Lifelong Challenge: A little further on up the road
So here we are in the first week of August – eight months down, four to go and as my kids take great delight in telling me: Christmas is in sight. Think I may enter hibernation now and be done with it.
Despite being roughly three quarters of the way through winter here in New Zealand, the bougainvillea still hasn’t lost all of last summers leaves and we still have Monarch butterflies laying eggs; really I shouldn’t complain. But I’m going to anyway. It’s freezing. Admittedly many bariatric patients feel the cold quite severely during the first year following surgery so that may account for some of it but in truth it is more because I like the heat of summer. I was made to live in the tropics I tell you.
The exciting news on the weight loss front is that I am now down to 73kg – that’s a 32 kilo loss since I first met with the GP for referral and 16 kilos since May 9. Which works out at a little over a kilo a week – I can’t complain about that. I can keep most protein down now as long as it isn’t deep fried and I don’t eat too much of it. My current favourite lunch is a hard boiled, duck egg – and since we have a pair of Indian Runner ducks, there are plenty of those to go around. I still struggle with carbs but can eat a little plain pasta as long as I neither rush it nor overdo it. Very spicy food doesn’t agree with me and nor does very greasy food.
Just like the calendar – I now have less weight to lose than I have lost and I’m very excited by the possibility of being under 70kg for the first time in my adult life by the end of the month, so stay tuned.
It’s NOT that simple is coming along slowly and I hope to have a first draft complete by the end of August/early September. So if you see me lurking on FaceBook or Twitter or listening to (drooling over)Springsteen on YouTube – do me a favour and boot my butt back to the keyboard will you?
What the…..
I am overweight. No secrets there. I am on the waiting list for a Gastric Sleeve procedure in the next 12 weeks – but this post isn’t about my choice to do this. My sister Fiona has had the procedure – very successfully -and this post isn’t about her choice either. It is about good old fashioned respect.
Earlier this morning my sister sent me this video: 23928807
I’m not sure if I’m disgusted or embarrassed by it – but I’m certainly upset one way or the other. Now let’s be clear -I’m aware these are actors in this case but I have seen this kind of thing happen over and over again.
Why does our society think it is okay to pass judgement or even just comment on the way another person looks or what they choose to eat because they are overweight?
This video upsets me not because I’m an obese woman and I sympathise with what happened but because it’s wrong to disrespect people because of the way they look.Why do people think it is okay to humiliate obese people – especially obese women – with words or actions? Does their obesity – whatever caused it – justify a lack of basic decency and respect?
If my slim friend buys an ice-cream nobody bats an eyelid -if I buy an ice-cream I get treated to disapproving glares, stage-whispered comments, and even at times outright condemnation from people I don’t even know. If my slim friend goes on a diet everyone is very respectful of her tuna salad – if I go on a diet everyone is offering me chocolate or cake.
What IS that about guys? Seriously – what makes it okay to tell people they need to lose weight, then to humiliate them and finally to actively sabotage them when they try to make changes?