Down One Calf... Moo?

When I started this journey on January 16, I was 348.1 pounds, which, on my 5'7" frame, meant I wore a size 22/24 in jeans, a 2XL in men's shirts, and an 11 shoe.

I felt like crap all the time. My ankles and shins ached horribly if I had to walk around for more than a brief period of time, especially if it was uphill; a trainer told me that my ankle rolled to the side to compensate for the width of my body, resulting in joint pain. I had no energy and poor circulation; if I sat Indian-style for more than a few minutes, my legs would go to sleep.

Weight loss surgery is not an ice cream sundae with cherries on top. I'm a member of a support forum and everyone there is constantly congratulating themselves on "rocking their sleeves" and "loving their sleeves". I am not among these people. Having a gastric sleeve procedure has definitely changed my outlook on food and the way I think about my body, but it hasn't made me wake up in the morning singing and dancing around, grateful that it took cutting a body part in half to get me to control myself. I wish that I'd had the self-control and the willpower to simply walk away from the junk food and avoid the fast food.

Do I miss food? Like a phantom limb of an amputee. I went to a fancy restaurant with my best friends for a birthday celebration and could sample a bit of everything, but I couldn't really relish the smoked mac 'n cheese or the cream cheese and raspberry cake we got for dessert. I can't go to Freebird's and enjoy a big salad with chopped steak on top. I can't eat a breakfast burrito, or drink one of the new peanut-butter-and-jelly milkshakes from Sonic.

The problem is that everything we love is bad for us, and it's that lack of moderation that got me into trouble in the first place. I want to eat the way I used to; I want every bite to be delicious and rich and disgustingly bad for me. But there isn't a place for that in my life anymore. This morning I had a bite of my grandma's hashbrowns at breakfast and my stomach lurched at how greasy they were. The smell of bacon made my belly growl, but the bacon tasted flat and dead in my mouth. My very desire to love food has been stripped away from me, and for so long that was something I used to identify myself. I considered myself an amateur foodie; I loved going with my best friend Shawn to exotic ethnic restaurants and trying weird things. We went to New Orleans and ate our way through the whole vacation with rich, delicious food, some of the best I've ever eaten. Under his tutelage I've tried so many things I would've probably never eaten on my own. And now I don't have that luxury; I have to think "protein first, then veggies, and if there's any room left, carbs" and of course there's never room left for carbs. My tasting of exotic meals has turned into 'sampling', bite-sized portions stolen from my friends' plates, meals shared because I couldn't hope to make a dent in my own.

But you get over it. It's only been five months for me, and that isn't very long when you consider that I've been obese since I was a pre-teen. I have to get used to the idea that this is permanent, that that part of my stomach is never coming back, that I'll never be eating a Big Mac or a whole steak or a fully loaded baked potato again. I made four pans of brownies for an event, and everyone raved about them, but I felt nauseous just from licking the fork and tasting how much sugar was in them.

But I can walk around without pain. In fact, I have a lot of stamina now, and my leg pain is almost nonexistent. I do still have shitty circulation, but when I lose a little more weight I'm thinking about taking up yoga or Pilates or some other kind of stretching exercises to help with that.

Last weekend I had a major health setback, and it was entirely my fault. After surgery, my doctors told me what kinds of vitamins I should take and how many of each to take every day. The problem is, I've never liked vitamins (except Flinstones chewables when I was little, and that's because I'm pretty sure they're actually Sweet Tarts), and so when I felt pretty good without taking them I decided "Meh, I don't need vitamins, I'm fine!" I thought I was getting enough nutrients from eating food, which is ridiculous because I'm consuming maybe 500 calories a day and even that is a big stretch. Still, I wasn't taking vitamins, and then something weird happened. I woke up with absolutely no appetite. I was tired, I was stressing about my upcoming finals at school (I'm taking 22 hours this semester, which for non-students--- 12 hours makes you a 'full time' student. I was taking 3 classes more than that), and I was constantly on the go. I wasn't taking care of myself. But it slipped my mind to eat--- God, when could Fattie!Me ever claim that? I used to watch the clock waiting for the next chance to eat something. But I suddenly looked up and realized that I hadn't eaten in three days. Not a bite. So I poured myself some of my Mootopia, the protein-enhanced milk I drink, but one swallow made me gag and I dumped it down the sink. I tried a protein shake but it made my stomach churn. The nausea was overwhelming and I had nothing to throw up, so I would just dry-heave until the feeling passed.

Unfortunately, that weekend was also Texas Frightmare Weekend, a huge convention in Dallas where the film I'm working on was running a table. I was so nauseous and dizzy and I was unable to keep anything down; my boys kept bringing me bits of sandwiches or what have you, but I couldn't eat more than a mouthful before I started gagging and had to run for the bathroom to throw up. This continued for the entire three-day weekend, with me getting progressively sicker, weaker and more tired. The fact that I literally couldn't ingest protein meant that my body was kind of shutting down; it had no idea what to do with itself. My gums were bleeding when I brushed my teeth, even though I've never had gingivitis or a cavity in my life; I was experiencing neuropathy and numbness of my feet and legs. I got dizzy spells when I stood up too fast, and after a jammed elevator forced the boys and I to climb one flight of stairs, my heart was beating so fast that I had to go to the bathroom and throw up again. I thought that maybe I needed to go to the hospital to get on an IV to rehydrate; I was sipping apple juice for the sugar just to keep my body running on something.

