*I’ve posted my “before” photo below.

One of my mantras, when making decisions that require time commitment and discipline, is, “The time will pass no matter what you do with it.”  If I hadn’t had gastric bypass, this year would have passed, and I would have probably lost and gained the same 10 pounds throughout the year.  This year was different. March 23, 2016, was a game changer for me.  I faced my fears and embarked on an adventure that has brought many highs and lows, but mostly highs.

Many things have changed, and as a result, I have a stronger resolve that I can do hard things and not only survive but thrive.

Life still has many challenges and (dammit!) my leaner body didn’t solve all those problems.  (Surprise!)  I was under no delusions when I began this adventure.  I knew that being thinner wouldn’t magically make everything better.  I still have to deal with negative emotions in a different way.  I have literally walked my ass off.  (Smile.)

Speaking of life’s challenges, simultaneous to my surgery and the following events, we have been fighting with the LA County Department of BS.  (I love to call it that because it makes me feel better for, like, 1 second.  Building and Safety= BS.)  Just this week, we found out that the entire back of our house will be under construction for 3 months and we have to move everything out of our room and the music studio and move into Boy’s room, the living room, and a storage Pod.  (Yeah, guess what we get to do over spring break. Gah!)  The most devastating news, our construction costs may run up to $70,000.  Not kidding.  We’ve already spent $59,000 on the solar panels, roofing, and energy efficient work that Zero Energy completed without permitting.  (I’m laying this out there because I want to all to learn from my mistake.  Please don’t be hasty like I was.)  I thought I was doing a good thing, getting solar panels and making our house more energy efficient.  Nope.  This has been one of the most stressful experiences of my life, (and I’ve had a few other stressful times.)  That said, I have to find the silver lining. I have to. We will all have trouble, but we have to “dust the dust up off our shoulders, feet on ground, we’ll come round, and be human again.”

Have a listen.  I’ve been listening to this band on repeat since I heard them on KCRW.  I listened to this performance and was captivated and encouraged.

“Human”

I know that it’s been rough,
It shows in your reflection,
You’ve fallen out of touch,
Got lost along the way,
I know it’s not enough,
But these things they all get better,
And even if its tough,

This is us, you know it on the inside,
This is us, so you should show it on the outside,
This is us, dust the dust up off your shoulders,
Feet on ground, you’ll come round,
And be human again.

I know that its been hard,
But even when its hurting,
You’re gonna have to start,
To learn to recognise,
That even in the dark,
There’s lines between the spaces,
Hiding where you are,

This is us, you know it on the inside,
This is us, so you should show it on the outside,
This is us, dust the dust up off your shoulders,
Feet on ground, you’ll come round,
And be human again.

Be There lyrics

I’ll be there when you need me most
I’ll be there if you’re ever alone
Together, we can grow old.
I can’t leave you
I can’t leave you,
No.

Thank you for being there for me during this first year post surgery.

I’m grateful.

I’ve sustained the 90 pound weight loss for several weeks now.

Here’s my “before” photo:

I’m back to my 3 year old self.  If you were hoping for a photo from last year, well, I’m not posting those, not because I’m ashamed. My reasoning is that, I liked myself in March of 2016 and I don’t want to criticize who I was last year.  I’m kinda done comparing.  I’m focusing on living.

Until next Friday…Love you loves.

Yesterday, I was so exhausted coming off of teaching, just two days in my 5th-grade class, that I fell asleep watching Goliath, Billy Bob Thorton returns as a down and out alcoholic divorced attorney and takes on his old firm. <<Commercial>>  Post- Goliath, I decided that I should probably just crawl into bed on a Friday evening at 9pm.  Yeah, it’s the life of a middle-aged mom, one that’s been sick with a pesky cold all week.  You know the kind of cold where your nose is itchy and you feel like you’ll sneeze any moment, and then you don’t.  The problem I have is, I have terribly dry skin already, and then when I have a cold I use hand sanitizer every 2 minutes, because I’m blowing my nose every two minutes, and well, my poor hands are competing for first place against the Rough-skinned Newt.

I went back to my posts in February of 2016, O*1sity- A Label.  I posted about my feelings about the word- O*!sity and included some of the research I was reading at that time.  This piece from the article I included is promising.  After 7 years, those who maintained their weight loss, who had the RYGB surgery, like mine, exercised regularly.

