Changes

So I've said before, I despise the scale. It's not a terribly accurate portrayal of true progress, especially if you're building muscle. That's not to say I never step on one and don't pay attention to what it says. After weighing myself yesterday and then looking at my previously logged weight over the last year or so, I realized that I have lost 37 pounds in 4 months. My weight hovered between 450 and 460 for over a year. Initially post surgery I dropped roughly 40 pounds, fast. I think it took about a month. I was thrilled. And then it stopped. And it stopped. And it stopped. While I didn't gain any, I also didn't lose any. One week I would be at 459 and the next it would be 450. I was well and truly stuck. Didn't matter how little I would eat, the scale wouldn't drop below 450. So I finally went to the gym

And the pounds started to drop. As did the inches. 37 of them. And I really don't know how many inches. Several. It's encouraging. It's refreshing. It's nice to see weight loss again. After everything I went through, the surgery, the pain, the recovery. To see the same weight day after day, month after month was frustrating. To not see or feel a difference, after all that. It was disheartening. Depression started to come back, the ever present sense of failure, the desire to give up. All the emotions that so greatly contributed to my long term suicide attempt started to claw their way back up. The one thing that saved me was going to the gym. Just to start moving again. To sweat, to feel the muscle pain, to have that sense of accomplishment you can only achieve after exhausting yourself. And now I step on the scale and I see a difference. I see success. I see progress. And makes it all worth it. Not only that, it makes me want to go back to the gym to do more, to work harder, to change more. To take another step forward. Every single day.

I've been asked many times if I thought surgery was "worth it". Honestly, I'm still not sure. It was probably the catalyst I needed to move in the right direction. I probably could have done the same without surgery, the question is, would I have. I don't think so. Depression had such a hold on me at that point that I was quite willing to simply eat until I died. After surgery that wasn't really an option. Eat till I puke, absolutely. Eat until I wished I was dead? More than once. But once you have bariatric surgery that takes far, far less food to accomplish. And it HURTS! Oh, how it hurts. Unless you're a true masochist it's not something you do on purpose more than once. Knowing what I know now, I think I would approach it differently. I would probably ask them to take out more of my stomach than they did. But I'd probably still do it again. Probably. I sometimes wonder where I would be now if I hadn't hadn't taken that huge step. Would I even still be alive?

It is sometimes rather fascinating for me to go back through old photos or blog posts and see what I looked like a few years ago. Yes, it's motivational, but it's also something more. It makes me wonder how much longer I would have survived. How much longer I could have kept the depression from its inevitable end. When you get to 600 pounds there's really only a couple option. You keep going until you die, you die, or you do something about it. The same is true of depression. Put the two together and it's a deadly combination. I don't think I would have survived it much longer. Hell, I still struggle with it every damn day. The depression is better but it's not gone. And I know it never will be. I've simply learned to understand it, accept it and work with it instead of going with it. I still have days I don't want to be alive. I still occasionally grapple with thoughts of death. And I always will. But I've come a long way from where I was a few years ago. And seeing progress helps with that too. Bariatric surgery, if nothing else, stopped me from killing myself with food. And that's something I don't regret. Some people have better success with it than I have, and I hate those people. No, not really. Well, maybe a little.