Shawn to the rescue--- he bought me a bag of oranges and practically stood over me while I ate several of them. I couldn't eat the pulp but I sucked the juices out, and the next day I managed to drive myself back to Waco. There I forced myself to eat and called my doctor, who informed me what I already knew; the vitamins and the protein were not something I could skip out on, especially for over a week. I had sent my body into shock.

I got myself back on track thanks to finishing the oranges, eating some steak from a hibachi grill near my house, and making some tuna salad, and everything feels better now. There's some lingering neuropathy in my feet but it's minimal compared to how it was, and I am feeling light years ahead of where I was four days ago.

When I weighed in today, I realized that I was at 256--- that's 92 pounds down in five months. My brain can barely wrap around something like that, but there you have it. I have lost 26% of my body weight, if my calculation is correct. My original 'goal weight' was 250 because I wanted to pick something reasonable and attainable--- little did I know I'd be attaining it before my birthday.

I looked it up--- a newborn calf weighs 90 pounds. I've lost a calf. 

There are so many things that I am looking forward to doing, and one of them begins tomorrow. I'm going to Los Angeles with my grandma and my uncle, flying out for a few days to see West Coast friends, go to Universal Studios and Warner Bros Studios, and then drive to Vegas for a few more days. I am really looking forward to it; it's partially a birthday present for me, partially a congratulations for finishing such a backbreaking semester with a 3.7 GPA, and partially because fuck it, I love Los Angeles and Vegas and I wanted to go. After that trip, I come back, see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert onstage in Dallas, and then fly to Boston because one of my favorite horror icons, Adam Green, is putting on charity events to benefit the people impacted by the Boston Marathon bombings. June 9 is my birthday party, and one of my dearest friends Sarah is driving from out of state to attend!  All this while shooting a movie in Dallas!

It's a crazy life, but I love it.

Insecure Ramblings and Struggling to Find Footing

Today I weighed in at 276.1, which is pretty cool. 72 pounds down in four months. Can't really complain about that. I joked that I wanted to be 250 by Texas Frightmare Weekend, and in all honesty I'm not very far off, but I'm not going to make 250 in the next few days. Ah well, I look a lot better than I did this time last year.

Or so the scale says, anyway.

I still don't see it visually; when I look in the mirror I'm still grossed out by what I see and insecure about the flaws that, to me, are huge and glaring. I was trying on clothes this weekend with my best friend, the two of us sharing a dressing room, and I still turned my back to her while changing my shirt. I didn't want her to see my lumpy, misshapen stomach or the scars like vibrant purple hatchmarks across it. I'm losing weight in my arms and thighs but my calves are as huge as ever, making it impossible for me to wear any of the 'stiletto/skinny jean'-style capris. For some reason, whoever the hell is buying clothes for plus-sized store Torrid right now is smoking crack--- all of the summer line consists of halter tops and Daisy Duke shorts. The store carries up to 4X, but I don't know a lot of size 26-28 girls who want to be parading around in tiny shorts that barely cover the hemline of their panties. I have so much cellulite my legs look like pantyhose filled with marbles, and in no way do I want to strut that shit this summer. I'm pretty pale in general but my legs are paper-white thanks to never seeing the light of day; I hate wearing shorts even when it's in the firm triple digits in Texas. In elementary school, when I was just starting to get big, a girl named Jeanette told me that I looked like I didn't have any knees because my legs were so fat. At the time, I was playing softball and running a lot, so they were thick with muscle anyway, but they were one of the first places I started to gain weight. My mom, even at 400 pounds, had slender ankles and shapely calves. I have dumpy, thick legs. They're one of my least-favorite features about myself; I don't think I've ever seen a picture of myself in a dress or shorts or anything else and not cringed or tried to crop it to remove my legs. I'd rather be a disembodied torso in the photo than standing on these tree-trunk stalks of mine. Wide-calf boots aren't even usually big enough unless they have a stretch panel somewhere in them; this is also the reason I can't own cowboy boots even though I've wanted them since high school.

I'm in a bleak period right now because it's been almost a year since my mom and the ripple effect of her death is still hitting me hard. This weekend I'll be attending the annual horror convention in Dallas, Texas Frightmare, and this will be the first one I've ever gone to without my mom. She was friends with virtually everyone who goes and this year simply won't be the same without having her there. I spend my days in this house surrounded by memories of her, not just her tangible things but thinking about lying on the couch watching TV or climbing on her bed to tell her about my day, and it's rough. I come home and the only person waiting here for me is my cat, who while great company is a poor substitute. I miss her so much sometimes it hurts to breathe. I went on a bender for the last two days where all I did was lie on the couch eating sugar-free Popsicles and watching Disney movies. I just had to turn the real world off and live in the familiar for awhile.