Regular physical activity is an important factor in weight loss maintenance (31). According to one survey in RYGB patients with a mean follow-up of 7 yr, successful patients (those who maintained at least 74% of their initial weight loss) exercised regularly (no details given) (32).

So, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, walking to get to 10,000 steps as often as I can.  It’s much easier being active when I weigh less, no question.

Check out my post from 2016, see link above.

My label has changed, but I’m still the same Joy.

Gastric Bypass Update:

I’m down 90 pounds.  For the first time, I fit into pants that I bought at the thrift store, size 10.  I don’t think I’ve worn a size 10 in over 20 years.  That was exciting and kind of unbelievable!  I’m not going to show you a picture of me with my “HUGE” pants and then smile next to them.  Because honestly, I hate those kinds of pictures, and I loved myself in the bigger pants too.  So there. 🙂

This liquid diet has felt like the wilderness.  Feeling deprived has actually forced me to deal with my emotions rather than mask the feelings with food.  I’m a master food masker. (Say that 10 times fast.)

Introversion is a term I didn’t discover until college. Prior to those years, I always felt inferior.  I’d berate myself, “Why do I have to be so sensitive & quiet?  Why can’t I just let things go? Why do I obsess and replay situations or conversations that occurred?  Why do I hate social encounters with people I don’t know?  Why can’t I just be more like… <insert extroverted friend’s name here>).”  I am an INFP and an on-the-fencer INFJ according the Myers Briggs Personality Scale.  The I is for Introvert.

With a name like Joy, people expect you to be a joy…all the time.  (It’s like having the name Angel or Heaven or Precious. What happens when you don’t live up to your name? I’ve seen some Angels that aren’t very angelic.  Parents: don’t name your kids Angel, it’s just not nice.)  I am my most joyful when I’m alone.  Don’t get me wrong, I love all of you.  I love my family and friends, but I will start to feel immense hatred and turn into a beast with steam coming out of my ears if I don’t have time to myself, to think, to process, to contemplate, to rehearse the days’ events.  I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I actually go through almost everything that happened in the course of a day, before I go to sleep at night.  It’s a way I process my world.  It’s a blessing and a curse.  Anything unresolved usually shows up in my dreams.  (Why can’t I have Peter Pan flying dreams?  I still would rather have adventure dreams rather than an obsessively-boring-processing-dream in which I try to process someone’s facial expressions during a strange social interaction.  Yes, I’m a weirdo, but a lovely one.)

Bel Canto choir tour in 1993 was one of the moments in my history where I realized…I AM AN INTROVERT.  Two weeks, on a bus with over 100 other 20-something women college students (screeching laughter and hilarious jovial fun-for some), traveling to states across the country (still on said bus), eating with these 100 women (still with said jovial women), performing nightly concerts with them (more noise in close proximity with said jovial women) and then, post-concert arrival at host family’s residence (more obligatory social contact as not to be rude to the hosts and interaction with a few of said *jovial women).  Toward the end of the tour, I thought I might lose my mind.  I needed quiet. I needed time to decompress.  I felt terrible for feeling so moody. Now I realize that there was no time for me to be alone.  This is what I craved to recharge.

*(If you are reading this and are one of the said jovial women that was on this tour, I still love you.  But I love you more now that I’m not on a bus with you for two weeks.)

On Being an Introvert

“Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

“Unlike their Extraverted cousins though, INFPs will focus their attention on just a few people, a single worthy cause – spread too thinly, they’ll run out of energy, and even become dejected and overwhelmed by all the bad in the world that they can’t fix.” Source.

I have often felt totally overwhelmed by all the bad in the world that I can’t fix.  I just have to turn off the news and limit input.  It’s a way I can deal with what’s right in front of me rather than hearing about 100 million things I can’t control or fix.

“INFPs feel most comfortable among colleagues – they aren’t interested in controlling others, and have a similar distaste for being controlled. Among their colleagues, INFPs will feel freer to share their ideas, and while they may maintain some psychological distance, they will make every effort to be pleasant, friendly and supportive – so long as their coworkers reciprocate. INFPs don’t like conflict or picking sides, and will do everything they can to maintain harmony and cooperation.

