The Imaginarium Of My Corpulence

How does a girl get fat?  The short answer is, I dunno.

I eat ok.  Too much from time to time but I’m not particularly different to anyone else.  As a younger gal I did eat pretty badly – all pastas and takeaway and snacks but again, no worse than anyone else really.  As an adult, I’m not a huge fan of fast food or convenience foods.  I will always choose water over coke and an apple over a block of chocolate.  Not for health reasons particularly, just my taste-buds seem to like it that way.   I was born athletic and I stayed that way until I left high school and stopped running around.   I do however eat a bit too much sometimes and I do have a tendency towards guzzling quickly!  So make of all that what you will.

Everyone has an opinion.  I’ve been through all the emotional arguments, the quality and quantity arguments, the lifestyle arguments… whatever you can think of, I’ve analysed it.  Fact is, I still don’t really know and nor do you.  I guess it’s all of them and none of them at the same time.  So throw whatever media coverage, advertising bans, education, oprah aha moments etc around that you want but I just don’t think it’s ever gonna be uncomplicated, easily explainable situation.

From the age of about 20 to now (36), I’ve been overweight.  Now I’m horrendously overweight.  Everyone expects me to have a million health problems but I don’t really.  Pretty healthy all things considered.  However,  I’ve hated myself almost perpetually from the age of 20, and that ain’t so good.  Sometimes for the obvious reasons (boys) but I’ve always been pretty lucky in that department (personality goes a long way as they say) but mostly because I just wanted to wear clothes I like (as opposed to boring fat people clothes) and I wanted to do stuff that I couldn’t (like jumping out of planes and surfing).

Losing the amount of weight I need to lose would take about 2-3 years of strict adherence to a starvation diet.  And I’m not kidding about starvation diet.  Consuming say 800 calories a day for a normal human being is pretty impossible for more than a few weeks.   Try doing it for 2 years.  Yeah, right.

I’ve tried every diet or drug but never really stuck with anything.  I’m just not a consistent sort of person.  In any part of my life.  I’m never gonna be the employee who sits there from 9 to 5 every day and plugs away.  However I will be the employee who gets all excited and involved and works for 12 hours a day for six weeks and then fart-arses around for a few hours each day for the next two.

So…

I  accept that the task of losing this weight is insurmountable.  I accept that I can’t do it alone.   I accept that I need help.

That’s why I decided to get a gastric band.

Took me about 30 words to say and about 2 years to actually do.  It’s an emotionally complicated and heart rending decision to make.  Accepting failure and accepting help does not come easily to anyone, particularly me.

I think many people see gastric banding as an easy way out. They say “can’t you just eat less?”.  Sure I can.  But I will feel starving all the time and I will have to do it for YEARS.  Not days or weeks or months.  Years.  It’s just not realistic.  Those accusers couldn’t do it and nor can I.

Gastric banding is not an easy way out.  It doesn’t make good food choices for you.  You still have to choose the apple over the chocolate most of the time, like everyone else.  The difference is, my body which has been primed for storing weight no longer allows me to intake quite so much quantity.  If I eat too often and eat the wrong things, the band won’t make a difference.

The band is just a helping hand, that’s all.  Not a solution or a quick fix.  It will help me get started and help me stay on track but it won’t do the hard work for me.  That’s up to me.

So I made this decision because I need help.  It’s as simple as that.

This is my journey.