I don't know how to shake this. It feels like my heart isn't in anything. From the outside my life is going fine--- I'm losing weight, I have incredible friends, I'm doing well in school (I got named Marketing Student of the Year at my college this week), I'm about to start working on a feature horror film, etc. But I am just so sad, and I'm sleepwalking through everything I'm doing.

Protein Bliss?

First off, this is going to sound like a product review, maybe because it is a little.

I cannot say enough good things about the company "Chike", which makes delicious protein shakes for bariatric patients. If you're drinking protein shakes for bulking up or getting muscle or something, these aren't gonna be what you want, but if you need a good source of easily-digested protein, Chike is your best bet in my opinion. They also have amazing customer service--- I bought their sample pack from their website and the next day a rep called me and was really nice about the whole thing. She wanted to know how I'd found out about them, which product I was most excited to try, etc. When I got the package and tried the French Vanilla shake, it was by far the creamiest and yummiest protein shake I'd tried yet. Same with the chocolate. I haven't tried the banana, orange dreamsicle or strawberry one yet, and I don't like coffee so I may pass on the mocha one. But the two I have were pretty delicious and they didn't have the weird chalky aftertaste that comes with  most protein shakes. After a few days, the same rep actually called me back to verify that everything got here okay and ask how I liked the shakes, which was my favorite so far, etc! If I DO buy more protein powder in the future, I will be giving my business to "Chike"... they have been bar-none the best experience I've had since the surgery.

I had a 'day' today--- as most of you know if you follow the news, yesterday a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded and killed or injured a lot of people. My sister Heather is an EMT/firefighter and I was afraid that they would be sending her into the chaos to help; there were massive search and rescue efforts going on all night and most of today as well. The body count has been climbing as they find casualties, and everyone in the community has come together to donate supplies, blood, money and anything else to the almost-three-thousand people who were displaced or rendered homeless by this tragedy. It's all anyone's been talking about around here, so soon on the heels of the Boston Marathon tragedy, and it makes it hard to remain cheerful.

After screwing up a math test and tuning out most of my Business Law class, I headed off to run errands. I needed an eye exam because my contacts prescription had expired, so I made a beeline for the mall. There I ran into my old friend Anne and we talked while I picked out two new pair of frames. Then I went into Forever 21 to check out their plus-sized section. Much to my surprise they had plus-sized swimwear; even though their stuff is sized pretty small, it's amazing to me that they would even carry it. Most other stores don't, unless they're somewhere like WalMart. And the swimsuits are actually cute, and very affordable; most of the ones I looked at were around $25 each. I decided to try one on, knowing that a few times this summer I'll have access to a pool, and I wiggled into a strapless 2x with flamingos on it.

Me posting that photo is NOT me saying 'whoo, I love my body!' because good lord, I do not. But I was kind of happy about the fact that I could wear a 2X, not a 3X (and many were the times when I tried on a 3X in their plus-sized section and couldn't even wiggle that up over my hips). I got it on and more importantly, I looked cute in it. I didn't buy it, because my boobs kept falling out, but I was kind of excited that I could actually fit into it.  That kind of thing alone is no easy task.

After a fairly triumphant day at the mall, I went to Drug Emporium. I have no idea why I don't go more often--- half of the store is health/alternative food and you always find something really cool! I bought a box of pasta made entirely of spinach (9g of protein per serving and almost no sugar at all!), a new kind of protein bar with no sugar, and a few other exciting things that I can't wait to try. Maybe the most stoke-worthy of them--- I found PROTEIN CEREAL.

Okay I know this means NOTHING to the people who haven't had weight loss surgery, but when you get it, they tell you that protein always comes first, then veggies, and carbs if you have any room left afterward. Which you NEVER do. And every time I try to take a bite of a hamburger or something, the bread makes me feel like I just ate Thanksgiving meal and I'm done a bite or two in. Ironically, I don't really miss bread--- it's kind of nice not eating carbs. I indulge every now and then in a few bites of spaghetti, but I'm certainly not going for the Neverending Pasta Bowl at Olive Garden ever again. Still, I do miss cereal. Breakfast for me, when I eat it, is usually a glass of my Mootopia or, if I'm starving, egg whites with turkey sausage crumbles and cheese mixed in. Most of the time it's just Mootopia though, or a piece of string cheese on my way out the door. Maybe Greek yogurt. The point is, I used to lay on the couch with a mixing bowl of Captain Crunch and watch a movie on lazy weekend mornings, and I MISS cereal.

So the idea that I could have cereal, and the cereal has like 9g of protein per serving, is more than okay with me.

Now there are two so far that I've met with this criteria; Kashi GoLean makes the claim that one serving of their cereal has as much protein as an egg in it. The new brand I bought, which is Kay's Natural Protein Cereal, comes in apple cinnamon and french vanilla flavors. At $5 a box, and running the risk that I'd hate it, I splurged and decided to try the apple cinnamon since I realllly miss Apple Jacks.

To my surprise it was really good! I mean, it's no Apple Jacks or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but it's pretty tasty. The cinnamon covered up whatever weird proteiny aftertaste was inevitably going to happen. Plus, I ate it with Mootopia, which is 12g a serving, so really, in one teensy little bowl of cereal I got 21 grams of protein! Yay me!

