Time May Change Me, But I Can't Change Time.

It is time for another progress update!

Today is March 12, it is actually the day before my “Surgiversary,” and I am glad that I am updating now. I don’t know that I have touched on what I’m about to discuss yet, but it’s very important and it has to do with body image. After weight loss surgery, it can be very hard for you to see yourself differently and you may or may not actually believe that you are losing the weight or that what you are seeing happening on the scales is actually making a difference in a meaningful way.

My former best friend had the beginnings of this problem and she couldn’t see, or feel, that she had lost weight in a meaningful way which was affecting her self-esteem. I quickly snapped a picture of her and placed it side by side a picture of her before she had her surgery to show her the difference. Her issue was that she was still seeing herself as the person in picture number one, the before, but everyone around her was seeing her as she actually was. She was shrinking before our eyes. From that experience with her, I was resolved to document evidence of my weight loss each month so that I could see what others saw and try to come to terms with my body and its changes. It is my suggestion that you do the same so that you can see your milestones and celebrate them.

This morning, I had to come to work early which meant that I had to get up earlier, leaving me with extra time available to me with which I could play around with what I was going to wear. For months now, I have but very little effort into what I wear to work because I was either very uncomfortable in the clothes that I did have and they were tight of cutting off circulation, or I was wearing saggy, baggy clothes because I refused to buy new ones until I had reached my goal weight. This left me in a gap area in terms of my wardrobe; there was seriously no middle ground. I had been hearing from coworkers and my mother that my pants were getting saggy in the butt and my mother would say, “Don’t wear that again.” (Which really only pissed me off because, what else could I wear?)

I reluctantly gave my slacks to my mother to wear because I had shrunken out of them when I wasn’t even looking. So then, the question became, “If I now have no slacks, and I am unwilling to buy new ones in the interim because that’s too large of an investment just to shrink out of them, then what?” So I started rifling through my closet to see what I could and could not fit. I am finding now that I can fit XL clothes and size 16 pants. Not bad for someone that was wearing 18, 20, and 22 slacks two months ago! I threw together an outfit today and for the first time in a long time, I was pleased with how I looked. (I even wore heels at work for the first time in months!) Because I was tickled with how I could see how good I looked, I slipped off to the restroom where I could take a picture and have photographic evidence… then, I added today’s picture to the running collage of progress pictures. It is amazing how far I have come!

Today, I am at 239 pounds, a long way away from where I started before surgery and even longer from my heaviest, which was 285. My personal weight loss goal is to get to 180, which is 87 pounds less than 267 I started at on the day of surgery. Having lost 28 of the 87 lbs I wanted to lose, I have now lost 32% of my excess body weight. 32% IN TWO MONTHS!

I am so excited to see myself meet my goal. I have made myself start exercising again and I am seeing my confidence SOAR. Love yourself and embrace every single change for the better! Don’t cheat yourself out of victories, like being able to fit clothes that you haven’t been able to wear for over a year. That’s no small feat.