I underwent vertical sleeve gastrectomy in March 2018. The surgery involves amputating approximately 80% of an obese person’s stomach to make it smaller. Sure, I was able to regain some of the mobility I had lost over the years, but most of the time I still wish I hadn’t. The reality is that I far I am not as healthy now as I was before the surgery. My mental health deteriorated. As it turned out, I was never warned about this during my pre-operative counseling. Mental health problems are on the rise Among patients receiving treatment bariatric surgeryincluding self-harm and suicide.
After surgery, you can forget about intuitive eating. How can you intuitively eat when you’re literally not hungry? Or when your body decides to fight back and gets greedy after months of starvation? My surgeon gave me a “goal” weight number for me to achieve after surgery, but it was unrealistic. I was unwise to believe these predictions. But what happens to his patients who don’t?
If you look at my body, you’ll have questions. How did she get so fat? What does she eat? How does she wipe? can she have sex? Who would want to have sex with her anyway? You would guess about me. She has to eat non-stop all day. I’m sure she loves McDonald’s. She doesn’t care about herself. She must be very sad. She is clearly miserable.
If you saw me daring to live my life as I regularly share my travel adventures and love of makeup on Instagram, you might think, “Wow! Once again, it’s glorified obesity with a lot of fat! Trust me; no matter what you’re thinking, I can almost guarantee you’ve thought more than that about yourself. Well, apart from the really absurd stuff (like the BS that glorifies obesity).
Luckily, I’m strong enough not to listen to these types of trolls. I was also bullied as a child, but it never really bothered me because my brain is hardwired. I consider this a privilege. It’s not a skill. That’s my way of thinking. Not everyone has this privilege. Sometimes I’ve intentionally involved trolls just to distract them from another, perhaps more vulnerable, target, but just because I can deal with it doesn’t mean it’s fun. Spoiler alert: It’s not.
I am deeply, deeply tired. For nearly 30 years, I was told how I was a ticking time bomb and that I would die by the time I was 30 (after 30, it turned into 50). I was hospitalized for 7 weeks at age 15. unpurified bulimia. I was suicidal. Sometimes you can accept your body 100%, and sometimes you can’t accept it at all. Now I’m in between, but it doesn’t matter because it’s the only body I have.
I just want to be happybut no matter how wonderful my life is, I won’t be like that. Not completely. Not when the world refuses to bend. When it saw me and people like me as a “problem” that needed to be not just solved, but completely eradicated. When eating disorder behaviors are praised as “self-control” or “discipline,” calorie content information is displayed on the front of the box in 20-point font. To prevent yourself from moralizing your own food choices and falling into the eating disordered behaviors you worked so hard to overcome, you should keep nutrition labels in your cabinet.
My body size hasn’t changed much. But my life, and the lives of other fat people, It was done change. Our lives would be better if the world accepted that bodies come in all sizes.
Infinifats like me make up a significant percentage of the population, but here we are. we’re not going anywhere. We fall in love, we get heartbroken, we have great sex, we have terrible sex, we laugh, we cry… In other words, we are just like humans in much smaller bodies and deserve the same privileges. I will. Things that can be given to others, such as attractive clothing, comfortable seating, and access to appropriate medical care (including imaging). We are entitled to basic human dignity and respect. We are not obligated to explain our bodies to you.
Yes, I’m tired, but I’m determined to spend every ticking time bomb of my life left to solve the real problem: fatphobia.
Juliette James is a queer, bisexual fat beauty who writes about mental health, eating disorders, and the social and emotional challenges of being fat in a thinness-centric culture. She was born in New Jersey and lived in New York City for six years, earning a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Hunter College. She currently lives in the mountains of Colorado with her husband and their dog. Her hobbies include traveling with her husband, spoiling her dog, reading, music, and makeup. you can follow her quora Or read more of her work Medium. She can also be found at Instagram and Twitter With username @IAmJulietJames
This article was first published HuffPost.
Source: BuzzFeed – LGBTQ – www.buzzfeed.com
