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Through Thick and Thin #29 (September 15, 2003) Vows Kept and Challenges MetI made myself a solemn promise one year ago when I decided to have my Weight Loss Surgery. It was a vow that, at that time, I couldn't imagine being able to keep. I promised myself that by the end of my first summer after WLS, I would complete a legendary and demanding 10 mile hike, with significant elevations, through old growth forests and to the Pacific Ocean and back. I intentionally set this very ambitious goal, because I had a great deal to prove. I wanted a challenge so unthinkable and impossible in my pre-operative state that its eventual achievement would really mean something. It would mean that I had used the tool of WLS to totally change my lifestyle, dramatically improve my health, and attain an unprecedented level of physical fitness and mobility.
In my work with teens over the last decade, I have used "high ropes" and "low ropes" challenges to help the youths build a close and trusting team and stretch their comfort zones. When they take risks, they grow, and they learn — or remember — just how capable and awesome they really are. Before my surgery, I lacked both the physical mobility and the self-confidence to do many of the ropes challenges myself. In the ten months since my surgery, I've worked hard to lose weight, strengthen and stretch my body, and otherwise develop the fitness and flexibility to handle any physical challenge. My Walk From Obesity on this hike was my own personal ropes challenge. It was difficult and, at times, scary. It was also exhilarating and empowering. The first three 3.5 miles was a beautiful trail through the giant trees in the temperate rain forest. I was grateful for a warm, sunny day. The path was a boardwalk, raised above the sometimes wet and muddy land, and the steps moved up and down to match the contours of the ground below. The length and the elevations were comparable to my daily walk, so I walked briskly and finished the first phase in less than an hour. At the very end of this link, when the path moved sharply downhill to the beach and surf below, I encountered my first moments of doubt and panic. I should explain that I departed on my hike with two internal voices battling for predominance within my head. The persona I'll call "Maxi-G" (maximum weight Glenn) — the "I can't do it" voice of my old, morbidly obese and mobility-impaired self — was resigned to failing yet again. The persona I'll call "Mini-G" (goal weight Glenn) — the "I can do ANYTHING" voice of my new, healthy and fit self — was ready, hopeful, even confident. The steep descent to the shoreline plunged Maxi-G into the familiar trap of fear. If the drop to the beach is so steep, he worried, how will we ever be able to handle the ascent back up? Mini-G reminded me that this fear was a phony issue, a distraction, and that after months of climbing hills I was more than ready to deal with the challenge. I heeded his advice and carefully climbed down to the beach, savoring the moment. Actually there wasn't much of a beach. That presented the second opportunity for Maxi-G to stir the pot. I had planned the hike to arrive at the shore at low tide, because the Park Service had cautioned that at high tide this three mile second leg of the journey could be impassable and dangerous. While I had expected to trek along a beach, it immediately became apparent that I would need to walk off-shore, on the now exposed rocks and tidelands filled with tidepools, until I picked up the return trail three miles south of my arrival point. The rocks were slippery, and I have balance/vertigo problems anyway, so this was another unanticipated challenge. Because I had to constantly walk away from the shoreline to round the next in an endless series of points of land, the supposedly three mile jaunt morphed into a four or five mile ordeal. But the vista was magnificent, and the isolation splendid, and once I was able to stifle Maxi-G's complaints and whining, I had the time of my life. It took three hours to negotiate the tidelands and find the return trail. By that time I was finally and fully ready to leave Maxi-G behind, along with the huge stacks of driftwood on the beach. I'm pleased to tell you that I abandoned Maxi-G, and his negative sabotaging voice of pessimism, despair and limitation, in that pristine spot, and there he will remain forever. Mini-G lives on, peacefully and alone, within me. I walked the three mile final leg back on the boardwalk and through the woods at an accelerated and energized pace, feeling somehow lighter without the burden of Maxi-G's voice. I was now certain that I would complete my challenge in grand style.
At trail's end I celebrated, yelling and pumping my fists in the air, and I noted, with great pleasure, that I felt like I could walk another mile or two or five... As I drove home from my adventure and the hike that was a metaphor for my liberation from the oppression of morbid obesity, I felt a deep inner serenity. I kept my vow; I met my challenge. In the process, I proved to myself — on a deep emotional gut-feeling level totally distinct from my head-knowing — that my pre-WLS inability to lose weight and gain mobility was not a product of some internal character defect, or insufficient commitment or willpower. I proved that I am whole, and I am powerful, and my commitment and will can change my world and create the life that I want. GlennClick here to read another newsletter. Copyright, © 2003, Glenn Goldberg. All rights reserved.
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Through Thick
I just returned from my hike, joyful and triumphant! Besides being beautiful, invigorating and fun, it proved to be a powerful metaphor for my recovery from Weight Loss Surgery and the miraculous transformation I have experienced through this process.
It was wonderful, and somehow fitting, that about a mile before the end of the trail, I encountered a group of hikers heading toward the shore. One of them was a friend I hadn't seen since before my surgery. She didn't recognize me after my 150+ pound weight loss, and certainly didn't expect to see the sedentary, lethargic Glenn she remembered hiking so vigorously on the wilderness trail. It was a timely reminder that I'm no longer the man that I once was, physically and spiritually.