Note: This is about vanity, not health. I am aware of that. It just needs to come out.
As I got closer to 230 pounds, my excitement kept building. The great day I got there, I went to Disney World to celebrate. I wanted to walk and did, around the EPCOT Resorts. I walked two miles an hour and walked for two hours. Without resting.
It was me soarin’ as I moved my body in ways I had not in so very long. My legs were going back and forth. I was not in pain. I felt like an avatar in someone else’s body.
When I was getting tired, I had a small dinner, then was exhausted and needed to leave as soon as possible.
I fell asleep in the back seat of the Uber car, nearly crawled to my bed, and then slept for six uninterrupted hours, unheard of for me.
I woke up still being me. I was the same person as I had been the day before, when I was not 230 pounds.
Intermission
I took a shower and looked at myself in the mirror and saw the massive drapes of flesh on my body. My arm skin hung down many inches.
My thigh ex-fat/now-skin folds onto itself and my once enormous pregnant-looking belly (37 years after my last baby) is deflated. I swear it looks like those fancy stage curtains from old movies.
I squinted and tried to imagine what this might have looked like if I was 30 years younger. I wondered how many thousands of dollars and how many surgeries it would now take to chop the flesh off and sew me back together. (I just don’t think I could do even one more surgery unless it was medically necessary, pretty much a firm no to cosmetic surgery.)
I turned my head sideways, still squinting, and thought about the a gobs of concern about losing muscle weight on the GLP-1 and GLP-1/GIP meds. I wondered if people think some of us lose so much because our melting muscle is included on the scale’s numbers. Doesn’t my skin have a weight, too? Can’t it balance out the scale’s measurements of my muscle loss and skin-stay? I wonder how much I would weigh if all the skin was gone? I would certainly be in much smaller-sized clothes. (And my muscle weight is going up, not down. I’m watching!
Re-Imagining a Skin-y World
When I was out on my evening walk, I was thinking about this post. I’d been working on it for a bit and needed a break; it was time to walk anyway, before dark. I threw on my sweater, covering my arms. I wear black mostly now, a 180 degree shift from decades of only tie-dye. Am I really that shallow? Is this me who is concerned what people will think? Those around me who love me tell me to wear my skin as a badge of honor for what my body has been through. It does look rather lived in, yes?
I do realize, too, I’m lucky that I am losing any weight at all. Plenty of people who take these medications don’t lose a pound. Re-reading as I edit, I feel like I am being terribly ungrateful for my blessings. I am not. I’m merely sharing these thoughts that many of us have. I want others to know they aren’t alone.
Do I regret taking the medications and losing so much weight? No. But I do wish… “if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.” I’m grateful because I am in a privileged position to even get the Trulicity (taken for a year) and Mounjaro (have taken it now for four months). So many need and want the GLP-1s and can’t get them for financial reasons and because their insurance won’t cover it. I know I shouldn’t whine.
Damn the Scale
A lot of this is about my Scale Watching. I can’t watch my labs as they get better each day, therefore the scale, so prevalent in our society, has been the focus.
I’ve had this issue before and asked my housemate to lock it away. Instead of that this time, I moved it back behind a side table near a bunch of cords so it will be more complicated to access. At least more than if it was sitting next to me, singing her siren song.
Once a Week Max – I Promise
I get my next labs drawn mid-February and I know most will be great. I am a tad concerned about my kidney labs because my Chronic Kidney Disease 3b (eGFR 40) keeps getting worse and I just had my third bout of pyelonephritis in six months. Not sure how much better my HbA1c can get… it’s a 5.1 right now… but will still be good to see where I am. I am also struggling to keep my iron in a place where I don’t have to have three iron infusions in a week, two months in a row. My iron sat doesn’t want to climb above 9. Grrrr. I’m (sarcastically) thanking the RNY Gastric Bypass for my chronic anemia that needs so much attention to keep somewhat in the low iron ranges. I’m also waiting for a referral to show off my lymphedema that I discovered only because I’ve lost enough weight that I now have a thin leg and a fat leg. Fun times.
I promise to keep my eye on the Lab Prizes, not the tilt-o-whirl of the scale’s numbers.
I’ll weigh on Monday mornings.
Sometimes this is harder because I make it that way.
I just need to chill and do life.
HEALTH AT ANY COST!!!
I’ll take the baggy skin. Happily!
all photos except the last one taken by Barb Herrera