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 #44 (June 16, 2004)

Stretching Comfort Zones or As I Shrink, I Redouble My Efforts to Grow

As I continue to reduce my weight, and solidify and redefine my lean muscle mass, I'm discovering more and more opportunities to stretch my “comfort zones” with respect to the physical activities and adventures that my normal weight now permits. I've lost 100% of my excess weight (180 pounds), so physical challenges that were inconceivable to my Former Fat Self now beckon and dare me to partake.

In recent months I have experienced the joys of trying (or re-trying) formerly impossible pursuits. In the process, I've learned that it's just as important to my progression to keep testing and stretching my comfort zones (i.e. the things I feel comfortable, excited and reasonably confident about) as it was for me to tackle the difficult task of losing my excess weight.

In my counseling and educational work with adolescents and their parents, I underscore my core belief that personal growth is the ultimate payoff from taking risks (physical, emotional and/or social). When we try something new and a bit scary, I teach -- and then demonstrate – we expand the range of our choices of activities (doing, sharing, interacting) that feel comfortable, often exhilarating, and help us stretch and grow.

In the GUTS Teen Seminars that I've developed (see www.gutsforteens.org), we use “portable ropes” challenges to encourage and promote team-building and personal growth. These challenges involve two primary elements common to all “adventure-based learning” (Priest, 1990):

1. A break with the familiar, or venturing into unknown territory. When teens (or others) move outside of their social, emotional or physical “comfort zones”, it seems to open them up to accelerated growth and learning; and

2. Elements of risk, challenge and overcoming, in the emotional (feeling), cognitive (thinking), social (interacting) and physical (doing) domains.

The ultimate goal of adventure-based learning is to assist people in making their own linkages, bridges, and connections between what has happened during, e.g. the GUTS program, and what is happening in their own life. They can then be more intentional about integrating their own personal insights, new skills, and desired behaviors into their lifestyles. I've found that pursuing my own adventure-based learning is vital, and valuable, for this fat person who's become thin.

I've always operated on another core belief and personal rule – that whenever an opportunity presents itself to me that makes me feel anxious or resistant, I MUST try it. I've found that what I resist persists. I choose to take the risk and, hopefully, reap the rewards and push back a bit farther the boundaries or limits I place around my own life. Thus, in recent months, I have either sought out or accepted the challenges to:

• sea-kayak (first time ever!) for 20+ miles through the pristine islands and (icy) waters of Northern British Columbia ;
• spend a day socializing (at a safe distance) from Grizzly Bears and their young; and
• participate in an Elderhostel Big Band Camp that helped me grow musically and improve my jazz improvisation and sectional Big Band playing, on both my clarinet and alto sax.

Each activity was – in its own way – both an intimidating and ultimately joyful challenge. I'm already adding to my list of other challenges I want and intend to try in order to continue my personal stretching in coming months and years:

• white-water river rafting;
• salmon fishing;
• sailing;
• parachuting and paragliding;
• water skiing;
• horseback riding;
• walking in a marathon or half-marathon;

• going back to school and re-learning the musical scales and chords (after a 40+ year break) that will help me elevate my jazz improvisation;
• jamming at several local “improv nights” at local music clubs; and
• writing a book about my WLS experience, and another one about my insights into parenting adolescents and pre-teens.

The truth, which I sometimes resist and sometimes accept, is that in my new and improved body and shape, I can do just about ANYTHING (with reasonable and appropriate limits) I choose to try. It's taking me lots of time – and unlearning and relearning – to see that I need not use my obesity as an excuse for opting out of life's abundant challenges and opportunities. The story I told myself for most of my life – that I CAN'T – has been exposed as a lie. I'm working hard to take responsibility and accountability for extending my comfort zones as wide as they can reach.

I'm sharing these thoughts because I'm convinced that using the WLS toolkit to lose your excess weight is only the first of an endless array of second chances you'll get to re-create your life and re-define your limitations. There's nothing more satisfying to me than checking off another “stretch goal” and thereby expanding my Universe, experience, skills and capacities, and dreams of what could yet be. I wish you the same satisfaction and growth…

P.S. You've probably noticed that the frequency of my newsletters has slowed in recent months. Between travel, work, getting a pacemaker, and the relentless march of time, I've had some space to reassess my WLS newsletters and website. I've decided to stop posting in WLS chat rooms and email groups, and to reduce the frequency of my newsletters. I'll still be here, and still be writing and sharing. Please let me know if you have suggestions for WLS-related topics you'd like me to address in my upcoming newsletters. Also, if you find value in my newsletters (or at my website at www.weightlosssurgerycoach.com), then please pass on the address to those who might find it helpful, or a good place to start. Thanks for your help. Take good care, stretch and grow...

Glenn Goldberg , VBG 10.24.02, 360/180

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