Also, I had to go buy 'little kid' dishes so that I could manage portions better and stop dirtying a giant cup for a few swallows of drink. I went to Target and checked out that area they have in the front of stuff that's a dollar--- and nearly died. This is the set of little bowls I bought.

How amazing are they? I know. I'm still kind of in awe myself. I also bought the little plates that are divided up into sections so your food won't touch, and I am thinking about buying myself a bento box to take with me for when we start filming Sacrament. I know that craft services aren't exactly going to be friendly to my weird, wonky, specific little diet. A bento box is basically a way to eyeball your portions and food groups and keep track of what you're eating, but it also happens to be tiny, adorable Tupperware shaped like a panda. And I am totally on board for that.

I keep posting reference photos because they're helping me keep track. So here's two face shots--- one is from the day I auditioned for Sacrament, back in December, and the second is from last Saturday when we had rehearsal. The wig's the same. Everything else is... not.

Adjustments.

Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything... real life is kind of kicking my butt right now and I'm doing my best to stay ahead of it. It's been a crazy month since my last entry.

As of this morning, I am down exactly 70 pounds, which is pretty great since I'm four months out. My size 22 jeans from Lane Bryant were falling off me, so I moved down to a 20, and now I have to put those in the dryer on high before I wear them or they, too, are saggy and baggy. This weekend I borrowed a pair of sleep shorts from my best friend, who is about sixty pounds lighter than me, and they fit (I was pretty positive they wouldn't, remembering an embarrassing episode when I tried to borrow an ex-boyfriend's sweatpants in college in an attempt to be cute but they wouldn't go up higher than my thighs). But when I went to buy a new outfit for a friend's birthday party, I was still trying on the same sizes I always have and clothes were still fitting me strangely. I don't notice a difference in my body but my friends say that they do. My two biggest 'non-scale victories' have been being able to wrap one hand completely around the opposite wrist, and being able to feel/see my collarbones when I turn my head. I haven't seen my actual collarbones probably since middle school.

 However, I am still having major self esteem problems. I still don't like myself very much and I don't think that I'm beautiful by any means. I am currently working on a feature film that's shooting this summer and I am really insecure about it; I don't want to see myself on camera because the whole time I will be thinking about how fat I still am as well as comparing my acting skills to those of everyone else in the film. They are all immensely talented and good-looking and at this point I have days where I wonder what the hell I was even thinking when I auditioned. I have very little faith in my own abilities and I hate that I'm like this. I wish I could celebrate 70 pounds down instead of thinking about the other 70 I want to lose.

One of the strange things is that food is usually one of the last things on my mind now, which is weird because you really don't know what to do with yourself. It's a social gathering; my friends get together for bonding, for celebration, for commiseration. We use food to communicate. Without that method of communication available to me I feel adrift. Even when I was dating, a 'dinner date' was both pointless and irritating on my end; it usually consisted of me picking at a kid's menu item, eating less than half of it and feeling unsatisfied by the heavy, greasy food while my date relished theirs. The things I always loved don't taste good to me anymore; things that were sweet are now cloying, things that were greasy and savory now make me sick or taste horrendous. I've been craving different things every day but they so rarely live up to the expectations of what I want them to taste like. I made spaghetti today, which was really delicious but I could only have a few forkfuls. I have been eating Doritos one at a time because I'm craving salty food. I found a protein shake that doesn't make me want to kick kittens (Chike, and it's pretty yummy if you ignore the blatant 'this is good for you' aftertaste/smell). I just don't want food. It's a means to an end with me, something to keep me from getting dizzy or feeling shitty. I eat just enough to make the hollow feeling go away. There've been a few weekends where I only ate maybe 200 calories total over the course of a few days. Man cannot live on skim string cheese alone but I am trying some days.

Still, the surgery really hasn't complicated my life. It's just changed the way I think about food, and I am trying so hard not to be judgmental about anyone but damn it's hard to look at food at a restaurant/fast food place when you can't have it anymore. You eat three bites of food and are full and then you see the giant platter-sized serving of enchiladas someone is eating, or the huge slab of cake that they got for dessert that you can't have, and you just get kind of 'meh' about the whole thing. I'm not bitter or jealous--- at best I'm sort of wistful. My friends got Griff's the other day, this amazing local burger joint that makes super-delicious greasy diner fare, and I didn't really want it, but I did think about offering to lick their hands clean after they handled the fries. If we could just install a salt lick for me that'd be terrific.

For reference, here are my status photos.

 This was me in October 2012, with my gorgeous friend Stephanie.

And here I am in March 2013, with my amazing friend Eva.

Things I Can't Do

Body image is something that everyone needs to deal with at some point; I'm sure even the biggest supermodels in the world have days of feeling inadequate or unsexy.

I am the epitome of frustration because I have lost 50 pounds but I can't tell. I went down from my size-22 jeans to my size-20 and my bras are looser in the cup area, but other than that I haven't seen much difference. I went to try on clothes to find something to wear for the weekend and still bought a shirt in my usual size. I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time in the dressing room, wondering where fifty pounds had come from and why I couldn't see it gone. My body is still something that I loathe to the deepest core of my being.

