Angel Aware

I am puzzled by something that delights me. As I go through my days, the old gun-shyness still rares its extremely ugly head as I watch TV, walk through the grocery store and watch for evil lurking behind baked goods or in the potato chip aisle. When a commercial comes on where melted chocolate is being poured over something even better, I normally recoil and quickly change the channel, in hopes of stifling a craving that eventually will need to be satisfied in something fattening. When these cravings were denied a long time, I must admit that I felt mistreated and, to be perfectly honest, felt sorry for myself because I am not the type that can EVER indulge. Eventually I gave in, ate the chocolate thing, and felt guilty. There is nothing cerebral about this process, I will assure you.
Since I have vowed to be brutally honest with myself, I need to admit something incredibly cool! I still am seeing the evil commercials, and early on I resorted to the decades-old habit of recoiling in fear of feeling those awful feelings which could end with a rendezvous with that chocolate thing and the ensuing guilt. I noticed recently that those commercials no longer have an emotional bang for me. In fact, I have pretty much been able to leave the remote control alone over the last week. This is new for me, and I am finding myself so much more at ease, and it is wonderful. However, one thing is REALLY new for me. Like everyone, I have trigger foods that I have trouble leaving alone. My husband is the same way, which is why I never keep baked goods in the house. (thank God for sugar free jello!) My trigger foods are different than his, starches like potato salad, broccoli and rice casserole, and baked potatoes. My early vow was to simply keep them out of the house, to embrace the idea that I have trouble leaving them alone and solve it by simply extracting them from my reach. Over the last two weekends, we have had guests for parties or for dinner on our new deck. I do not believe in forcing my dietary restrictions on guests, so I prepared the standard fare for a BBQ, which included my home-made potato salad. I put more effort into planning how to deal with the potato salad in the house than in cooking the potato salad! I was going to allow myself to have a small portion, and then send every bite of left-overs home with my guests. The next weekend, we were grilling steaks for our dinner guests, and my husband and I discussed how to be a good host while still staying within common sense for our eating plan. I googled carbs and calories in a baked potato and discovered that it would be OK to split a medium baked potato with my husband once in awhile. I also had problems not offering dessert to my guests, even though I needed to stay away. I decided to bake a frozen cobbler, and that I would allow myself a very small serving, after all, this is for the rest of my life and I am really working on relaxing into the process. This would be the only sugar that had crossed my lips in six weeks, and I thought that was reasonable as long as it was a little serving, and a one-time thing and I went right back to work the next day.
Here is the cool thing. I put the pre-planned amount of each of these trigger foods on my plate at these two parties, I ate a couple of bites and thought, I don't WANT this. This is bad for me and it is just not worth it. I just threw it away, just like that. I was shocked at how easy this was for me; this is new for me in this lifetime. I can't help but wonder what is going on that is just so different this time. While I am 100% engaged and determined, I feel more may be at play than just my ability to white-knuckle past dietary obstacles. Another noticeable difference is the total lack of emotion in this, no guilt, no feeling sorry for myself. It is though my intellect has at last entered the building after all of these years. What the heck?
Honestly, I think there are several "angels" at work in this. First, I honestly think I have some help from real angels--I am so determined and so easy in my mind. Second, I think the science angel is helping a lot. My bloodwork showed I had a high Insulin level. We all understand how powerful hormones are, and that they can impact emotion, thinking and behavior. Insulin is a hormone, capable of wielding enormous power over the human body. I have been eating a very small amount of carbs, and that drives down the Insulin. It is my understanding that carbs cause cravings, and that Metformin also lowers the Insulin, which also causes cravings. Whatever is happening, I am just grateful, grateful, grateful! Could it really be this easy? After 45 years of struggling with my weight, have I finally found a doctor who has found the source of the problem instead of just wanting to treat the symptoms with surgery? My own Mother died at age 62 due to complications from weight loss surgery--I can't help but wonder what would have happened if she had access to Metformin and this bit of knowledge about what caused her weight problem. That part hurts.
I can't help but credit my wonderful doctor. It costs a few hundred dollars for the bloodwork to test for the metabolic causes of obesity, plus occasional visits to re-check bloodwork. The first surgeon that did weight-loss surgery never even met me before he saw me just before checking out of the hospital post-surgery. The thousands I paid him for the few minutes he spent with me during surgery pale in comparison to what my current doctor is making curing me. When I was a teacher, I used to joke about the kids getting in the way of my job! Apparently, unfortunately, patients often get in the way of the medical community making money, too.
All I know is that I am different now, I feel different now. While I have some regret that a cure has been so incredibly slow coming, I am overwhelming grateful and hopeful that it may just be at hand.