In which I haven't changed the record

So, there we have it.  I have admitted, ONLINE, that I’m going to be having bariatric surgery to stop me being such a massively, grossly, offensively obese monster; and to help with the whole fertility thing.  If I said it, it MUST be true.

I’ve done my research into each type of surgery; gastric band (no), gastric bypass (no) or sleeve gastrectomy (BINGO).  I have been approved for surgery but the waiting game has just started…

To get to the stage where I am now, I have had to lose weight of my own accord to show willing.  I have done this and am continuing to do so.  I have also had to see a psychologist, to make sure I’m not too nuts to have surgery.  The main thing picked up in this session was that I’ll always have hang ups over how I look, and so I will need a follow up session or two post-surgery.

A sleeve gastrectomy is where about 75% of your stomach is removed, so you’re left with a sort of mini banana shaped stomach pouch.  It’s irreversible, it’s safe and it probably seems fairly extreme, but I’m focussed and want this to happen.

Here are some conversations I have with myself on a week to week basis:

“Why don’t you just eat like a normal person, and not a pig?”

Well, yeah, tried that and did really well and became depressed and didn’t care. 

“You’ll never be able to have children whilst you’re the size you are”.

I know this, genius; this is why I’m having the thing.

“You’ll be too old for kids then anyway, you know, you’re 37 now.  You’re over the hill”.

Which is why I need it done ASAP.  We are under the fertility clinic also.  The cut off age for IVF is 39 years and 11 months.  This is why this needs to be done.

“You’ll have loose skin, and look like an even bigger mess”.

Well possibly, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

“It’s just sheer laziness that’s done this.  It’s your own fault.  Why should the taxpayer pay for your greed”?

Because I’m a taxpayer as well and, although my obesity hasn’t caused any major health issues as of yet, it might do later on in life, like heart disease, strokes, cancers etc.  So operate on me now whilst I’m a relatively healthy, youngish specimen, and I’ll save you all cash.  Alcohol and smoking related problems are treated, why can’t food related ones be also?  

I’ve had a life time of jibes about how I look (ginger,glasses, braces, bad skin), about my weight.  I previously mentioned that as a little kid in infant school, I was subjected to bullying for being fat (which I absolutely wasn’t when I was four, five or six) and took it that seriously that I stopped eating my lunches at school in a bid to make me thinner.

I’m a self-hating fatty.  I personally can’t get behind fat acceptance programmes, because I can’t accept myself being as fat as I am (although I have been overweight almost my entire teenage-adult life).  It really does make me miserable, no matter how much to try to put on the jolly fat tart persona, that’s really not who I am at all.  I’m speaking solely from my perspective.  That’s my view of myself.  And as I learned in all my sessions of therapy, if I fire the shots first, then I do the most damage to myself. 

I’ve joked about trying to develop an eating disorder but it being too damned difficult.  How is that acceptable?  Answer:  It isn’t.  I’ve seen what eating disorders can do to people.  But society nowadays is so obsessed with image, aesthetics and being thin, there’s not much hope for the younger generations of kids coming through.  A friend of mine mentioned that her daughter asked her one day whether she had fat legs.  My friend was shocked and asked who’d said that to her.  Her daughter kept quiet.  Let me point out that her daughter was around four years of age.  Another friend of mine advised me that her daughter had developed an eating disorder of sorts.  She was seven. 

This report that was released recently is terrifying reading.  It brought back my own experiences of school, but I really am shocked at how young these feelings about self-image begin.  Mainstream media, magazines, telly shows, FB, celebrities, these are all showing us what’s pretty and what isn’t.  Thinness is pretty, fatness is not.  Smooth, tanned skin is pretty, pale freckly skin with a few imperfections here and there is not. 

I hope things change, because if I am ever lucky enough to have a daughter, I wouldn’t know where to start with this hell hole 'aesthetics is everything' nightmare.