People react in shock when I say that, because I've done erotic modeling before. I've stripped down to corsets and thigh-highs and heels and done sexy poses in front of a camera, and then posted those pictures to the Internet. But the difference was, those pictures weren't me. They were all personas, just like an actor slipping into a role. I can play sex kitten like a harp. I made money doing phone sex audio recordings and I write erotica frequently. So why is it so hard for me to tune into that in real life? Why do I prefer to flirt and then balk back when it looks like things might actually go somewhere?

Things I can't do: I can't have sex with the lights on. Or with any part of me visible, really. I hate my body; we've been at war for what feels like centuries. Every adjective someone else could use on me to hurt, I've used on myself; I've criticized the jiggle of my ass and the way my thighs rub together and the flabbiness of my belly and the size of my arms since I was a kid. I feel insecure in my own skin. In an attempt to make it into something beautiful I began collecting tattoos, ink spiraling up and down my arms, across my chest and back, over my leg and foot, trying to hide the stretch marks and the ugliness. I wanted to see art, not a vast canvas of pure white skin.

Things I can't do: I can't get out of my own head. When I was in fifth grade, a girl named Jeanette said that I was so fat it looked like I didn't have knees. I didn't wear shorts again until I was seventeen years old. Every time I went to try on a pair, I thought about what she said. When I was twenty-three, a girl made fat jokes about me on the Internet. Nearly four years later I sat in my best friend's office, sobbing so hard I could barely talk as I forced the words out and told him why a thousand 'I'm sorry's would never fix anything even if the girl meant it. I watched my mom, one of the most wonderful women in the world, date abusive asshole after abusive asshole, watching them sugarcoat everything and play her like a hand of poker for the first few months, earn her trust, get her to let her guard down before they delivered the killing blow. Each time it happened I made myself tougher, told myself I wouldn't be like that. I went on dates with boys who promised to call and never did, boys who only kissed me when they made me swear I'd never tell anyone--- boys who couldn't be seen dating the fat chick. After years of that it wore my self esteem down to a see-through pane of sugar glass.

Oh, I hid it. I'm a professional at wearing masks. I can laugh and use a tongue borne of a high SAT verbal score to tear someone apart and my friends commend me on being strong. I got up and spoke at my grandpa's funeral and then a few months later, my mom's. Everyone kept saying "You're so strong, you're so strong" and all I could think was What choice do I have? You're not strong if you're backed into a corner. You're just taking the only way out, and if that way out happens to yield a favorable result, then good for me. I'm not 'strong'. I made my friends come take the good drugs out of the house after Mom died because I was afraid there might be a night when the siren call was too strong. I used to cut myself in high school and I still remember how my mom's face looked when she caught me sawing at my wrist with a broken pair of scissors, how she yelled at me about how without  me she'd have nothing worth living for. And now she's gone and for a long time after that (and even now sometimes, when my heart hurts so much it feels like someone's kicking me in the chest each time it beats) all I have to keep me from reaching for something sharp again is remembering my best friends, my chosen family, and my grandmother. They're the only people I have left in this world who I trust, the only people I let in. These people have earned their war medals; they've sat with me through my depression and my grief, my anger and my self-doubt. They've led cheers for me when I needed encouragement and beaten my ass into submission when I forgot who I was. And they are the reason the mask slips, when it does. They are the ones who make me feel beautiful or strong or capable, if even for a moment before I remember who I really am.

When you go through an insurance company to get weight loss surgery, they interview you with a psychologist to make sure that you understand that the surgery isn't an 'easy fix', that your problems don't magically go away. I already knew that. My eating has always stemmed from deep-seated emotional issues inside of me; we could blame my dad leaving and my consequent fear of abandonment, for example. We could talk about how it felt to have him show up in my life when I was eight years old, a girl who shared his chubby cheeks and curly brown hair but not his name, and how it felt to have him put his arms around me and fill my head with lies about how much he loved me, how he was here to stay this time. We spent five days together during spring break, him visiting from Florida with his new wife and new daughter, and I met an older half-sister I never knew I'd had, and I thought This is it, this is my family. I was actually angry with my mom for keeping him from me; I was convinced she'd known how to get ahold of him, that she'd chosen to separate me from my father while all of the other girls in my class went to Father-Daughter dances or talked about their dads in their 'My Hero' papers we had to write in class. Then on Day Six when I was supposed to get picked up by him, I sat outside on the bottom steps leading to our sidewalk and waited. After an hour or so had passed, my mom called him, only to be informed coldly by his wife that they'd left the night before to head back to Florida. He'd left me without saying goodbye and his wife said we shouldn't call again, that he didn't want me in his life anymore. I remember realizing that it was my fault; I hadn't been sweet enough or smart enough or good enough. I hadn't made a good enough first impression and he'd realized his mistake in coming to see me; he'd been better off in Florida with his new family, never even knowing how I'd turned out.

