Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:25:38 GMT

Woo hoo, an empty blog. What shall I fill it up with? Probably a bit of whining, self talk, and reflections on this messed up world.

old timers?

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:13:43 GMT

This post is rather long and rambly. Sorry. I've been reading this community for a year but never posted so I guess I'm making up for it.

Where do the WLS Old Timers hang out on LJ? I have found a couple other wls communities but they are silent month after month.

I'm two and a half years out. I've lost 180 pounds from my highest weight which was actually a couple years before WLS. I now weigh 151. About a year ago, I thought I had finished losing weight because my weight was stable for four months or so and everyone had told me that I would lose most of my weight in the first year. I finally went out and bought new clothes. That wasn't such a great plan because my loss restarted and I've gone down two more sizes since then. I like the way I feel and the shape of my body as it is now and I'm ready for the weight loss to stop but I know I have very little control over it.

I've been experiencing some very strange things that I never would have expected. I sleep in the buff and sometimes I am startled awake by the feeling of my own body. I'll have my arm tossed over my hip and somehow the feeling of my hip bone just registers in my sleeping brain as totally wrong and I wake up alarmed.

I don't know what size I am. I picked up a pair of size 12 jeans out of the clean laundry and started to hang them and put them in my 11 year old son's stuff. It's takes a while to register that they are mine.

I step on the scales every morning and am in shock and denial. My recent weight loss has been very fast for some unknown reason. I'm back to losing three+ pounds a week. I have a weird panic feeling when I look at the scales. It's like I don't believe that is possible because I was supposed to stop losing weight a very long time ago. It's almost a fear at this point. I step on the scales and when I see that I've lost more weight, I panic and wish it would stop. I know that sounds really weird. It's not a well-thought out thing. It's just a subconcsious feeling. Part of it has to do with buying clothes. We don't have the money for me to go out and buy new clothes every month and that's what I would need to do in order to keep up. Now, my 12s are getting loose which is beyond my ability to fathom.

There's something else that's bothering me which doesn't make any sense at all. I have some sort of whacked out survivor's guilt thing going on. I feel like I need to apologize before I even explain it here which is stupid. I look good. My skin didn't sag. I have a flat stomach. My upper arms are a little bit hangy but not bad. My thighs are wrinkly looking but I dont' care because it doesn't show at all even in a skirt. I've met people my age (39) who have never lost weight whose arms hang as much as mine. I am all girlie shaped and nobody would ever guess that I used to weigh 330+ pounds. I'm embarassed to go to WLS support group meetings because people keep asking me if I've had plastic surgery. I feel like I need to wear baggy clothes to hide the fact that I look like I've never been overweight and never had WLS.

One thing about my appearance that is bugging me is my face. I never had wrinkles when I was overweight. People never believed me when I told them my age because I looked younger. Now, I look my age plus some. The wrinkles have appeared within the last 30 pounds of loss. This is one reason I don't want to lose any more weight. I don't want my face to hang like a pound puppy.

Another REALLY weird thing is that my feet are shrinking. I don't mean that they are getting thinner. I mean that they are getting shorter. I wore a seven+ before and now am wearing sixes that are a bit loose. There is something about losing weight that is reshaping the bone structure of my feet. This doesn't sound like a big deal except that none of my shoes fit now. I have a mortgage and family and don't have the money to be going out and buying all new shoes. The foot size thing has only been in the last few months too. I am neurotic about my shoes fitting right and I can't just wear the ones that are too big. They feel all funky and I hate it.

It's time for my weight loss to stop. I don't want to be skinny. I look good and feel good now. I'm really struggling with accepting my body as it is today which is the same problem I had when I could barely fit into size 24 jeans. I would have NEVER imagined that I would be having THIS problem.

I know this post is too long. Sorry.

lessthanhalf

old timers?