Considering the cut.

I've long been very sceptical of a stomach operation. It has seemed "too dramatic" to me, for my purpose. It must also be said, that I have only in the last couple of years fallen into the bracket where the operation would be free for me. It is free for people with a BMI of over 40, or over 35 with certain exisiting conditions that endanger ones health (which I have none of, I'm fit as a fiddle but ... fat. Fat as a fiddle!). After giving birth though, I've dedicated myself 100% to being a good mum and a good fiancé and a good daughter and making sure that everyone is ok, while facing that I am not managing to lose weight much. I try, but trying apparently isn't quite cutting it. I can't dedicate 3 hours a day to fitness like I did when I lost a lot of weight at 28, now at 43 I am a mum of a toddler and busier than I have ever been. I love spending time with him, but quickly he is becoming very fast! That scares me. And I feel limited during play, I can't climb up nets and whatnot at playgrounds, or run. 

What gets me is also, that you get treated in a certain way when you are overweight. Since I have for some periods of my life had close to a normal weight, I definitely notice the difference between being overweight and being of normal weight. People tend to take you less seriously when you're overweight. They tend to think you are less intelligent than you are, less fit for a job, less capable, and sort of responsible for the state that you are in. Doctors also discriminate, where it seems that any condition in the world can be assigned to being overweight.

Try losing weight! Yeah, thanks...

The weight has been creeping up, and it didn't help that in my pregnancy I was given a medicine to help me sleep that "helped me" gain weight really really fast, because I felt hungry all the time. It was downright creepy. And now, two years later, I have managed to lose about 12 Kilos since birth. But I've stagnated. And I am still heavy, and unhappy. 

So a friend of mine who underwent surgery 7 years ago asked me, why I wasn't considering it. I wanted to say, because it limits you so much, there is so much you can't do, and have to forego... and then, I thought about it. This same friend was about as heavy as I am now, at her heaviest. And last Autumn she ran an Ultramarathon. My prejudice had gotten the better of me. 

So now I am signed up for a first consultation at the Barmherzige Schwestern hospital in Vienna. That is on the 15th of March, and I am having all sorts of feelings about it. I am conflicted about a lot of things. How I am logging food. How I am struggling between wanting to lose weight and wanting to get the operation, and being uncertain how that would play out if I were to lose "too much" before the operation.... I'll be very glad when I have had the consultation next week. Then I will surely know a lot more than right now.