My surgery is in exactly 17 days and I’m so excited I can hardly stand it.

I started my liquid diet today, something I’ve been dreading for months but now that today is here I’m pretty okay with it. I’m actually not supposed to start until Monday but I decided to start today. I gained five pounds over the past month (might have had something to do with Thanksgiving and/or my period- who knows) that I need to be sure to lose before the surgery so I figured I might as well get a head-start.

It’s funny…I thought that I would totally freak out having to give up food during this time but instead I’m finding myself excited about it. For the first time in my life I feel not just hopeful that I will lose weight, but confident that it will happen. There have been countless times in my life that I’ve tried to diet but other than a few pounds at the beginning I’ve never had much success. The lack of success led to feeling like a failure which quickly led to giving up and feeling even more like a failure, especially since giving up meant gaining back the weight that I had lost plus more.

My body is a mess. I have been significantly overweight for as long as I can remember. When people (doctors included) ask me what my goal weight is I tell them I have no idea. It’s true, I really don’t. Based on BMI standards I should weigh between 105 and 135lbs. The problem is, I haven’t weight 135 since I was 11 years old! Do you think you could ever weigh what you weighed in grade school?! NO! So the thought of having an “appropriate BMI” seems pretty fricken impossible.

When I think back to a time that I was a “healthy weight”, when I was super active (and the same height I am now) I think about 1990, when I was almost 14 and weighed 165lbs. I was still “big”, still the “fat kid” (compared to others my age), but I was doing gymnastics five days a week and probably in the best shape of my life. I still had a dimple of cellulite on my upper left thigh but I was otherwise pretty toned or as toned as I could be. (My mom would always tell me my butt was so hard!) So I’ve decided that my ultimate weight goal is 165lbs, I don’t know if it’s actually attainable- like I said, I was 14 years old the last time I weighed that much, but I’m definitely going to give it a try. However, instead of stressing myself out over a number on the scale, my main focus is fitness. There are so many things I want to be able to do, one of them is a Mud Run- a 3 mile obstacle course…IN THE MUD! There’s one in May 2012 which I think would be AWESOME, but since I have no idea how much weight I will have lost by then or more importantly what kind of shape I’ll be in, it might be a little far fetched. I think I’ll know better come February whether or not that goal is reasonable. Is it February yet?!

I had a little melt down on Monday. I have been seeing a therapist in anticipation of the surgery as well as other issues I’m trying to work through (ADD for one) and she told me during our visit on Monday that if I was going to be successful at losing weight I was going to need to be regimented. Anyone who knows me, knows that regiment is a like four letter word in my book. It’s probably what I need most in my life (especially for the ADD) but it’s EXTREMELY difficult for me to fathom and even more so, to implement. Grr! So armed with this bit of information I came home feeling like I was going to fail. There was no doubt in my mind. I mean, I had already been worried about it. For the past several weeks I’d been worrying that I was going to fail, that I’d be the 3% (or whatever the number is) that the surgery doesn’t work for and that’d be it. It’d be one more failed diet to add to my list of failures. I was feeling depressed and stressed to the max, then when she told me that I’d have to be regimented it was like one more nail in the failure-coffin. So I cried…a lot. Brett was such a trooper, he listened, tried to be reassuring and of course laughed at me a little because well, that’s what he does. I laughed a little at myself too. I knew I was being ridiculous but I couldn’t help it. There’s a LOT of pressure involved with all of this. Expectations for something that there’s no way of knowing what to expect. (I DO NOT LIKE NOT KNOWING WHAT TO EXPECT!)

I finally decided to call my friend Kayce who had the surgery last year and she was able to talk me down. She has had INSANE results that I had chalked up to being “luck” but when she told me how hard she’s worked, how she’s stuck to the diet and exercised regularly I realized “duh! I can do that too!” I hadn’t realized just how dumb I was being about the whole situation. I mean, I KNEW that it was going to be “hard”, that’s what everyone tells you, but I just thought they meant it was going to be hard to eat (or not to eat), not that the process was going to be hard work! Yes, I know how dumb that sounds and no, I did not think that it was going to be easy, I just didn’t…I don’t know, I just thought it was going to come down to luck.

Anyway, something clicked and I’m feeling so much better. For whatever reason, I have a tendency to make things more difficult that they need to be. Like, I am almost literally the one who goes around my ass to get to my elbow with everything in life, but once something clicks I’m brilliant. So watch out! My brilliance is about to SHINE, BIG TIME!

As for being regimented, I’m not going to stress too much about that. It will be fine. I’ll get my protein in everyday and limit my carbs everyday and I’ll exercise (when I’m feeling better) and I will be successful!

The weight I lose today and the next day and the next day will be the last time I EVER see those pounds AGAIN! And that my friends is the best feeling in the world!