I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed our communications. The information you have conveyed so well has prepared me in many ways — from eating to exercise, from expecting pain after surgery to dealing with plateaus. So thanks so much for your sharing, help and personal experiences.
— Patricia

You are the best source of information and support I have found!
— Dana K.

After communicating with you, I'm deeply moved and feel like I have found someone who is going through profound experiences very much like my own. I studied up on the WLS process for 11 months prior to having my procedure, but never in all my reading did I come across any significant discussion on the early pre-op months and the related emotional and physical challenges. Thanks for your gift!

Through Thick and Thin #32 (October 16, 2003)

Out of the Closet

As I approach my one year post-op anniversary, and finalize curricula for my coaching groups, I've been remembering how my life was before surgery, comparing my life today, and marveling at the transformations. One of the most surprising changes is that today, at my goal weight, I'm boldly striding "out of the closet" with the astounding revelation that I'm a Clothes Hound and a Fashion Plate! This is about the last thing I would ever have predicted for my life after WLS.

I share this self-discovery with those of you who are considering whether to choose Weight Loss Surgery, or who are awaiting surgery, or who are still struggling in the first months post-op, to help you keep your eyes on the Prize — the reasons to consider this drastic medical intervention.

It turns out that I've been telling myself a fictional story all of those Fat Years: that I just didn't care much about either my appearance or my wardrobe. The plainer, more shapeless, and blacker the better. Baggy sweats whenever I could. Ties and jackets only when there was no other option, and even then ties were loosened at the first opportunity and jackets came off soon thereafter. "I just don't care about vanity, appearances and such trifling contrivances as clothes," I convinced myself. All these years, it now turns out, I was telling myself a whopper of a lie.

Now that I CAN and DO look good, even great, in nice clothes, I find that I actually love and enjoy dressing up and showing off. I love the feeling of wearing clothing that is colorful, fashionable, form-fitting and elegant. I love "making an entrance" into a room. I enjoy flaunting my increasingly attractive figure. I savor the feelings of confidence, power and attention that accompany my choice of attractive clothes. I like wearing suits, jackets, ties, turtlenecks, tight jeans, horizontal stripes, outrageous colors and everything else that painful experience (and my mother) taught me to avoid. Today, I take great pride in my appearance, knowing how hard I've worked and exercised, and just how much I've sacrificed to create this new body and look.

Shopping for clothes had always been an odious, painful task, because of the humiliation and the despair. Today, I love my shopping excursions to thrift shops in every community we visit. The excitement of finding hidden treasures, the prospect that a very special outfit awaits, the confidence that everything marked "large" will actually fit me, and look good on me. I particularly enjoy recycling, giving new life and a new home to clothes that, for whatever reason, had outlived their value to their prior owner.

I chose to have my Weight Loss Surgery because I wanted to live a long and healthy life. Everything else was just an added benefit and afterthought, the "gravy" in my old food-centered way of thinking. I never, ever would have guessed that it was only the intense power of my denial that had convinced me that clothes and appearance and pride and confidence — or even my comfort and self-esteem — weren't, in and of themselves, important enough to justify my Weight Loss Surgery. Today, I know different and I know better. And I'm hoping that my joy and celebration at walking out of the closet, resplendent in my newest recycled threads, will help encourage and inspire you to keep working toward your own WLS goal.

Glenn

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