Most of this comes down to good communication, which INFPs prefer to conduct in person, for that personal touch, or in writing, where they can compose and perfect their statements. People with the INFP personality type avoid using phones if they can, having the worst of both worlds, being both detached and uncomposed.”  Source.

“INFPs prefer to conduct in person, for that personal touch, or in writing, where they can compose and perfect their statements.”  Writing my thoughts is my lifeline (that’s why blogging has been so exciting for me).  I abhor business-type phone calls where I don’t know the person on the other end.  It makes me cringe just thinking about it.  I can’t read facial expressions in a phone call.

Watch this if you are or know someone who is an introvert:

“Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe”
― Susan Cain

In addition to the book, Quiet that was quoted extensively, these are two other books that are worthwhile reads for understanding yourself or the introverts in your life.

Until next Friday… Love you loves.

I love label makers. I love to categorize things and put them in the same drawer, take a collection of books and put them all on the same shelf, sort office supplies and place them in compartments in my desk.  I love searching the categorized aisles at the store find just the right product. We humans naturally label things. We naturally make patterns and put things in categories. We do the same thing with people. This label, obesity, is my most unfavorite label.

Feelings check: **Sigh** Every time I see the word, obesity, it makes me feel very sad. And I don’t just have morbid obesity, I have, wait for it—morbid (severe) obesity. I know it’s a label. I know it’s a medical term based on specific data, however, the word, obesity, carries a stigma. Unlike with other stigmas, mental illness, learning disabilities, being born into poverty; obesity, morbid obesity, morbid (severe) obesity all carry this unwritten inner dialogue, the unwritten inner dialogue is, “You made yourself obese. You could have prevented it. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you control your eating? Why don’t you exercise more? You’re nothing. You’re fat. If only you were more disciplined.”  Sure, I can choose to not identify or agree with this inner dialogue, however I wear my label.  I can’t hide it. It’s there, in the rolls of belly fat.

It seems odd, but if I’m honest, one of the things I’m afraid of after my surgery, is being thin. Believe it or not, I remember days in my late teens and 20s when I was thin, and received compliments on my appearance and whistles as I walked down the street.  That objectifying, is the part of being thin that I’d like to avoid. I’ve grown to accept my ‘heavy mom’ identity. I’ve grown to love who I am in spite of how I look.  Embracing myself at any weight helps me to embrace others.  I don’t want to simply be loved for what I look like. These are qualities I treasure. These are qualities I cherish in other people. In a way being heavy, has made it so I have to love and reach out— in spite of labels.

So why not just stay obese?  Well, there are the complex effects of long-term obesity and comorbidities and specifically the effects of diabetes, that convince me to go ahead with Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB). There are many articles on the subject of Long-Term Mortality after Gastric Bypass Surgery at New England Journal of Medicine.  “Diet, exercise, and medical therapy have not been shown to be effective in treating severe obesity in the long term” -see more at Long-Term Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Body Weight, Comorbidities, and Nutritional Status.

In my January nutrition meeting, the most impacting take-away was that I need to chew my food to applesauce consistency. What?  Have you tried this?  Whether you realize it or not, chewing and swallowing is pretty much involuntary.  We don’t think, “Oh, chew 1, 2, 3, 4…25…30, yup, applesauce consistency, swallow.”  No, we don’t think. We’ve learned from a young age, just how much we have to chew our food in order to not choke.  That’s it.  Simple. Chew. Swallow. Repeat.  There’s not a lot of mindfulness involved in that.  However, I’m supposed to change over 40 years of eating habits.  Here are the three steps of mindful eating: 1) tuning in to the physical characteristics of food (Oh, this salad is really crunchy. Mmmm.) 2) tuning into the repetitive habits and processes of eating (Sit at the table instead of standing or sitting in front of the TV.)  3) tuning into mindless eating triggers. (Even though you’re starving, Joy, wait until you get home instead of eating in the car.)  I definitely eat mindlessly.  Can I get a “Hells yeah!” from the moms in the audience? If we’re honest, most of us eat mindlessly. We are surviving this thing called Life…come on.  Can I get an “Amen?”

So back to label-making.  I’m going to think of it as what it is, a label.  I can rip off that label and make a new one, right?