sustain this loss...More power to you!
I think you will find that the gain was a combo of the no BM and the (.) Weigh in a day or so and it will be gone!
Amanda, thank you for the comment on my blog. I'm here reading your blog, and recognizing those feelings your describing. Try to stay calm and give yourself time. EVEN if it was a permanent gain- you will lose it again. You did NOT gain all of your weight back- and this is NOT a slide back into bigger numbers. Sometimes the scale goes up, sometimes it goes down. That's just life. You are okay. We can do this!
It's so hard to break those patterns, and we're all "frauds" in the sense that we will likely battle some of those mental patterns for our whole lives, though with less and less frequency. I know I do it much less often now than I used to do it with any previous weight loss attempt. But I still catch myself falling into old 'diet' habits with the scale and with food. Dizzy Girl is right. It's life, and we CAN do this -- all of us! :)
blame it on TOM and the lack of a BM.. It is amazing how much water we retain and how much bloat occurs when one is "out of sync"..
You're not a fraud, you're my hero!! What you have is real and long term!
I think what your feeling is totally normal...I Know I did it all of the time. We all do, after all, have quite the amount of failed diet baggage. A lifetime of negative feedback has got to cause fall out!
xxxooo
Completely agree that the negative feedback can be devastating to our confidence.
You are going along and everything is fine and then something isnt as we had been thinking - even though you know in your heart that wasnt the case. Terrified that ...."maybe everyone else was right and I was just making exscuses".
I too was on weight watchers, exercised religiously with a trainer and only lost 8 kilo's (17 pounds) in six months.
And that is what lead me to the band....without some assistance I could not overcome the carb addiction and my appetite problem. Sometimes we see it as one problem, but for me it was multiple, my appetites trigger had been broken while on depo provera and it never seemed to reset, but that sounds like an exscuse...And society tells us that fat people simply lack either motivation or willingness, and yet obesity studies have shown that motivation won't keep you on a diet for the years needed to get out of obesity.
People always point at cases and say "well he did it" like the guy who met the trainer (on Oprah I think). But the fact is he pretty much lives with a personal trainer and mentor.
I try to think of my band as that...my food trainer and mentor, guiding me in the right direction, and just like before my weight fluctuated wildly at times
I definitely wouldn't worry about it! :) Is 180 your goal weight? If so, I heard that people hover about 3 lbs above and below theirs at all times. (If not, it's a very minor setback, and it happens to everyone from what I've been reading around ol' Blogger.com.) Plus, when TOM (hehe, that's cute) comes a-knockin' I think all us ladies retain water like no other. I have an IUD too, and when my period comes I get really bloated. :(
I don't think any of us lack dieting motivation! We're doing something proactive for our health by choosing the lapband! :) You rock, I know you'll be seeing 180 again by next week, maybe less!
Evil scale! A gain of 1.6 is nothing - easily water weight. Don't give the scale your power! You have done so amazingly and you have it all right. Just keep doing what you've been doing. Think about how far you have come! You are a HUGE inspiration to me!
Ugh! I have been going through this very thing for the last couple of weeks. I honestly feel like I have yo-yo-ed so much for so many years that my body is very particular on how it loses weight. Whereas some people can simply calorie count I have found this method doesn't always yield good results for me. I still hit plateaus and it seems like the harder I work the less weight I lose. I know for myself the best thing I have ever done is low carbing. I have PCOS and insulin resistance so my blood sugar is very touchy. Carbs make me hold onto weight. Unfortunately carbs are the most appetizing foods to me. So I must choose and sometimes that seems simple but most of the time it's hard.
I gained two lbs yesterday from the day before and this morning I had lost 1.2lbs of that gain. So I am sure you will see a better number tomorrow. Just hang in there. This struggle is for life. That's how I think of it. I know it will always be a struggle to maintain but eventually the struggle gets easier. I don't think it ever goes away.
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