As a child, I often found myself hot, sweaty and red-faced. This was not due to embarrassment~I was just hot. Most pictures of me (including my wedding pictures)are adorned in a very Rosy hue. Recently, I have had the exact opposite issue- I am freezing all of the time. Today in church, I was shivering so bad I cuddled with my husband for a little heat. Burr~I say! What a turnaround. It is funny to think about all of the changes that my body is going through. The physical changes go beyond how I look and how fast I can man a tread-mill. Because I have lost so much extra insulation- my temperature has changed.
These changes have happened so quickly that sometimes I have trouble grasping what is happening to me. One of the doctors at the clinic where I had my surgery said something to me that has stayed with me through the process. He said, "after this, you need to tell yourself that you are a fat person no longer". I guess I am still processing that idea. I still see myself as a 300+ person in spite of the fact that I have lost 70+ lbs. I recently read a blog written by a fellow bariatric patient that said something to the fact that it takes a lot of time for your mind to catch up with your weight loss. I can certainly see that is true. It is a struggle to get my head and heart around the idea that I am smaller.
I don't think that it is just a struggle for me- it has been my friends too. At first, people would look at me curiously and then ask me if I had changed my hair. "no, I haven't" was my reply. Funny, I couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth. Am I embarrassed? Maybe afraid of their response to my decision to do this thing. At this point it is no longer a secret that I did this and people will comment about my physical change but they don't want any details. That is hard for me. I want to talk about it. I want to process what is happening to me but I suppose it is some sort of taboo. Indeed you have changed, Erika, but don't tell us the gory details.
Another strange phenomenon is how people I don't know look at me. This is not a pity party but the honest truth- people look at me again. In the last few years, I had noticed that people had stopped looking me in the eye. At the grocery store, I used to catch the eye of the cashier as my children would do something funny and we would laugh. About three years ago, that stopped. People stopped looking at me. As if I had some sort of horrible physical defect that they couldn't stand to look at. In the three months since my surgery, people have started looking at me again. Talking to my face and laughing with me again. It is bittersweet because while I enjoy these new found friendships, I mourn for countless obese women everywhere who are suffering from this old fashioned shunning. I wish there was a way to show people that we all struggle with something: money, anger, alcohol/drugs, gossip...over eaters just can't hide their struggle-it's all over their body for all to see. If we all struggle, why do we despise someone for their personal struggle?
