Because I was afraid- Why I said nothing about Gastric Bypass until after it was over

I have no doubt in my mind why it is that The Bible has so many admonitions to not be afraid.
Fear is a huge motivator.

 It can be so powerful that it locks us away from trying new things, from continuing on in the good things, and even from leaving the toxic things in our lives.

Being so overweight was definitely toxic. Both as a result of habits, but to my body itself.

So once I came to the decision to go ahead with surgery as one of my tools, in conjunction with all the other tools I was already using, a lot of fears came to the surface:

1. What if this, like everything else, fails too? 
2. What if I blow it? I mean, it's not a magic bullet. Long term maintenance of good habits is required so we don't gain it all back
3. What is everyone else gonna say when they find out?
4. Will they judge me? 
5. Will they try to talk me out of it?
6. Will they write me off as lazy? (an irony, because I realized later that so many people have already written 'fat people' off as 'lazy', so what did I really have to lose?)
7. What is the criticism of others in this area going to cost me this time?
8. What if I have to hear a lot of hurtful things?
9. What if I never get to eat anything 'fun' again?
10. Am I going to be subject to every Gastric Bypass horror story that comes out of the wood work, like when I was pregnant and had every labour horror story related in freakish detail. You know. Just to mess with my head. Cause the decision wasn't hard enough ;)
11. Can I really pull off following this set of rules for life that I'm being told are necessary to do this?
12. What vitamin and mineral deficiencies will I face?
13. How is this going to affect my marriage? (The stats on divorce post gastric bypass) aren't good, gentle reader.)
14. How will my new lifestyle affect my friendships?
15. What about excess skin?
16. What if I succeed?

Sounds ridiculous to be afraid of success doesn't it?

But there it is. The honest truth.

So I had to shield myself for just a little longer. 

This was a HARD choice. A choice that I had to know in the hard moments I made for myself. That I could sustain by myself. That if not one person stood with me, I knew my reasons for having made this decision.

I couldn't do that with the simply based on the approval of others, and I certainly couldn't do it if I allowed myself to be talked out of it.

So I kept doing my research, making my lists of why I needed this, and quietly relied on the reassurance of my husband in the moments of weakness and doubt.
He was my rock when I wanted to run scared from this process.

And I worked on a need to know basis. The angel of a mother in law, that gave up 8 weeks of her life, to help run my household as I recuperated, and leaned how to eat again got to know.
And at the end of my 14 month wait, a couple of weeks before I actually entered the hospital, a few others outside my surgery support group got to know.
Again, it was a pretty short need to know list.

But I entered the hospital that day knowing it was my choice. That no one talked me into it, and no one talked me out of it. No one to take the credit, no one to blame.

No passing the buck.
Taking charge of your life and choices is a very powerful place to be, when you take what everyone else thinks out of the equation.

I had no idea that both the best and the worst of both worlds was about to come.

A Complicated Choice

I started when I was pretty young with my weight loss battles.
Medicated myself with food, when I was younger than to know what I was doing.

It wasn't until a bit further down the road that my coping mechanisms for stress caught up with me.
Unfortunately, by then, my body had decided to defend my higher weight.
Body chemistry had kicked in to sabotage me. Didn't matter what tools I used, none of them could be used for long enough to get down in weight.

And hope failed. And the weight rose. And the pain came. Then it got worse.

None of these took a break while I was carrying on with life. We added babies to our family. I still had to try to carry the work load. With a body that felt like it was failing me. Betraying me.

Endless dieting, Calorie counting, trying to keep moving when my feet, ankles, knees, hips and back were in mounting pain. Bouts of Sciatica set me back as well.
And the exhaustion of lugging around an extra 150 pounds.
It started to feel like a seriously losing battle.

There had to be a solution. It seems everyone else knows what you should do:

We're told if we give up snacks, or fast food, or our favourite things, we could achieve our goals.
Some have suggested that if only we have enough faith, God will help us with our plight.
Diets are touted, as a rite of passage, and you just have to find the right one to 'get it right'.
We're told that if we just put the fork down, and move more, we would be able to lose weight.
We're told that we just need to use self control.
If only it were that simple.

