The Big Moment

I made a very big decision about two weeks ago, I made the decision to inquire as to whether or not my insurance company would cover #gastricbypass surgery. It was a large enough decision, no pun intended, that it included several pieces. One was deciding to even look into the procedure, but then I had to go a step further and question whether or not I even had the wherewithal to expend the energy it would take to get all of my ducks in a row. A lot of psychologists will tell you that after first asking a person if they had suicidal thoughts, the next logical question is whether they have a plan or not, because it means that as soon as they have the energy to dedicate to it, they will follow through with said plan. Well, there I was, morbidly obese and slowly committing suicide with each bite I put into my mouth and now, I had a plan. I could feel myself dying a slow death and all of the methods I’d tried to lose weight had failed me. I tried counting calories, and I had integrated walking three miles a day into my repertoire to successfully lose 50 pounds only to put that weight back on and then some when I had finally begun to address my #Bipolar diagnosis with medicine. The prescription had caused me to gain an additional thirty pounds. So, I found myself incredibly discouraged, there is something to be said for the feeling of futility. Balling up my ineffectual fists, I had decided that I needed a major life change to see any time of results going forward. Now, having made the decision to undergo a major surgery, I asked myself what other people would have to say and I tested it on my sister first. My sister underwent gastric bypass right around 2003 and she has maintained a healthy weight since then. She gave me the benefit of her experience and told me that ultimately it would be my decision, but to prepare myself for the effects and the toll that it would take on my body. Next, I told my mother, who was overjoyed that I decided to be proactive, and I stopped there.

My significant other, Orlando, a recent Air Force inductee had a week prior expressed his concern for my weight and told me that he didn’t want to work out with me because he was frustrated by a seeming unwillingness to comply with his directives. It felt, all at once, like he was expressing dissatisfaction with my figure because it differed so much from the figure I had when he and I met, making me feel worse than ever. I still have not told him that I am a candidate for gastric bypass because I worry that he, like many others would see it primarily as a cop out instead of putting in the hard work of dieting and exercising.

Let me be clear, gastric bypass is anything other than a cop out. It is a major life change. I’ll never be able to over eat again because my body simply won’t allow such a thing, and in the absence of exercise I’m signing up for excess baggage in the most literal sense. So no, this is going to be hard work. But, am I up for the challenge? Absolutely. I weighed the cost versus the benefits, pun intended, and found that if I had to choose between a life spent in misery and a life filled with making careful choices about what I eat and the nutrients that come from what I eat then I would be a happier person. There are more risks to me being obese than there are undergoing this procedure. So I am ready to go forth into the unknown knowing that even the most minimal success is better than where I am right now, but coupled with changes in eating and exercise, I stand to lose a hundred pounds or more and finally be able to feel confident about how I look, a feeling that I have never had because I have been overweight since adolescence. At 275 pounds, I weigh the most that I have ever weighed in my life and I am not willing to succumb to the casket just yet. If I’m going to overwork my heart, I’m going to overwork it with actual workouts and be the person I know is inside of me.