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| I stole the text from a meme I loved on Facebook. It fits. |
When Andy’s weight reached 630
pounds I was tying his shoes for him. It was heart breaking and it scared me to
death. I started praying every single day that I would find a way to help him. But
I needed to remove the mote in my own eye first before I could help him. I
finally got the guts to do the new-fangled HCG diet and lost 60 pounds so Andy
decided to do it too.
Let me digress a little here…
On HCG you can only eat 500
calories a day. You are given a magic potion each morning or a shot, and it
cuts your hunger down. It didn’t work for Andy. The second time through the
regiment, I was fantasizing about caramel sticky buns. There must be a one shot
limit on this diet because the second time I did it I was licking salt off
French fries and throwing away the fries. I couldn’t move. Walking up the
stairs to our bedroom was like climbing Everest. I wanted to cry just at the
thought that I had to get up and walk somewhere. I could not function. But
because I wanted Andy to be successful I hung in there as long as I could. He
was also suffering but desperate. One day about 2 weeks into this magic snake
oil, we had come home from school and plopped ourselves down in our chairs and
DIED. I was praying to know what to do. The Word of Wisdom, the Mormon churches
health code came to my mind: “all things in moderation.” Was this not a severe
violation of moderation only in the guise of trying to get healthy? I started
to cry, I could not stop. I was exhausted! It was an ugly cry! But even the
crying was using up calories! I told Andy that I had been dreaming about a
caramel sticky bun that I would pass every time we would go and weigh ourselves
(we had to weigh at the GNC in the mall because our scale was too small). I let it all hang out! I told him that I had
licked the salt off a bunch of French fries…that I had taken a salt shaker to
work, that I chewed up an apple and S.P.I.T. I.T. B.A.C.K. O.U.T…I came clean.
We both cried. I told him that I felt crash dieting like this was definitely
against the Word of Wisdom. We drove immediately to the closest caramel sticky
bun. I guess we should have driven to the nearest salad bar but I thought the
sticky bun might get me to stop crying.
It did.
It seems
like in the media, when someone loses a lot of weight - they always ask
"What made you finally decide to do it?" And they always have a
specific moment when they hit rock bottom and they got the BIG motivation to
start and finish a diet. There have been lots of those days.
It was the day we could not ride on
several of the rides in Disneyland that truly broke my heart.
The day that we broke the car seat.
The day that I got put on blood
pressure mediation...and then high cholesterol meds.
The day that I had to start tying
Andy shoes for him.
The day that we no longer fit in a
restaurant booth.
The day that I had a stroke.
The day our primary class said
"you almost don't fit through the door!"
The day that we lost Noah.
The day we were told that Andy was
"too specific" to be cast as Thenardier at Tuacahn.
It was the day...
The day...
that one day....
that one day....
Each time one of those things
happened, we would be on fire to start something new. We would do it for a month...and then life would hit us, a show, a big deadline...we'd go off the diet...feel crappy about ourselves and then start something new. The list of diets that we
both have tried is like looking at a list of people that have bullied you on
the playground.
·
We’ve eaten all meat and cheese (and been
constipated for months)
·
We’ve taken all traces of fat out of our diet...bring on the bagels and jolly ranchers...
·
We’ve eaten 500, 900, 1200 and 1500 calories a
day – (not all on the same day…usually)
·
We’ve paid large sums of money for pre-packaged
food (you know you can eat two or three of those at a time and still not feel
full…interesting ;-0)
·
We’ve taken Phen-Phen (that was a good one –
dang the people that abused it and got it taken off the market)
·
We’ve been to weight doctors that gave us B-12
shots and made us listen to mind-altering tapes
·
We’ve tried Anorexia and Bulimia but it hurt my
throat too much…when I was a kid I was so jealous of the girls that made that
work.