When all of that fails, then what?

Well, for me, that became complicated.
Because you see, it had been suggested by society that gastric bypass surgery was for the lazy. The people who couldn't be bothered to try hard enough.
That it was the easy way out. Shameful. I cringed, dying inside because I knew what this would mean.
Choosing this would be tantamount to a failure of character, because of the way I had been taught to think.

But I also saw the hope in people when they posted their 'before and after shots'. I heard the stories, of people that were able to get off medications, that were able to achieve their weight loss goals, and some of them talked about how it felt to not be in pain any more.

To not be exhausted, because of the constant pain.

There was a part of me so conflicted at weighing my choices.
How do you think it feels to stand at the edge of a cliff, knowing that if you told anyone what you were thinking, they'd try to talk you out of it?

It feels lonely. And scary. Like there is a whole lot of unknown.

Fortunately, I was able to find a great support group where I could get my questions answered. They were patient with me.
And I decided that I would take a step.

I would place myself on the wait list for surgery.

I knew that it would be a year, before I had satisfied all the requirements of the clinic.  I would attend all of my appointments and continue as though I was planning on surgery. I would endeavour to make a last hurrah, in order to avoid surgery, but I would put myself on a timeline. If it was at all possible to pull this off, it would be done. I was motivated.

And I did everything possible.
And the weight loss stalled yet again.
There was a set point that my body simply would not go below for anything. I struggled, beginning to know that there didn't seem to be any other way out.

It was during the appointments for the clinic, and in that year that two important things happened: My endocrinologist was very supportive when I suggested that I was considering the surgery. He really encouraged me to go ahead with it, based on having watched another patient of his regain his life.
Also, the internist was one of the mandatory appointments. She told me essentially that there is a very small percentage of people who every pull off this type of weight loss without the surgery. My thyroid condition set me squarely NOT in that percentage.

Do you know what happened in that moment? I had been granted a permission slip to put away all of the society driven criticisms. I was granted a medical reason to consider this tool on its' own merits. There was something very freeing in that.

Paddling like the Dickens Below the Surface: A Gastric Bypass Primer

As many of you know, I had Gastric By-Pass Surgery, coming up on a year ago now. I've been blessed to have been one of the super-responders that do really well when combining eating, exercise and coping strategies, with my tool of surgery.

I've been grateful to be part of a Weight Loss Surgery support system that allows me to see the good, bad and ugly of WLS.

The most fun is seeing so many people have triumphs. Seeing people take back their lives. We see 'Before and After' shots. The side by side comparisons of where they have been, and where they have come to. They're amazing. Sometimes it's hard to even recognize the person when they've made a metamorphosis.

It looks easy. Effortless even. Right?
Well, there is only so much you can see in that snap shot. The work it takes to get there, isn't part of that snap shot.

I know first hand  that this process carries with it, a lot of dynamics that remain unseen to the general public.  I'd like to take the time to take you through a bit of my process in the past 3 years, because really none of this began with my surgery date. It began with so many other things that led up to that date.

I have the feeling that so many people minimize people's results after gastric bypass because they don't have an appreciation for the height, depth, breath and complications of the process. I'd like to take the next couple of weeks to demistify the process a little.

Much in the same way that we can observe a duck on the surface of the water, and know that although it looks like the duck is relaxed, serene, and appears to all the world as though it is effortless for them, but under the surface a tremendous amount of work goes on to get that result.

Ever seen those cool pictures flying around the net with the huge iceberg, and 90% of it is below the surface of the water? We see this itty bitty bit of ice sitting atop the waters edge. We can't see the full depth of what is really going on.

The same is true in the Gastric bypass world. There is no easy way out, and there is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes than you'd think.

I'm planning to paint you a picture of what goes on under the water's surface.

I'll be updating my progress with some pretty cool updates closer to my 'Surgaversary', so stay tuned and follow this blog via Google Plus, E-mail, or on my Blog FaceBook page, to keep up with where I'm about to go with this series!

