I wrote this piece in early 2010 - about a year before my surgery. It shows where my head was and where I assume a lot of you pre-ops are today. I hope the insight into my mind helps you deal with the questions and concerns you are having now.
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I have a love affair with food. When I say "food," I mean food. I mean the French bread I tear off in hunks and stuff in my mouth as I run out the door. I mean the brownies a friend bakes for me and which I parcel out in slivers for weeks. I mean the soup, freighted with its nuggets of onion and squash and potatoes, which I spend all afternoon making and whose aroma rises, steaming, toward my face at dinnertime. And when I say "food," I mean too that stuff that foams like endless verbal meringue across the pages of cookbooks and novels and menus. I mean the liberally sprinkled adjectives: "freshly ground," "extra spicy," "braised to perfection." The lingering step-by-steps: "saute until golden," "whisk until light and fluffy," "season to taste." I mean the groaning, page-long tables of Thomas Wolfe, the banquets spread before Odysseus and that wine-blue sea, Levin and Oblonsky's dining, William Carlos William's plums, the catalogs of the young Gargantua's meals, Proust's Madeleine, the Ghost of Christmas Present's puddings and chestnuts and stuffing and cakes, and the fact that Babette spends all her fortune on one supernal meal. I mean "FOOD."
I love food - and giving it up, or limiting it in any way, is VERY difficult. So I'm having some trepidation as I say goodbye to all my nutritionally unsound friends and move towards my date with a bariatric surgeon.
Shocked?!? You shouldn't be.. I've been the "fat man" for over 30 years - and I'm tired of the sweating, the sore back and knees, the limited wardrobe choices, the diabetes, the high blood pressure... But mostly, I'm tired of the staring... The "Oh God please don't let him sit beside me" looks I get as I push down an airplane aisle. The "why doesn't he order a salad" look when I open a menu.. The "I bet you five bucks he gets dessert" whispers as I finish a restaurant meal. I don't eat dessert - at least not often. A really good creme brulee or cheesecake may tempt me on rare occasion. I don't sneak cookies or candy bars. I actually eat reasonably. I'm just fat - too fat - and now, dangerously fat, so I have to do something about it.
My dieting story is like nearly everyone else. Lose 20 pounds - gain 25, lose 30 - gain 40. I have no choice but to try another tack - something drastic..
Bariatric surgery isn't a "get out of fat free card" - far from it. What it does is give me one, and only one, "do-over" so I can make the right choices and learn to eat the right foods to stay healthy and slim.
The road from here to there isn't an easy one. In the next few months I'll be preparing for the surgery, both mentally and physically. After the surgery my meals will amount to the total size of a single small dinner roll, but I'll rarely eat bread - and never another grain of sugar, so goodbye to pumpernickel rye and southern sweet tea. The nutrition I'll no longer be able to eat will come from vitamins and supplements. I'll eat almost exclusively protein for the next 2 years or more - maybe I'll eat that way forever..
I'll always be aware of the closest restroom, as a shortened digestive tract is almost certainly a recipe for disaster if I eat the wrong, or too much, food.
The skin on my body won't shrink as the fat dissolves under it. It will hang loosely about me. I'll be spending hours in a gym, but no amount of exercise will make that skin retract. I eventually face additional surgeries to remove the excess skin from my face, arms, stomach and thighs. No, bariatric surgery isn't exactly a "get out of fat free card".
So.. why am I doing it? It's because I'm a very selfish man. Food, as much as I love it, loves me too much. It's killing me. The fat is surrounding my heart and invading my veins. It interrupts my sleep and makes it difficult to breathe. I want to play with my eventual grandchildren, not just sit in a chair and watch, but actually run with them. I want to walk again on the beach at sunrise, not sit in the car in a parking lot just to listen to the surf. I want to walk onto an airplane and sit comfortably in a middle seat - and no one notice me. I want to grow old with and take care of the woman I love.
I'm twice the man I used to be, and I look forward to being half the man I am now. I just don't want to be the fat man any longer. There are plenty of candidates in America today who can take over that position so I won't be missed.
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