It is a tool, not a cure

Do you remember the post about gaining weight? Yes, I am guilty. Well, things didn’t get completely out of hand, that is for sure. Lucky me! I was able to catch everything at the beginning and stop it before it got catastrophic proportions. Well, but those 5 kg/some 10 pounds crept up. That is a fact. It was a very loud wake-up call. 

I was super confident. I thought I was eating right. I thought things were under control. I was not cautious. And I was slipping into my old behaviors. Slowly but steadily. Because I was not doing anything completely horrendous, the weight was piling up slowly. Lucky me 🙏 It took me 2,5 years to get to this point. Thinking about it I never thought this would happen to me. I am so organized, have things under control, have my checklists, you name it. 

What went wrong was the most stupid thing in the universe. I stopped using the calorie counter app and I was stepping on the scales maybe once a month, sometimes not even that. It was winter, so I was wearing loose clothes, hoodies, and sweaters, so obviously I didn’t notice that things were a little different. It was cold (don’t think that living in Spain is all about the beach and sun, that is the biggest lie ever! Winter here is humid and really cold.), so I was eating more warm comforting meals – soups, some potatoes or pasta. 

I am not excusing myself. I declare myself completely guilty. I messed up. Let us acknowledge what happened here. 

Right! But enough of beating myself bloody. It is good to nothing. It won’t solve anything and it won’t make me feel anyhow better. It happened. So let’s check what I can do about this form where I am. I am still under 70 kg/155 pounds, which is great. I take it as a psychological boundary. It sounds better to be close to 70 than crawling to 80 😱That number reminds me a lot of my old days. And that is a big no no! 😀

So let’s do this: log in again in the calorie counter app, it looks really abandoned; and scales, the dreaded thing, every single week. Let’s get things again back under control. Oh, and scales not only for me but for everything I am putting on my plate. Yeah, it is again in the kitchen counter and bugging me every time I am cleaning there. Sigh… well, can’t be done in any different way. 

I thought that I already had a good and very accurate estimate of how much I was eating of foods. I couldn’t be further from the truth. This is exactly where my old thinking took over. Not completely, but partially yes. And this is from where it all stems. What I thought was 100 grams of minced meat, was actually 120 grams. It is a difference.

My brain was underestimating the quantities of food I was eating. That is why the kitchen scales are crucial. It doesn’t lie. What you put on it, is the real amount that will go inside. Don’t be overly confident. It is not working. We have a real problem with food. So being careful is a must. 

I am not suggesting being obsessive. That is the opposite and the same bad. I think that having things under control is a must for us. And it is not only about the amount of food, it applies the same to protein. It is our main daily goal. How much protein did your nutritionist tell you to eat? 80 g? 90? Maybe even 100. This doesn’t happen just like that. This requires some planning.

It is a lot of protein and if you start your meal with those beautiful crispy golden baked potatoes, trust me, you won’t be able to get in not even half of the protein that you have on the plate. You simply don’t have the space for it. So you will put it back in the fridge promising yourself that you will finish it the next meal. Will it happen? Answer for yourself. 

It was the same with treats. I never went back to eating chocolates or anything with sugar, but still, a slice of pizza here, a coffee with cream there, a kebab for dinner… this is not what we are supposed to eat. I am not advocating sticking to the rules 100%. It is not doable. We have life and we have social life. And also life happens.

So, ok, have the pizza, maybe even the three slices that are smiling at you, if you have space for it, go! BUT!!! Do it once a week and only with one meal. Reward yourself, you deserve it. But make sure that the rest of the week you are eating right. Like this, if you plan a little, you can have something that you are craving without falling off the wagon. 

Everybody who ended up with some kind of bariatric surgery has/had some underlying problem with food. It is important to face this demon. It is huge and once upon a time, it used to have an overwhelming power over us. We all have to admit that. I did my best to tame it as much as possible before the surgery. And I think I was reasonably successful. It was not easy, but I did work on my issues and all over, I am doing much better than before. Still, I am human and it means I fail sometimes. 

I need help to keep things on track. It is the scales and the calorie counter app. These guys help me to have things under control. We have to flip our lives all over after the surgery. It is a huge emotional roller coaster, the body is very tender, nothing tastes as it used to, and we can’t eat anything much for months (counting the pre-op diet). This all is far from easy. We have great and not-so-great days, we have maybe a boss that knows how to make us miserable, maybe our kid got sick, you know, the list goes on. It is so incredibly easy to open the freezer, take out the box of ice cream, and eat it off. Many of us used to do this. 

Now it is not an option. We have to find a new coping mechanism. Food is here to keep us going, not to hush away our troubles. But I think that we were given a wonderful opportunity to turn our life around and start fresh. This is a golden second opportunity in life. I have to say I am incredibly grateful that I could have the surgery. It helped me so extremely much, it is beyond words. But I am also painfully aware, that where I live, there is no magical third second chance. I was already granted the second one, and no one will give me another one. Here, these things don’t happen.

So I am making sure that I won’t mess up. Bariatric surgery is a tool. It helped us to lose tons of weight and from a certain point in time, it is only up to us how we will keep using this tool. We had about a year to learn how to use it and now it is all up to us. We will keep going strong, or we will fail. But it is all up to us. It all depends on our choices, our decisions, and our will. It is no magic. Or we do what we are supposed to do, and things will work out just fine, or we start cutting corners, or even give up at some point, and things will end up in disaster. 

We keep living with our food addictions, we are cured of our obesity only visually, it is not exposed to everyone at first glance, but it doesn’t mean our body is completely healed. It will never be. We used to have obesity at some point and the body remembers it. Yes, we might have cured our comorbidities, but that is all. But it’s wonderful, we are not pre-diabetic anymore, our cholesterol is sure way down, the same blood pressure. This is why we did it in most cases. But we are not cured of obesity. This is something we have to remember. 

I think that many of us had a bad week when everything was falling apart and nothing went right. It is important to keep going. Keep doing what is right. It is not easy. I never said it was. But you know what I did last week to remind me? I put on the fridge a very unflattering pic from my past. I guess it is one of the worst I have ever had 😂 So far it works wonders 😂