Stay tuned.

These are a few of my favourite things: Non-Scale Victories

Though what the scale says to me these days is encouraging, there are so many other types of measurements.

We should never limit ourselves to the statement of what the scale says about our relationship with gravity.

There are so many other methods of measuring success in the weight loss arena.
Clothing size, measurements, how much we can move, what your physical endurance levels look like, and the ways we can rejoin participating in life are such fantastic indicators of our success, and can be noticed even during a weight stall. Not to mention, it's really cool to count your gratitudes of things that you've regained. In some cases you tally them up at the same time you realized you lost them in the first place.

So, for your consideration, and perhaps even to help you come up with your goal NSV's (Non-Scale Victories) I wanted to tell you a few of my favourite things about losing well over  100 pounds:

* I broke through that 'magic number' that I could NEVER get past no matter what I did.
* I fit every where now
* I don't worry if 'that chair' will hold me
* I can shop in the regular clothing size section
* Regular size clothes fit properly
* I'm not dead tired any more
* My hips, knees, feet, neck and back don't hurt any more due to the excess weight removed
* I CAN SAY YES TO MY CHILDREN, when this time last year everything that would have caused me pain, or exhaustion would have been a big 'no'.
* I participate in life, and because I put out a 'ready to participate' vibe, people respond to that.
It has positively affected my relationships
* have more energy to tackle my non-weight loss related goals
* Hope returned
* Finding collar bones 
* I can breathe when I run (I'm not one of those lucky ones that like running even now though  )
* My physical body does not hold me back
* I'm not sweating profusely when it gets hot
* The first time I walked past a store window and didn't recognize myself
* The day a normal sized towel fit
* BELTS!!!!! 
* I feel much more confident
* I fit back in my wedding dress
* My wedding bands went back on, and fit on my middle finger now- They didn't fit at all before.
* People who have told me they didn't recognize me
Thanks for sticking with me for my list of victories. I know that at the same time that you might be cheering me on, you might be feeling struggle with your goal, and desire to move forward to want to be.
If you're at the beginning of a large weight loss journey, and needing a little inspiration on accomplishing the 'impossible', just maybe you'll want to mosey over to another post on the topic: A Round Tuit: Replacing "I can't" with "I'll find a way"  

Summer Reading Motivation!

For some of us, we have children who make us proud in the reading department. We can't tear them away from books of all sorts and descriptions.

What about those of us whose children need extra motivation?

What if you could set a goal of a certain number of books, or chapters, for your child to read, and have a visual way to keep track?

Well, I have an idea for you.

It's simple, and appeals to many ages. It can also be adapted to many other uses. 

First go online and Google "free printable 100 chart." You will be presented with a ton of options. Find one that speaks to you. 

We found the one pictured below here. 

If you need something with less squares on it, by all means don't limit yourself to a hundreds chart. Any large grid graph paper can be adapted to your purposes and then photocopied.

So how do we implement it?

In our case, we are choosing to let the kids read a book/chapter, according to their reading level or tolerance, and fill in the boxes on the chart. When the chart is full, they get ten dollars. The amounts are relative and can be adapted to the goal you set for your child. 

To make the chart effective,  make sure the chart  gets posted where it'll be motivating to the child, and they will see it often. 

If you have multiple children, you may find they urge each other on if they charts are all together, and they can have a healthy competition going on.

If your children work better with a co-operative approach, then by all means approach it from that stand point. You may find that setting a date goal for all  to have the chart filled, will do nicely. Then the group works together to finish as a group, rather than there being a competition over who can fill the chart first.

There are all sorts of ways to fill the boxes: stickers, bingo dabbers, markers, stamps, crayons and pencil crayons are all great things for the kids to use. If you prefer, the parent's initials are also an option.

Enjoy, and Happy Reading!

Jen

A Round Tuit: Replacing "I can't" with "I'll find a way".

Bringing about change in our lives can be a difficult but rewarding thing. But what happens with having a goal that is too big? A mountain sized goal? One for which you haven't possibly got the endurance? Is it then worth trying? Is it worth even starting? Is it worth risking failure?