Once I'd decided that things were actually sort of easier. I knew then that if my own father couldn't love me, why would anyone else? I stopped caring about myself. I filled notebooks with angry scribbles about how ugly I was, how much I hated myself. I found one recently where I'd written "I WISH I WAS DEAD" all over the page in pen so hard that it had torn through to pages beneath. It was dated 1995, when I was nine. I was full of anger but I had no way to express it. I couldn't tell my mom because I knew how badly she was hurting from it too; I could hear her crying at night. She was single and alone, struggling to raise a child by herself, working sixty hour weeks; she didn't need to know my emotional problems. So I internalized everything. My routine answer was "Fine" when someone asked how I was doing. I lost myself in books, reading because any world besides mine was better. I'd always been a reader but I was well above my grade level, and I was working my way through Stephen King and Anne Rice. People assumed I was just a bookworm and left me alone. I ate because there was this huge hole inside of me and I had no idea what would fill it up but food seemed like a viable option. My mom was a stress-eater; why shouldn't I be? The adults in my life knew I was hurting and so they looked away. When I was picked last for sports or sat out in gym class feigning injury so that I could read on the bleachers instead, no one stopped to correct me. They just let me be alone and thus it began--- an independent streak a mile wide, never having to answer for anything I did as long as it was only to myself. No one cared if I ate myself into a size 22 in jeans by high school; my mom silently led me from the juniors' section to the misses' to the plus sizes, and I watched the other girls run around in their short shorts and tight t-shirts and all of the other things I couldn't wear and wondered how they filled the holes inside themselves.

Now I'm twenty-six and it's fucking dismaying to realize how I haven't grown up, not really. I'm weaker and more fragile now than I think I've ever been before. I have the best friends now that I've ever had in my entire life, but I hate myself for relying on them as much as I do. I've worked with tons of famous people but it's always shadowed after with those inner monologues--- They don't actually like you, they just know you're desperate to be seen in their 'circle' because you're hideous. They hang out with models and actresses and other musicians. What the fuck do you think you're doing here? So I tried to make myself invaluable; I worked tirelessly, overextending myself on multiple jobs at once, busting my ass to prove my worth to someone.

I haven't worked on anything creative of my own since my mother died in July 2012. Before that really, because I wasn't writing when she was sick. But now I just feel anxiety when I open a word processing program. The stories, which have been there all my life and have gotten me through so many hard times, simply aren't there. The poems, the spoken word pieces, all of it's dried up and I stare at the blinking little cursor until the tears in my eyes blur everything and I click the X in the corner. I don't feel inspired or powerful or strong or anything else. I feel weak and small and frail and I've found that the easiest thing to do is curl up in my bed with my music on, letting one of the great songwriters tell me how to feel.

I  am not good at being the girlfriend, the socialite, or the therapist for more than a few hours at a stretch. After that I get caught up in my own head and realize how much I just like to be alone with my own thoughts and my own pressure; if I can just focus on my own problems from the safety behind my mask, then nothing external can hurt me. I don't have to worry about losing myself again because I'm not putting that possibility into anyone else's hands, the power rests solely with me. I want to be strong but I keep coming up short.

Things I can't do: believe in myself.
Things I can't do: let go.
Things I can't do: love myself.
Things I can't do: let others love me.

Body Image and a Sense of Identity

I'm sorry that it's been awhile, gang, but things have been crazzzzzy busy on my end! For one thing, work on Sacrament, the horror film I'm involved with, has been snowballing as we get closer to production time. We will be working a table at Texas Frightmare Weekend in Irving, Texas in May alongside horror legends like Bill Moseley, Tom Savini, and Jeffrey Combs, and to top it off the wonderful Marilyn Burns (of original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' fame) will be occupying our table with us to help promote the film. So we've been busting our butts with script revisions, production meetings, budget decisions, fundraising, sponsorship queries and more! Not to mention I'm also in the very early stages of seeing someone new in a romantic sense; he's really terrific and we've been seeing each other as much as possible, which means I'm not spending my 'down time' sitting in front of the computer screen! All good things but they've led to the neglect of this blog for nearly two weeks!

So where to begin?

I went in on Monday, Feb 10 for my one-month checkup from surgery; my weight rang in at 309.6, which means I'd lost roughly 40 pounds since January 16. There was a bigger milestone though; every time I've ever done my blood pressure at a doctor's office, for as long as I can remember, the nurse has clucked a little and said "BP's a little high." I was never officially 'hypertension'-laden, but it always seemed to be looming just around the corner. However, this time my blood pressure was significantly lower and the nurse said in a surprised voice "Your BP's great." That alone made me feel awesome!

The day before, my friends and I went to the Dallas Sci-Fi Expo, a small convention which featured celebrities, vendors and more. I wasn't feeling 100% but we headed out to walk around for awhile so I could get some exercise. In the process I got to meet the incredibly dreamy Sam Witwer from "Being Human" (as well as "Dexter", "Smallville", and a myriad of other genre shows, but who's counting?). Afterward, I did take the free shuttle back to the parking garage because I wasn't sure I felt up to a mile-long walk back, but when I arrived I climbed four flights of stairs in the garage up to the car's parking spot. I wasn't winded or near-death when I finished, which is a first; usually even one flight of stairs makes me hyperventilate when I reach the landing, so this felt GREAT.

