1st Support Group Meeting

Tuesday was the first time we went to the MV Support group. With my past experiences with support groups, I was NOT looking forward to this experience...

I did Diet Workshop from the time I was 20 or so and eventually worked there for 9 years (where I went from a beginning weight of 116 to 180). I was taught all of the bad food habits that I currently have, thank you very much! After that, I joined Weight Watchers and had a fairly successful run (went from 210 to 150) once the weight started creeping back on, I rejoined several times.

I have to confess, I can't walk into a weight loss group without mentally rolling my eyes! I felt like I have heard it all way too many times and I just don't have any enthusiasm for the process. I do realize that attending support groups more than doubles your chance to be successful and all, but (you should see me sitting here rolling my eyes trying to come up with an apt description) but YUCK! As the saying goes, I have so been there, done that - and literally have several T-shirts.

One of the things that I am fortunate to know about weight loss is that a persons maiden voyage with a program is likely to give their best results. People we call "Virgins" are far more enthusiastic about the process and don't second guess everything. They spend more time reading their diet and following the rules word for word, letter to letter. After that maiden voyage, you start to think that you "KNOW" this and that you know it better than the experts.

I used to catch myself feeling so jealous of new virgins in my classes and would try to catch their enthusiasm.

Fast forward to 2011...I am on my maiden voyage in WLS and I don't want to mess this up. (In the WLS community they call it the honeymoon phase.) So if they tell me to go to a support group, I'm getting my butt there...not without allot of eye-rolling though!

So I found my jaded self walking into a support meeting that had about 50 people in it. It wasn't as professionally put together as Weight Watchers, with no canned hype - but the people there probably were all like me and didn't want that bull-crap. The thing that got me right out of the gate was when they announced the total weight loss for the group was like 3000 plus pounds! So that's like 60 lbs per person, and there were several new guys there who haven't started on the losers side yet.

A psychologist did about an hour talk on mindless eating and one of the participants mentioned something that made a light go off in my head - she ate to numb her feelings....which I soooo do! I had never put it into words, but sad, bored, stressed...and carbs are so effective for numbing. I can tell that I am definitely going to have to work on that. In fact I need to look into working with a therapist to figure this out!

Anyway, then we broke up into groups of the various surgery types: Roux en Y, LapBand, Sleeve and Duodendal Switch. Our group was talking about how to get more protein in and how that has to be the most important food that we will be eating - forever. 

I'm pretty sure N didn't want to talk at all there, and I was just fine with that, but we raised our hands when the leader asked if there were anyone new (I'm pretty sure she knew we were new, she hadn't seen us before!) and then I asked what he and I had been asking ourselves since we met with the surgeon, "What happens between our insurance approval and surgery?" Well, first of all they misunderstood what I was asking and I got lots of help with the insurance approval process. Finally I did get out of them that after the approval we will be scheduled a day of tests and meetings where we'll be informed of information for the pre-surgery process and rest of our lives. Well, I felt better once I got that answer as I had no idea of the process and nobody had told either of  us.

Anyway, N did actually ask a question, I'm sorry, I can't remember what the question was but the point was that he did feel comfortable enough to ask in the group. All said, it was a very good meeting! Everyone was very nice and eager to help us and everyone else.

I'm glad that I went!