I had some goals for myself. One goal in particular actually. I wanted to lose in excess of 100 pounds. Do you know that I tried for years to do it? Tried, got tired in the trying when the results were slow, lost hope, quit, saw a glimmer of light, and started wondering if it was worth trying again.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I tried everything. I beat myself up. I made my inability to lose this weight tantamount to fatal character defect, and saw the rest of what I wanted to do as hopeless, by extension . I was convinced that If I couldn't do this 'one thing', that the rest of my goals must be hopeless by default.

Photo Credit Sears Canada

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

I decided somewhere along the lines that I had to start seeing these things differently. That I had to become willing to risk what other people thought of me to find and use all of the tools necessary to meet my goal. Do you know what happened when I became willing? Hope came back!!!!!

Success came.

No question, there was a price to be paid. But I would do it all again in a heart beat!


And it snowballed in the most wonderful ways. It's like this 'one thing', that had been affecting all other areas to the negative, once resolved, caused a serious ripple effect. I suddenly had the energy and the hope to spend the energy, on these important goals.
I've been working on several different types of change. You see, I've got so much to work on.

I'm not a naturally organized person. I have the ability to remember all sorts of random pieces of information and if I saw a thing in a pile some where, three years ago, odds are high I'll remember where it is now if you ask, provided someone hasn't moved it on me. But loose leaves of paper are the bane of my existence. The fact that I have done more than one job with admin. requirements well,  is an irony,  and proves what hard work can accomplish.

I'm not a naturally patient person. Homeschooling, by default, requires one to deal with their children practically all the time. People assume superhuman patience in a home school mom, and worse still when they find out I deal with special needs stuff too.  I am here to tell you, this is a work in progress that has been going on for years.

I am naturally a pack rat. This has been one of my most difficult defaults to over come. However, five children in a reasonably small house has made it necessary to face my demons here. Insert better organization skills with less stuff, and voila..... things are looking much better! Obviously, they don't always look this good all the time. I've got five kids! This however, is a snap shot of what is possible now, and it was very much NOT POSSIBLE before!

Some days it feels as though my efforts are moving so slowly it feels that change is imperceptible.  Keeping at it long enough, though, has resulted in a snowball effect that is pretty undeniable.

It all started with what seem like pretty simple choices. You have to start with believing it's possible. But don't stop there:

Realize you've got a problem
You need to do more than to know there is a problem, you'll need to define it and how you're co-operating with it. If you've been struggling with a goal you just can't seem to meet, there is an important thing to know: You've got a system. It's just a bad system for reaching that goal. If you do something over and over again, you'll get better at doing it that way. Even if it's the wrong way. You just get better at being bad at something.

Pray
Appeal to the higher court. He knows your situation. He knows what you'll need to claim victory. He can show you. James 1:5 says "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." If you're embarrassed that you haven't already licked this problem, don't be. He already knows and He's ready and waiting.

Get with other people who are doing what you already want to do
It doesn't matter whether you find someone in person, or even choose online support groups. Find out what they are doing and choose to put in the work. Pick positive people that help you see the 'good' when you are working through the 'hard' required to reach your goal.

Keep Track
Make a list when you start, of what things are like right now- if your goal was weight related, you'd take measurements, get on the scale, write down your sizes in everything. (Shoes, belts, clothing sizes) Your medical outlook. Before pictures. Every little thing that describes where you are today. Yes. It's embarrassing. Yes it's a serious reality check. Yes, it'll be worth it.
 It works with more than weight loss. if you're starting with a huge organization deficit, take pictures. Write down where you are and where you want to be.
Along the way, make progress assessments- with a  big goal, you're going to have points where you are convinced nothing is changing. It's better than you think it is.  Just make smaller goals so that you can experience successes closer together to motivate yourself. Remind yourself where you came from. Also, why you never want to go back there.

