mathbabe

I’ve started to get emails from concerned friends checking up on me, so it’s high time I give an update on my condition over here:

I’m doing great!!

I’ve been eating really carefully, and enjoying every single (tiny) bite. I dream of bean soup, perfectly seasoned. I am, in fact, well on my way to becoming a health food obsessed foodie. My darling friend Laura has even brought over a selection of fancy salts, because we’re both convinced I’m going to become a “salt douche” lickety-split. I don’t want sweet things at all. My tastes are changing daily, and I live in the best city in the world, with the best friends in the world, to try out new things.

So. Lucky.

I’m also starting to take longer walks, between 1 and 2 miles, and I’m planning to beef it up to 3 miles by the time I see my doctor on the 15th, because my real goal is to get back on my bike. Because, besides becoming a foodie, I’m also planning to get really into exercise. It won’t be the first time, I’ve been there before. It’s fun, as long as you don’t make people listen to your work-out schedule or anything. If I start doing that, please slap me.

The story behind the story of me getting this surgery is that I love biking with my husband. In fact I’d pretty much been able to brush off the fact that I was fat because I could still point out that I was in great shape, biking around Central Park or downtown on the Westside bike trail, and I wasn’t lying.

But last summer, something changed. We rented a house near Poughkeepsie that was great, and pretty close to some nice bike trails, but not very close. As in, about five miles of pretty steep but rolling hills to get to a flat trail. What I realized was, in spite of my best intentions, I couldn’t get myself out there. It was really hot, and the thought of biking up and down all those hills filled me with dread. I couldn’t get myself to do it.

What was worse, I realized it was just the beginning. When you don’t bike regularly, you get out of shape, which makes it even harder to bike when the weather gets better. Once I realized this destructive feedback loop was happening, it really bothered me, and moreover fucked with my long-held notion of myself as a fit fat person.

I’d already heard about the bariatric surgery as a way of getting rid of diabetes, and I’d already decided I’d get it done if and when I was well on my way to diabetes (I ended up being pre-diabetic when I went into surgery, so this wasn’t a minor concern). But last summer was when I started to ask the question, why wait? I started interviewing people who’d had it, none of whom regretted it. Indeed their biggest regret seemed to be that they hadn’t done it earlier. One of them wished they’d gotten a sleeve surgery instead of a gastric bypass surgery (I got a sleeve).

I started thinking long term about my health, and how I wanted to be one of those active old ladies, shouting and carrying on at protests, and how I’d need to be able to stay fit if I was going to go through with it. And although I was carrying my 300 pound body pretty well at 44, it would be much harder to do that at 74.

Long story short, once I’m back on my bike, I’ll definitely feel I’ve achieved something. I was even thinking of joining SoulCycle (after being cleared by my doctor, of course) but it might be too cult-y for me. Then again, it might be just cult-y enough.

Please chime in with suggestions!