Time to stop being a patient

Once bariatric, always bariatric

We took so much time and effort to get to the surgery, it was our only hope. We decided that being a patient is the only way. We had to jump through so many loopholes to be approved. It seemed almost unreal and unbelievable when it finally happened. Each of us will remember the date of our surgery. Many of us celebrate it as another birthday. And thinking about it, it means so much to us that celebrating it makes all the sense in the world.

Losing weight in the following months was a really bumpy ride, am I right? Sometimes it was peeling off effortlessly, sometimes it was stubborn and didn’t want to move no matter how hard we tried. But eventually, it happened and we got to our healthy weight. To tell the truth, I didn’t think I would ever get this low, but once I was there, I wondered why I was underestimating myself so much.

It was only the beginning

But as we all know by now, losing weight is the first step in the journey. It means nothing if we can’t maintain it. And this is the major pitfall no one ever warned us about. We were so focused on losing weight that we never thought there would come a time when we would have to prove that we could maintain it. New challenge accepted.

And because we are humans and we are not perfect, we gain something at some point. It was a huge disappointment and caused us a lot of anxiety, maybe even embarrassment. We worked so hard for nothing. We were scared to death that we would gain it all again. Luckily we took this wake-up call seriously and we took measures so that this didn’t happen.

So now we are at a healthy weight, we keep taking our supplements, we keep doing our exercise, and we eat reasonably well and within the recommended amount. It seems it is all under control and things are going our way. If you are as lucky as I am, you were already taken off all your previous medication and they told you that you are healthy. It seems that it is all over.

But what are we going to do now?

It seems as if we lost our reason to live. We were obsessed with our weight and problems related to this for decades. At least that was my case. And now, all of a sudden, it is solved. Full stop. I don’t have the weight, I don’t have any comorbidities, and I am healthy. So now what?

It is a perfect time to reevaluate your life. We have accomplished a major goal, hooray, the weight is gone. We are healthy. So everything we were struggling with, every problem related to the weight is gone. It feels a little empty, right? For many of us, everything and anything related to the weight problem became a part of our identity.

Who am I?

Can you keep identifying yourself as a fat person? I doubt it. Can you keep talking about yourself from the point of view of a bariatric patient? This doesn’t fit anymore either. Why is that? Because we are long enough after the surgery that we internalized the new way of how the ball rolls. We changed so much that we adopted our new identity of a healthy person with normal weight. We do things now on autopilot that we were only dreaming of. We became that person. The moment the new habits are settled well enough that we don’t have to keep thinking about them, we can declare the war as finished.

Yes, we have to keep being aware. The old habits die hard and have their sneaky ways of coming back. Being aware of what is going on in our lives and keep checking if we are still putting in all the work needed, is the basics, no doubt about it. Putting off guard is incredibly easy, but the consequences are often detrimental. We get punished right away. We can never forget where we come from. But it is our past, no need to obsess without it.

The new beginning

We have opened a new chapter of our lives and we can write there anything we want. Do you remember the dreams and hopes you had had before the surgery? Maybe it is the right time to start doing something about them. Or maybe your priorities changed so much that it all seems petty and ridiculous now. Fear not. You can always set a new goal, and pursue a new dream.

We are living now the dream we had many months ago. We are healthy people with healthy weight. We are not patients anymore. This chapter is closed. We can start a new one. To do so, we have to let go of our old identity. We are not patients and we are not overweight. This is hard. We have to admit this and allow ourselves to let go of the old. And this is not easy. We were clinging to his for many years. And now we should let it go.

New unexpected challenge

It is a new challenge that we face all of a sudden. No doubt that this is the same as deciding on bariatric surgery and losing excess weight. It is the next logical step. The thing is that we have to get to this point ourselves. There is no one to tell us that it is time. See, when I said that our bari team is there until we get rid of the weight, I was right. Once you don’t have anything more to lose, once you are healthy, all these people disappear. We are not interested anymore.

It makes sense, there is a never-ending line of new patients. But from now on, we are on our own. We have to decide that it is enough and that we need to start living the life we have been dreaming of. It is here. It happened. It is like setting ourselves free. This step is very important. This is when we allow ourselves to start living a new life. We let go of the old and we embrace the new.

What the next chapter will be? Well, it depends on each of us. We can do and be anything and everything. We can start again, reinvent ourselves, and ditch what doesn’t serve us anymore. It is hard. But the decision is ours. The moment we decide, anything can happen.

We will always remember where we come from, it is a chapter that is written in our book, but there is no need to keep obsessing over it. Things happen. And we move on. This is no different. So what are you up to?