WHMP: 3 October 2017

First official day of the school holidays since yesterday was a public holiday. Being my regular Tuesday off I was home with the little guy and I also looked after our closest friends little guy today too.

They had a great day together but it was hard work. Somehow I still managed to cook 3 dinner, pack 3 lunchboxes for tomorrow, cleaned and mopped the bathroom, vacuumed all the floors, did a couple loads of washing, did some weeding all while looking these two dear little men…..feeling somewhat like a super hero mum today and in the process I have discovered that I already have an inbuilt cape. In the form of excess skin!!

Even if I did forget to have lunch myself and quickly had to put something together at 2pm to fuel my body.

I am fair active in the weight loss/ Bariatric/ gastric sleeve social media forums and I see at least daily posts from other members about their disappointment with their weight loss or people calling themselves “slow losers”. These posts make me a combination of sad and frustrated so I just feel like I want to share my learning along the way that may help others in new ways of looking at their journey.

This is my key advice points for any WLS patient:

– Rome wasn’t built in a day…..it took us a very long time years and years to get us to the point of needing WLS. WLS is not an instant fix and it’s going to take time to reverse our situations

– your journey is your journey and yours alone, don’t compare to others. Yes they may have similar stats to you BUT do they have the same DNA construct as you, co-morbidities as you, lifestyle situation as you…..unless it’s your identical twin probably not so you’re comparing apples to oranges

– a loss is a loss and as big or as small as your loss if then you’re that loss closer to your end goal than you were yesterday

– if you didn’t have WLS what would have your weight done? Either remained the same or even gained….

– stay focused, stay positive – always remember why you made the decisions you did to have WLS

– break down your total weight loss into small achievable goals along the way so you can small achievable goals in front of you and not the big daunting task in front of you

– don’t forget that WLS is a tool to change your life, you change your life not your surgery…..you get out of it what you put into it

– remember that dreaded weight is only one measure of your progress, there are so many more measure than kg alone

– celebrate the NSV or little wins on the way, it’s so important to stop and acknowledge the improvements in your life

– be kind to yourself and be proud of what your working to achieve and what you have achieved already! Making the decision to improve your health and wellbeing alone is something to be proud of!

Anyway, just wanted to put this out and hopefully one person can resonate with this post and they can start feeling most positive and proud of their changes……whatever the numbers say!