Find the right tools for the job
Your tools may have to be quite unorthodox. Sometimes our challenge is that we have some of the right tools, but are missing one of the major factors to make all the rest of the tools sustainable. Just don't be afraid to find all of your tools. If you have ever watched an episode of Red Green, you know that there is more than one way to get a job done. If you ask my husband, almost all of them require WD-40 or Duct-tape.

Reset your defaults one small victory at a time
 Every day make small changes.  Repetitively practice them until they become habit. Each one of your new steps will feel awkward, and like they take up a lot of your effort. It won't feel that way forever. Don't despise the day of small beginnings.

Don't hold yourself to the standards that others set for you if they are too low 
There is a tendency not to rise above the standards that others set for you because it's hard to go against the grain. "They don't believe I can, It must not be possible. So why should I try so hard for something that isn't possible?"
 It's not that it's not possible. It's that they don't have vision. The court of public opinion is fickle. Don't submit to it. When you stop caring what they think, you can see your own standards and rise far above what others think.

Don't expect a magic bullet
Sorry, there's just no nice way to say this. There is no magic bullet to getting to your big goal. Just hard work, and the right tools, and perseverance.

Don't give up
There is a tendency for us to feel like setbacks are worth quitting over. You're gonna hit weight loss stalls. Your kids are gonna mess up the room you just de-cluttered and cleaned. If clean eating is your goal you can bet you'll be discouraged at some point by a junk food binge. Just don't park there. Pick yourself up, and do the next right thing.

So if you're ready to start on your big goal, and just need to get 'A Round Tuit', Please take mine. It's right there at the top of this post. Consider it your gold engraved invitation to making it.
If you're so inclined, tell someone about your goal. Someone that'll hold you to it. You can even put it in the comments if you want to.

Explanations are not Excuses (The Myths: Evaluating things we say to Special Needs Parents)

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me for the topic of special needs. If you didn't by chance manage to catch the series of Let's Call A Spade a Spade: Special Needs Diagnosis, feel free to check it out. 

There are many myths and mindsets regarding special needs that abound. I'd like to tackle a few of them today. I speak in defense of some parents that may not be able to tell you what is on their mind. I think sometimes that we need to identify these mindsets, and their effects, to help us to re-evaluate their usefulness.  

"It's a parenting issue"

This comment carries with it the assumption of devaluing the parent, or their skills or the amount of work they put in. It's tantamount to claiming the parent is a poor parent. No question, as parents we have a responsibility to train our children in the way of developing character. This is always a work in progress. It's a marathon though, rather than a sprint, and sometimes meeting behaviour related goals with a child are going to take a very long time to achieve.

To simply criticize the parent in the middle of their journey really is quite unhelpful. It implies they are not doing their job. If, they also happen to be a stay at home parent, for whom that is their life's work, it pays out double insult.

Lets take for granted for a moment, that the person saying such a phrase has a higher skill level as a parent, than another special needs parent. Lets even go so far as to say the special needs parent would benefit from your expertise. Would they really be willing to come to you for any sort of skills improvement, if your approach to the situation is to put them down with your comments? 

No, there is a better way. It requires walking along side them.  It requires not implying with our words that we think they are a 'write-off'.
I am in the camp that says that I will approach it from the standpoint believes the best of a parent. That the parent is doing their job. That there are effective approaches to getting where they want to be and ineffective ones. Sometimes we simply need to tweak what's not working and choose to reinforce new habits. 

I was encouraged greatly once in a training session, to hear, that "sometimes you can be doing everything right, and still have the child be a challenging child. It's not a negative reflection on your skill level or the work you're putting in." 
What about that doesn't make you want to fight a little harder to help the child? It implies that it's not you as a parent, that is a write off? Rather than a hope-taking statement, it's a hope giving one. 

Proverbs 13:12 says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Before using this statement, evaluate, which effect would you rather have on a parent that may need encouragement to succeed?