·
We’ve made spinach shakes with flax and other “sure
fire snake oils” that just create a tempest in your belly all day and make you
wonder “do I need to go to the bathroom right now or can I wait until... *~*!#@! Nope! Can’t wait! AH...too late.
·
We’ve gotten up at five in the morning to bask
in the sunrise and run with the dogs – who let’s face it – have three inch legs
and get distracted by interesting looking rocks, other dogs, butterflies…and
have to “mark” their territory every 15 feet.
·
We’ve drunk our pay-checks in weight loss shakes
of ever kind only to eventually throw them up or run out of money
·
We ordered funky video systems, amazing blenders
(we have three) and most recently we ordered a video that promises you will
literally “dance your butt off.”
·
We’ve counted points, calories, steps (that’s
what we’re currently doing), ounces, carbs, glasses…you name it, we have a half
empty notebook full of all kinds of tracking systems (emphasis on the half empty).
Then there is a list of magic pills
that promise you model-like bodies in 21, 45 or 90 days but in the end the
consequences are a long as the possible side-effects for Viagra and include:
·
Heart racing uncontrollably
·
Heart failure
·
Leaking heart
·
Leaking bum (you that have been there know what
I’m talking about)
·
Stroke
·
Birth defects in your children (this one will
haunt you for years to come)
·
Constipation for months
·
Pooping in your sleep in the middle of the night
·
Vomiting
·
Crazy dreams
·
Insomnia
·
Inability to focus
·
Inability to move
·
Scary bright green pee that glows in the dark
·
Bikes, exercise equipment (or as we like to call
it at our house “the towel rack”)
·
And the list goes on and on…
The stuff from which you cannot turn back:
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| Pre- Bypass |
Three years ago Andy underwent gastric bypass surgery
which is one of the hardest ways to lose weight but it is very effective. He
was miserable for months, just like any diet, but once he stabilized he had
lost 300 pounds and is no longer on any medications for anything. It changed
our lives. It saved his life. I will forever be grateful to the incredible team
at the University of Utah who took such good care of him, and never judged him
and worked their whole skinny lives to learn how to help us save his.
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| 1 year post-bypass |
Gastric Bypass isn’t the answer for everyone. It’s expensive for some of us that don’t have fancy insurance ($25,000) and it changes what you can and can’t eat for the rest of your life. But for Andy, it was exactly right. I have seen my husband go from sitting in a chair to running a 5K every day. If gastric bypass is something you are thinking about, we are proponents of this life-saving surgery. I suspect, after we get into our new house (we are building a house right now) that I will also do the surgery at some point and we will both need additional surgeries to remove skin...it's a never ending battle.
Things we haven’t tried:
· LIPOSUCTION. I watched a documentary on that once and I just don’t think I want to be skinny in one area of my body and fat everywhere else. I recently was told by one of my students that she babysits for a lady that has “Sonobello” appointments every week which are like Lipo I guess but with a laser. I wonder how much that costs? I’d also like to try the “cool-sculpting” which is an FDA approved procedure where they freeze your fat by dropping the temperature of the skin down to where the fat cells die. You then eliminate those cells in “natural ways.” What does that look like? Why can’t I just fill a tub with ice and do it myself all at once? There’s a thought. Can I eat caramel popcorn during the procedure?
The
problem is, even with surgery, the diet is NEVER "finished." Skinny or fat, we
will always be working on our health because after we reach the ripe old age of
whatever we are not growing a body anymore, we are losing it. The only way to
keep yourself from going crazy over it is to know what makes you feel like you
are progressing. I truly feel that as long as I am working on something, I
am okay in my head. I’m writing like weight is the only thing Jandy thinks
about – HA! I wish that was our only problem. But the much bigger journey in
our house is whether or not we are actually moving forward…in life, in love, in
spirit. Sadly, how we feel about the shell that houses our spirit often casts a
shadow over all of those things.
Let us
not forget to wear out the journey doing other things and helping each other
through it…I want to talk about that next…but I gotta go teach a class.