At my one-month meeting, a protein/nutritional representative came to visit us and brought tasty snacks. Now that I'm off my liquid/pureed food restriction, I've been experimenting with various ways to get my protein in. I still can't stomach the protein shakes, all of them taste sickly-sweet or incredibly bitter to me. But the very nice man gave me two other options to try--- one are protein-packed little Jello shots. They're the size of regular Jello shots but they have great flavors and each one punches 15g of protein into it. The other treats are Ostrim, which is a beef-and-ostrich jerky snack that tastes exactly like a Slim Jim. They're not amazingly healthy for you, but they are much leaner than a Slim Jim, less greasy, and they have about 20g of animal protein in each stick. These are both super-easy to pack for travel or throw in my purse when I'm headed out shopping, and the convenience and non-mediciney taste definitely appeal to me in a big way.

The main problem I've been having is literally forgetting to eat, and I'm working harder at it but it's still evasive because I'm simply not hungry. Most mornings I wake up and have a glass of Mootopia fat-free milk, which is delicious, has tons of protein, hydrates me, and sits really easy on my stomach. Sometimes I will substitute this for 2% cottage cheese but not often. Twice now I've tried eggs--- once scrambled, once scrambled lightly with a bit of cheese for extra protein--- and both times they've given me heartburn, so I think eggs may be one to avoid for awhile and try again later on down the line. But mornings are a great time to get in your protein, so I'm doing my best to get the day off right. Then I take some of my vitamins and head to class, where I sip water or Powerade Zero through the lesson. I try to drink all day long so that I stay hydrated and focused. Around lunch my classes let out, so I head to my grandma's house more often than not since she lives near the campus. Lately she's been sick so she hasn't been cooking much, but we've experimented with a few things; I can have a few bites of a grilled cheese sandwich on whole-grain bread, or a little bit of soup, something mild like that. For dinner I tend to either have another glass of Mootopia or I'll have a few bites of something from the fridge. I've made up things like tuna salad with good results, but the problem is I most often just don't want anything at all.

Going out with friends has proven a challenge; you never realize how many restaurants don't cater to people who want to eat healthy until you're one of them. Even if the choices are 'healthy' the portion sizes are ENORMOUS. I've been to a pizza-and-beer joint, where I had to order a kid's hamburger with no bun/fries (I basically paid $5 to eat half a hamburger patty); Johnny Carino's, where I ate half of one meatball with no sauce on it; three different Tex-Mex restaurants, where I had a side of refried beans with a small spoonful of guacamole and sour cream stirred in (my friends were sweet enough to order 'platter meals' and then give me their sides rather than making me buy my own), and Jason's Deli, where I had a spoonful of tuna pasta salad and a few pieces of cut-up cantaloupe. My date has cooked for me twice, once a tuna salad that was delicious and went down easily, the second time an herb-filled poached chicken breast and steamed veggies, which sat fine but I wasn't able to eat very much before I was full.

It's all trial and error and I'm trying to reintroduce food into my diet slowly but surely so that I can be 'normal'. That month of liquids meant that I really missed out on the social engagement of dining out with friends. It's crazy to think about though; at Carino's I had a revelation. I used to walk in there and order a Coke right off the bat, then start browsing the appetizers for something to split with friends or my family. I would usually eat the Italian nachos or fried cheese sticks, then order a full-sized plate of pasta, usually chicken alfredo or lasagna (I remember a few times when I went to Olive Garden for the 'all you can eat' pasta bowl and could down 2-3 servings of various pastas), along with garlic bread, a salad drenched in Italian dressing, and probably a few refills of Coke along the way. Occasionally I would also get a dessert, sometimes sharing it with someone but more often just getting it because I wanted it. Sitting there eating my one-half of a meatball the other day I was honestly having a bit of 'culture shock' in regards to that, watching my friends attack their pastas and huge salads. It's amazing how the restaurant industry trains us what a serving size is and tries to guilt us into eating more than our bodies could possibly need. A twenty-piece box of McNuggets, really? A Big Mac, large fries and a large Coke is over half the calories you should eat in a day (not even counting sodium, sugar, and other preservatives). I'm not just picking on McDonald's either, it's everywhere. Places that offer 'all you can eat' soup/salad buffets are just as bad; people who think they're getting a 'light' lunch are being soaked in calories, salt, sugar and carbs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not all 'high and mighty' about fast food or anything. My best friend brought home Popeye's chicken the other day and I wanted to ask him if I could just lick his fingers when he was done. I didn't want it even a little, my stomach didn't growl or anything, but the smell of crispy animal flesh will always make something psychologically inside of me perk up.

But man, forty pounds down. The problem is, I was 348 when I started, which means that I'm still pretty damned fat. And it's hard for me to see the change. My jeans are sagging off my hips, which is nice, especially in the butt and thigh area, and the most depressing thing is that my bras are all too big now. Not necessarily in the band size, oh, no, but in the cups. It looks like I'm a little girl playing dress-up in Dolly Parton's lingerie. My boobs began as a 42D and I would feel comfortable wearing a B-cup now probably. I know that tits are just a fat reserve and that's one of the first things to go but COME ON. I want my ta-tas to stay right where they are, thank you!

