The Ever-Changing Never-Changing

Why losing weight won't solve every problem


Yesterday I caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length glass door as I was walking to enter a building.  What I noticed, aside from wicked humidity hair, was how big my jeans looked on my body.  I am only down about 20 pounds since my surgery, so the sight of my pants swirling around my legs was a surprise.  Still, progress is progress, however slow it might feel.  At my next appointment with my surgeon I need to ask him what his expectations are as far as the pace of my weight loss.  If I lose the weight too slowly I could get discouraged and lose momentum.  If I lose too much too quickly, I know it can lead to some health problems.  If I wanted health problems I would not have bothered with surgery in the first place!

Flash forward to this morning when I awoke with a THUNDERING headache.  As I have written about in earlier blogs, I have been a headache sufferer for as long as I can remember, with migraines starting around puberty.  Unfortunately, my headaches are an issue that weight loss most likely will not resolve.  I am not a doctor and I don't pretend to have any special knowledge about the headache phenomenon other than my own experience, but I suspect that headaches are not going to go away as my size decreases.  I don't expect them to.  I don't recall any research that makes a correlation between weight and headaches.  And as much research as I have done over the years I surely would have found it.

So, as much of my body changes, parts of it will not.  As much of my body changes, some things in my thinking will also change.  And they need to.  A book given to me by a dear friend and fellow traveler along the weight loss path deals a lot with our self-talk and how important it is for us to discard the old, negative thinking and replace it with self-encouragement.  The world in general is not all that friendly to plus size people, and for many of us, that unfriendliness begins early in life.  Years of scripts run through our minds and  try to sabotage our efforts at change...the voices of those who have seen us fail at weight loss saying that we are bound to fail again because failure is all we've ever known...that we can't change.

Yes, we can.  We CAN change.  Can I change my headaches?  Maybe not.  Can I change my body?  That is why I opted to pursue weight loss surgery.  Can I change my thinking?  With effort and dedication, you bet I can.  I am staking my health and my future on it.