10 Things Before You Have Weight Loss Surgery
#60M2IM Day 13/100
I had 80 percent of my stomach removed from my body in July 2015.
Here are some resources that were the most useful to me in the months (and even years) leading up to weight loss surgery, and some that I wish I’d had before hand, and some that were really useful afterward.
Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon
“Once you consider the extent of the magical thinking that tends to be tied in to the fantasy of thinness, you can understand how threatening it is to consider the idea that you may never get the thin body you crave. It means that you never get to become the person you want to be. ”
When I was leading up to my surgery, searching for help and resources, I was bombarded with people screaming about goal weights and freaking out about eating a corn tortilla and tearing each other apart over which protein shake they chose.
Crazy town.
I was really grateful for the years I spent learning and living Health at Every Size. The healthiest thing you can do for yourself, pre-surgery, is to start to recover from whatever is going on internally that lead to where you are. For me, that was an eating disorder. Having a real, solid hold on the idea that what I was doing was about more than the size of my body helped a lot.
Fed Up! by Wendy Oliver-Pyatt
“The only effective means of protecting yourself from developing an eating disorder is to avoid diets that push you, both psychologically and biologically, toward a destructive new level of food restriction and weight preoccupation.”
Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt is a psychiatrist and eating disorder expert. Her book was the start of my own recovery from an eating disorder. Fed Up! is a good introduction to the idea of intuitive eating.
Again — doing work to recover (or start recovering — I’m still a work in progress) from my disordered relationship with food was the single best thing I did for myself pre-surgery. This book helped a lot.
Stranger Here by Jen Larsen
I think I looked up every single book about weight loss surgery before I had mine. Because that’s how I roll.
This is the only one that meant anything to me. It’s a memoir. It’s hilarious. It’s real life. Definitely read this.
Dr. Matthew Weiner: Eat Your Vegetables First video
Between Bacon and Weiner — wow.
Anyway. This video was one of the most helpful things that I came across after my surgery. I wish I’d seen it before hand, but I found it when I was in that post-surgery phase where I missed food so much I’d spend hours a day watching Food Porn and imagining my teeth sinking into a cheeseburger.
Everyone — EVERYONE — was telling me that I needed to only think about eating protein. Dr. Weiner’s advice is to eat a lot of vegetables. It made sense to me. He’s got a ton of great videos, by the way.
And a book.
23 1/2 Hours video
Fantastic video about all of the reasons why a small amount of daily exercise matters. Pretty much none of the reasons are weight loss.
I’ve seen so many people in weight loss surgery forums talk about surgery as a way to avoid exercise. And I get it. When you’re very fat, sometimes weight loss hurts. A lot.
It hurt me. My legs and lower back, especially. There was this HUGE gap between the physical things I wanted to do and the physical things I could do.
It really helped me to start thinking about exercise outside the box of ‘this will make me smaller.’
The World According to Eggface
By far my favorite weight loss surgery website.
Shelly does this one thing that I love. Once a week or so she just shares everything she eats for a day. It was really helpful for me when I was faced with learning how to eat differently, right after my surgery.
eMeals
Speaking of eating.
I swear, eMeals saved my life for several months. Because I’m the cook in my family, and there were months where I had to cook when A) I couldn’t eat what I was making and B) the sight of food made me want to die for a variety of reasons.
It was really helpful to have eMeals just send me a weekly menu. I’d print out the grocery list and Kevin would go shopping. And I’d just go down the list of meals and make whatever was there.
I still use eMeals, although not as much as I did in the beginning. But, their recipes are good. You can pick from a wide variety of meal plans. (I use the clean eating plan. I wish it had a better name.)
Even if all you do is sign up for the two free weeks, it’s worth it. Print those out and use them when you just can’t face having to decide what to cook for other people (however much you love them.)
Toppik
Let me get very real with you for a minute.
If you decide to have weight loss surgery, you are probably going to lose your hair. Like in handfuls, all at once.
I had surgery in July 2015. I was fine for a while. I was cheeky, even, about how my hair wasn’t falling out AT ALL.
And then I took a shower one day in October, and realized I was shedding like a dog. That went on for months. I lost at least half of my hair. Maybe more. Most of the loss was concentrated in the front of my head.
I ended up cutting my hair as short as I could. Which was very short. And I used Toppik, which is a powder that somehow clings to the hair you do have and makes it look like you have more than you do.
I don’t know how it works, but it does.
(For what it’s worth — after about a year, my hair started growing back. It’s not 100 percent, but I don’t need Toppik anymore and I’m growing my ultra-pixie out.)
Thrift Stores
For a while, at least, make thrift stores your friends.
Because your body is going to change at an alarming weight. And clothes that fit you today will be swimming on you next week.
Right now you might be thinking: bring it on! But it’s a weird and unsettling experience when it’s happening.
So — make friends with your local thrift stores. Because you’ll need somewhere to deposit all of the clothes that are way too big for you. And you won’t want to spend a fortune on clothes that will only fit you for a few weeks.
By far the best resource I found for the whole clothes thing was Stacia at Thrift Me Pretty. I even took her class, which really helped me to get my mind and my body on the same page.
My best advice re: forums
I know they’re tempting.
You want to meet people who are doing what you’re doing. Or who have already done what you’re doing. You NEED to research, and forums seem like a must.
I joined just about every weight loss surgery Facebook Group I could find when I was researching weight loss surgery.
And pretty soon after my surgery, I had to leave them all. Every one of them.
They were toxic. For me anyway.
I was overwhelmed by people who had surgery without dealing with their underlying problems, filling my FB feed with posts about things like how much weight they should try to lose below their doctor’s goals for them. Or beating themselves up because they ate a taco.
It was too much for me.
My advice is to join just one, if you can do it without getting caught up in the drama. And look for one or two people you can connect with outside the group. Then get the hell out of there.
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