Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 February 2010 02:56
Written by Melinda
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
It’s 2:30 am and I can’t sleep. Perhaps its the fact that I took my anti-depressant too late, or maybe I just have too much swirling around in my mind. I’m going to Vegas Friday for the 1st Annual WLS Meet & Greet. There, I will be meeting online friends that I’ve spent hundreds of hours reading their posts, insights, struggles, and have never met “for real”. But Friday, we all come together to see what the real persons look, act and talk like! That in itself is just a little intimidating to this shy girl. (Tim swears I’m not shy, but I REALLY am.)
On with my post… There is one main reason I am going to this function. I need to be REFRESHED. I need rejuvenation. I need revival. Friend, can I just admit to you that these past few months have been difficult with health issues… and now that things are on the upswing and getting better, I face another issue. It’s called “SAME OLE, SAME OLE.” I have reached that place in my weight loss journey where things are boring. Things are routine. I’ve settled on my new way of living by incorporating good habits, lost all the weight expected of me by my surgeon PLUS more, and long gone are the NSV’s and WOW moments. People no longer identify me as “that lady who lost all the weight.” Now, I’m just identified as me: Melinda. Some folks don’t even know I was ever obese in the first place.
This is actually a good place to be. It means that I’ve adjusted quite well. I’ve embraced my new way of life and am walking it out every day. However, I LOVED it when life seemed all fresh and new! I enjoyed hearing compliments (oh come on now… don’t tell me you shrug off compliments of your weight loss!). I enjoyed changing clothing sizes every few weeks. It was exciting to go shopping for new wardrobes. Now, clothes are meaningless to me. They are boring. After several months of changing sizes because you have to, and then several years of changing styles because of trying to find “yourself”… eh. Shopping gets old. Yet, I still search for THAT PERFECT PAIR OF JEANS ~ the ones that will take away the searching for something….
Then there is the day after day after day of vitamins and supplements. How in the world can you add any spice and pizazz to that? There’s only so many flavors and brands of bariatric calcium, multi-vitamins, iron, B12, etc. After awhile, I just settled in with the swallowable bariatric friendly vitamins & calcium. Then, I just swallow it down and call it OVER until another few hours. All day… my routine consists of eating every few hours and taking pills. But… that didn’t stop me from trying to liven things up a bit. I bought a new pill organizer, created a new and improved routine of pill taking… and it helped get me through.
Do you see a pattern here? I do. It’s called GIMICKS. Oh yes, I have gotten so good at “gimicking” myself until I am now out of tricks from my bag. Life consists of finding the next best protein powder, new sugar free coffee syrups, sugar free products that are bariatric friendly, great low carb protein bars… oh on and on the list goes of things I’ve done these past few years just to “liven it up”, keep it fresh. Well… I’ve reached the point where the diamond has lost its luster ~ and so I am hoping and praying that when I go to Vegas and meet up with my online friends, it will encourage me.
Look at the Vegas picture above. It sure looks exciting to me! Bright lights! Big city! 24/7 fun and entertainment! I am going to spend time with my friends, take a day to celebrate our new bariatric lives (heck, I need some celebration… breathe some life into this dead corpse!) and then take in the sites of the city that never sleeps. SURELY…. Surely this will liven things up… But then again, maybe its just another one of my “gimicks”.
I close with this thought. With a church background, that’s how I often relate to things. I remember back in the day of Camp Meeting… half the church would pack up their bags, make reservations and fly to the most hopping church in order to get fired up for another year. We expected, ANTICIPATED, for something great to happen. It’s like the building of momentum inside your heart… and once you got to camp meeting, and the singing started… then people started to pray and get happy… it just did your heart good. I’m hoping for a WLS CAMP MEETING this weekend. I need it.
I’m addicted to food. I didn’t have to admit that to you. You already knew it. What gave it away? My official “before” picture. And, one needs only to read a few of my blog entries to realize that I’m learning ways of coping in life “without food” to make things better. I mess up miserably sometimes… but I get up, dust myself off, and go on. I wanted to share a few thoughts with you today about where I am on my journey.