But other than that, I can't see changes yet. My friends insist that they're there, that they can tell especially in my face and jawline/neck area, but I don't see it when I look in the mirror. I still see 'fat me', which sucks because I want to revel in a 40-pound victory but all I see is more fat when I examine myself. It's nice to be able to wiggle into my size-20 jeans without having to lie down to zip them or suck in and pray the button holds, but still, I don't feel it yet. I went into a store to try and find something to wear for my guy on Valentine's Day and I honestly didn't even know where to begin; I had no idea what size to try on anymore, if I was my usual size or one smaller, or how something would fit given my new boob size versus my new hip size. I didn't want to try things on because I didn't want to buy something that might not fit in a month. I left feeling even more helpless and frustrated than I did when I was 348 pounds and nothing came in my size in the first place.

Our doctors tell us about NSV--- non-scale victories. These are the things you're supposed to celebrate even if the scale doesn't show that you've lost weight, like when you hit a plateau. So here are my five proudest moments of this month for now:

1. Climbed four flights of stairs in a parking garage, did not die or need an EMT to administer oxygen when I reached Shawn's truck.
2. Get into my 'skinny' size-20 jeans without needing to lie down, dance around, 'loosen them up' first, or tear up my fingers trying to get the zipper up. In fact, I put them in the dryer and can still put them on comfortably when they come out.
3. Walk around campus without trying to hail down the free shuttle to take me to class.
4. Bought a size XL shirt from Hot Topic on the clearance rack. It's stretchy and still pretty tight, I need another 15 pounds or so before it looks good on me, but it's NOT a man's t-shirt, it's a slinky girly-girl shirt and buying it was really empowering and exciting.
5. Doing a photo shoot and being able to crouch down, get on my knees, etc to get the angles I wanted without my knees/ankles hurting too bad or giving out on me, hiked all over the location without getting winded or needing a break, AND all three of my male friends present that day complimented my butt in those 'skinny' jeans.

Until next time! <3

Crash Into Me, or Getting the Hang of Blood Sugar

One of the problems I've found with WLS is that when they remove the gland in your belly that produces the 'hunger hormone', you genuinely forget to eat. And this can be a problem.

Since I'm now three weeks out from my surgery, I got the go-ahead from my clinic to move into the 'pureed/soft foods' stage of my diet. This means anything you can get to the consistency of baby food, so I've been experimenting. I found that the most satisfying thing so far has been fat-free refried beans with a spoonful of guacamole mixed in; full of protein and delicious, which is the main thing. I can only take a few bites but those few bites are freaking heaven on earth. I'm also doing a lot of cottage cheese, chicken salad, and soup. I had oatmeal this morning made with this awesome product they sell at HEB called Mootopia, which is lactose-free milk with 12g of protein per cup.

But I literally forget to eat, and twice now it's bitten me in the ass. Once it was because I had cottage cheese for breakfast and then went shopping with a friend, and I didn't even notice that it was about five hours after my meal until we were standing in Forever 21 and my vision started to swim. My chest felt fairly tight even though I was standing very still, and I said "Oh, dude, I think I need to go sit down and eat something." We went to Wendy's, the only option viable to me at the time, and I ordered a cup of chili; I was only able to eat about six spoonfuls, but I tried to get the meatiest/beaniest parts to give myself a little protein boost. The chili made me feel minimally better but I still wasn't 'cured' by any means; when we went to see a movie after, I caved and ordered a Hi-C fruit punch to drink. I could only finish half of a small drink despite sipping it constantly through the movie, but I felt much better with the sugar-spike from the punch. That night I went home and had a few bites of chicken salad, and coupled with some bottled water and Powerade that settled my stomach nicely.

The next time it happened was yesterday. I woke up at eight to finish doing laundry, and I ate a small cup of cottage cheese and sipped some water. My models showed up and my friends who were assisting on the shoot, and we got so swept up in makeup and hair and wardrobe and lighting that I didn't think to get more food in me. We shot for awhile at my house, then headed off to the location. I had a bottle of water in tow but no food, and after almost an hour in the warm sunshine, I started to feel woozy again. I realized it was after 4 PM and I hadn't eaten since the cottage cheese. So when we got home I drank a few swallows of a protein shake and a few bites of chicken salad, and that helped until the shoot was done.

I'm having trouble keeping my vitamins down, they upset my stomach and since there isn't enough food in there to counterbalance them it's rough. I'm going to try pacing them throughout the day instead of taking them in groups. I also need to monitor my water more strictly and force myself to drink more. It's hard when all you can do is 'sip sip sip', no big gulps allowed. You get so thirsty and you want to chug the bottle but that's a big no-no.

I'll get the hang of it, it's just taking awhile. Doing my best to keep my head on straight and do right so that this lifelong journey will be a little easier on me for the next few weeks. In two more weeks I can start integrating 'real' food, not just mushy stuff, and that will be pretty danged awesome. I just have to be patient.

Current weight: 309.5. Down almost 40 pounds.