Saturday, December 30, 2006

Pick your poison

According to this report, from five to 30 percent of obesity surgery patients switch their addiction from food to some other substance or behavior – drinking, gambling, drugs or shopping.

I remember loving shopping when I shrank to a size 6 or 8, oh-so-many years ago. [Ten. It's been 10 years since I was a size 8.] I don't know if I'd have called it a problem, though.

This story caught my eye because I'm also a recovering alcoholic. I'm one of many recovering women who switched from booze to food. It doesn't matter what one uses, until one figures out what's going on emotionally, it'll probably always be something.

I hope my next addiction is knitting. Some would say it already is!

The penultimate project of 2006 is finished. May I present [drumroll, please]
my grandson's Pop-up Paws!

All that remains on the dad-sized pair are the flaps, one of which has been started. That was a lot of knitting in one day … a testament to two pretty good football games and a night of insomnia.

I attribute the insomnia to a great workout yesterday. I had no intention of running at all, but ended up doing a vigorous walk/jog of four miles in slightly less than an hour. Blame it on the music. There are just some songs you can't walk to – you either skip to the next song or pick up the pace. Once I started jogging, I started skipping the slow songs.

But with the exercise came a few aches and pains that woke me up very early. I'll have to remember to take an Aleve before bed if I should happen to repeat my performance today. I'm planning to ... but we all know about plans, don't we?

Your comments yesterday were soooo kind and uplifting! Thank you, one and all. If I reported that I was shooting woodpeckers out of trees would you be as supportive? They can be rather noisy pests, you know. Heh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's too bad more of the side effects of weight loss surgery are not more publicly widespread. So many people don't realize the emotions that go along with overeating. Unless they've been there, they just don't get it. I think many WLS patients go into the surgery in denial of the real reasons they eat. It seems too many surgeons eagerly wield the knife as a fix all and never take the time to have their patient fully evaluated mentally and emotionally, leaving them with no crutch and no good replacement.....thanks for some great reading ( support ) the past few months. May God bless you in the new year.

Lori G. said...

I think that not dealing with the emotional aspects might be one other why diets fail. It's hard to give up your crutch, comfort food, whatever you want to call it.

That Guy gave me a lecture about how being thin wasn't going to mean happiness...his ex had WLS and she is still a very unhappy person from what he says. I do consider that a lot; I know I didn't deal with emotional issues that last time I lost a substantial amt of weight.

Of course, if you ever get an opportunity to hear it, Lily Tomlin did a hilarious skit about Lucille, the Rubber Freak. It addresses some of what you wrote.

http://www.answers.com/topic/modern-scream

The Paw-Paw gloves look wonderful!

You can shoot woodpeckers if you want; just not the ivory-billed ones. :-) (My dad is awakened by one every morning and says he's going to shoot it too.)

mehitabel said...

Several people I know have had WLS and the results, while amazing, have not been uniform. I think the difference is that some of the people had sorted out the emotional issues BEFORE the surgery, so they were ready for the aftermath.
Okay, off to make my list of plans for the New Year--even though it's the Year of the Pig, "pigging out" will not be on my list!