Back to Basics and back to school.... and a confession

Back to basics (or btb) has come up a lot lately in some of the other WLS blogs I read such as Sam's and Christina's blogs.  Also, there is a lot of talk of going back to basics in the WLS group on fb that I belong to.

As I mentioned a few weeks back that I too was going back to basics.  I bought my marble notebooks and started journaling.

I was doing very well for the first couple of weeks.  Then the week my friend's father passed, the tracking of my food fell wayside.  That carried on into this week as well.  So today is the day the journaling and eating my five small meals a day will go back into action.

TODAY!  Because it has to be today.  Because if its not today, it won't ever happen.  and it needs to happen.  I was doing so great with the tracking.  So a week and half is missing, but I already started doing it again today.  I wrote down what I had for breakfast and that I took my vitamins :)

And the reason why I'm going back: Because without tracking, I know i'm not getting in all my water. I'm not getting in all my protein.  I'm not losing.  I'm not.  I've been at 233 for like a week and a half now.  I just want to break out of the 230s so badly.  I'm not freaking out about this however.  I know its going to come off.  I'm just saying I'd like to be out of the 230's.   That's all.

In other news, I'm planning on going back to school hopefully for the winter session, but definitely for january.  Originally I was going to go for nursing so I can work with doctors without borders and travel the world.

I've recently changed my mind.

My gastric bypass obviously had a huge impact on my life.  And so did everyone involved.  So it got me thinking that I'd really like to be involved with bariatric patients in some way.

So I'm going to go back to school for nutrition and psychology.  I'm going to focus on nutrition first, that way I can work as a nutritionist first (hopefully specializing in bariatric patients) and then continue my education with my psychology, so I can become a psychologist who specializes with patients who suffer from eating disorders.

I have mentioned this before, but I've had my battles with eating disorders. Binge eating disorder and bulimia, more so than anything else, but I've also had bouts of starvation.  I still struggle with the "urge to purge" ... but I've kept things down for months now.  I will admit this though... during my pre-op diet there were nights when I did binge and purge. I'm not proud of it and I actually didn't think I would ever admit to it, especially so publicly.

I don't want anyone to worry.  I have not purged since before my surgery. The last time I did it was back in April.  And before that... it had been YEARS.  Like 6 years. But I do battle with it everyday.  That feeling of that type of control is something I work on everyday and thats also part of the reason why I want to specialize in it.  I want to be able to help people... who have walked along the same path as I have and I want to be able to show them that its not that bad, and that things will get better and that they can overcome all of their problems.


Its hard for me to admit this.  I was able to keep this secret pretty quiet for years.  I've randomly mentioned it but I've never gone into full detail with people about it, and I hadn't told anyone about my pre-op binging and purging. I don't think I'll ever tell anyone my full story again... but here's the cliffs note version:

I had started throwing up when I was about 10. I had seen it on a lifetime movie and even though they focused on the dangers of it, and the girl in the movie actually died... I still did it.  Then there was the movie For the Love of Nancy which made me think starvation would have been better.  I had been switching between binging and purging and starvation for about a year and a half. In that year and a half I had lost about 50 lbs and I had been able to maintain it.  Then I started just binge eating.  I would sneak out of my room in the middle of the night and  my weight shot right back up.  So then one night I started with the purging again.  I'm not going to go into full details.. but my adolescence was spent over a toilet or looking up pro-ana or pro-mia sites for tips and tricks and 'thinspiration'.  It was rough, and I did eventually get help on my own through the local eating disorders anonymous chapter.  By that time I had been battling all of my eating disorders for about 6 years.  I kept cycling all of them until I decided to get healthy.  The most difficult aspect of everything during recovery is that my body had been so accustomed to regurgitating once it had food... that I had to learn how to control myself and NOT throw up.  I stopped starving myself and I stopped the purging... But I did continue with the binge eating.  And thats what led me to the path I had been on before having my gastric bypass.  And thats what led me to want to help others like me.... because it doesnt have to be SO bad.

An eating disorder is a serious condition.  If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder, please visit National Eating Disorders Association's website and get help.


Please don't leave any comments if they're going to pass some sort of bad judgement on me.  I really don't want to hear it.