"It's just an excuse for your child's poor behaviour"

You'd be surprised to find out how many things that 'look like' laziness, or bad behaviour, or rebellion, are actually completely different things. A child with Auditory Processing Disorder, may look like they refuse to listen to you, or ignore you. A child that can not sit still, has poor planning skills, can't carry tasks through to completion may have ADD or ADHD. The child that speaks with no tact and can't carry on a conversation with eye contact of any type may be working with Autism. You may also have children who can not stand tags, or external stimuli, that meltdown due to things going on outside of them, that have issues with Sensory Processing Disorder. There are any number of unwanted behaviours, or lagging skills. How we look at them will make all the difference.

We each of us look at these things through a lens. Either one can choose to look at these things in a way to devalue the child, and makes negative character statements about them, or see them through the lens that identifies a weakness or a lagging skill, and choose to train them and give them the skills and coping methods required to succeed. 

As a side note, I think that some people make the assumption that when a reason is given to help promote understanding of a child's condition, or to ask for understanding, it often gets looked at as though the parent is trying to condone a given behaviour. Not necessarily so.
 I'd like to draw attention to the fact that those ideas are actually separate concepts, and they do not necessarily go together. Yes, it IS possible for a parent to try to shrug their responsibility. Yes, it is possible for people to fail in their responsibility. Making that line of reasoning the starting point makes for a pretty short and hurtful discussion though.

 Before using that statement, evaluate whether you are assuming motives in a parent, leaning toward lack of effort, that may not be there. If you don't jump to that particular conclusion, you might just get to learn something new about how to manage that particular condition, because the parent will be able to show you a thing or two.

"_________ is over diagnosed"

This is a pretty unhelpful statement. It's kind of on the level of asking a pregnant woman whether her pregnancy was planned. If she answers affirmatively, it was kind of a waste of breath to have asked, and if she answers to the negative, you've possibly shamed her, or at least made her uncomfortable. All it serves to do is cause drama. What was the point of it?

Consider then the effect of saying this to a parent that trusts you with this information, and having one respond back to them, in that manner:

1) You'll shut them down. They know it's no longer safe to discuss the topic with you. They will fear you are in the camp of those who suggest that mental health or special needs diagnoses 'don't exist' or that it's a product solely of 'bad parenting'.  Not too much makes a person feel less safe than criticism and judgement.

2) It negates whatever emotional roller coaster brought this parent to the place they are in. It is hard to accept that there is a difference between your child and others. It is hard to find answers to cope. It is hard to feel alone, or like no one cares. Sometimes special needs comes with a difficult set of behaviours to manage, a physically and emotionally demanding child, and just plain old exhaustion. These are parents that require support. 

3) It  undermines whatever work has been done between this parent and their doctor and their medical support system. 
 It suggests from the get-go that they should have no faith in their doctor's judgement. It implies that the diagnosis of their specific child is wrong by default.  Let's take for granted they are happy with this doctor, otherwise they would have left and found another one.  That medical team may be all they've got for support and training. So, before you making that statement to a special needs parent, you might want to evaluate whether you are a qualified Behavioural therapist, Occupational Therapist, Doctor, or Trainer for problem behaviour management, and feeling patient enough to walk along side this family while they are sorting it all out.

 Rather, if you're truly interested, you might be surprised to find out, how many hours of testing they had to endure; How long the wait list was; How many appointments they had to attend; How many specialists they had to consult to finally get to the right answer. 

Yes, there are some times that a diagnosis is straightforward enough to make in one appointment. Some parents early in their denial stage of having received a new diagnosis may complain about that. Yes, there are some doctors that are 'quacks' and misdiagnose, propagating the myth, of over diagnosis, but other answers take an incredible amount of time to tease out. The existence of misdiagnosis does not by default make all diagnosis incorrect.
 To negate any of that of their experience, by implying that their diagnosis is wrong by merit of 'over diagnosis', helps no one. The parent is still left with the troublesome behaviours to manage. 
Before using this statement, evaluate whether you are qualified to be the medical team's replacement in management of those challenges. 


Sometimes we do ourselves and others a disservice, if we do not think through the affect that these words, though commonly spoken sentiments, may have on people. If putting these thoughts out here saves one parent the heartache described above because someone made an evaluation that they didn't want to cause this effect, then I have done my job here.