July
28
Your eyes are starving, not YOU!
I found the following poem a few months after my surgery. I cried. It was as if the author read my mind. Someone understood what I was going through. I wasn’t alone!
I wish I would have shared it earlier, but I lost the website I found it on and who the author was. I’ve spent the last hour searching for the poem (no luck) when I remembered I saved it on my computer. I didn’t write the website and author down when I copied it. I didn’t have any intentions of “borrowing” it for my blog. If the author so happens to find me, please let me know so I can credit it you.
“MY EYES ARE STARVING”
Relax! It’s OK to be hungry.
You would have to eat a great deal and for a long time to backslide far enough to get to your weight on
surgery day. Do not fear hunger. Fearing it gives it control. Fear makes you reckless, because it
makes you feel hopeless. Seize control! Realize you actually ARE hungry because your new tummy is so small, it can’t possibly ingest enough nutrition to support your body at one sitting.
Yes, you’re going to be hungry often, but DON’T be afraid of that. Go with the flow like a skier. Skiers bend their knees and move their bodies from side to side to keep their balance as they go forward. What we’re doing is learning to eat properly as we move forward, to keep our nutritional
balance. It’s not easy. I’ve never skied before, and I’ve never had RNY surgery before. It’s the learning curve. Hang on as you go up.
We no longer have the physical capacity to eat an entire package of cookies at one sitting. That’s impossible now. But you can eat one cookie (if you don’t go into dumping). You can eat it slowly, and savor it, and enjoy it. And you can have a second and a third, but you’re going to find you don’t really want the whole package. That’s a good sign. And maybe you didn’t even enjoy the cookie(s). That’s even better. You understand that cookies are a waste of your stomach space, space you should be filling with NUTRITIOUS food; Nutrition to keep you alive. Food is less and less of a recreation every day.
I think exploring is a good idea. You’re going to discover that foods don’t taste or even ‘feel’ like they used to, any more. Your tastes have changed. Try fruit when you THINK you have a sweet tooth. The more you stay away from refined sugars, the less you’ll crave them. You have more power to stay away these days than you ever had before. But if you do have some, be easy on yourself. So what?
BELIEVE IT! You are NOT going back ‘there’!
