"Me" Fatigue....

This Easter weekend I shot up to Queensland to visit with friends and family, and I got to see "Wicked" for the second time thanks to the tickets my dear husband bought me for my birthday :) I had a really great time, catching up with those who have known me the longest and the best, and it was a great time to sit back, relax and enjoy my new found freedom while relishing in the cries of "OMG you look so good!!!" ringing in my ears! :) I also discovered that I've become a little obsessive about calorie counting, something I NEVER thought would happen!!! How did I discover this you might ask?

I love Southbank! 

 Well, I have a prepaid phone, and on my phone I have "Myfitnesspal" :) It's the most AMAZING app, very easy to use, and I use it to track every single morsel of food I eat every single minute of every single day. I love it, and I've been using it to track and also to plan for the following day, which my dietician LOVES :) Unfortunately my phone started to run out of data, so I couldn't input the foods I was eating into it anymore. I went for about a day and a half without inputting my foods, though I am pretty confident I didn't go over my calorie allowance it was an interesting experiment. i was doing maths in my head, like, all the time and it became a little exhausting.

Dinner at Burger Urge!

I've never been one to count calories, so this has all been a new revelation - good grief I've BECOME one of those people!!!! Those people who know the caloric value of all their favourite junk food!!! aigh aigh aigh!!! The most interesting part was the moments of panic I would have sitting down to a meal knowing that I wasn't counting the calories in it.....AND how easy it was to instead of eating what I had PLANNED on eating instead eating what I felt like.

Chocolate Chocolate everywhere!!!!!

For example, I and my two best friends in the whole entire universe went to Burger Urge after we saw Wicked (OMG if you haven't been to Burger Urge, totally go - but if you've had weight loss surgery make sure you go with a friend who hasn't so they can share a burger with you!!!) I shared an asian burger with my bestie, she asked for it cut in half, so then I took the knife and cut a small wedge of burger off my half and ate a few chips. By the second small wedge of burger I was done - thankfully my bestie polished off the rest of my half AND hers!!! :) Now, had I budgeted my calories for half the burger I probably would have tried to plough on to fulfill this expectation - but because I wasn't tracking I listened to myself and knew that I was done. I was completely and totally full - amazing!!! I didn't feel like I'd missed out, AND I didn't make myself sick. Double win!

The tracking seems to be a double edged sword. On the one hand I'm getting to know what a "me" portion looks like now, and it's a LOT different to what it used to be. On the other hand though I am getting really sick of it, I feel like a slave to tracking everything. I know there will come a day when I dont have to do it anymore, and I know I'm not there yet - but sometimes I wish I could just let it go and just do what my psychologist talks about and just LIVE. I'm tired of rules, tired of restrictions, tired of tracking everything, tired of talking about the surgery and pretty tired of the navel gazing. Life beyond THIS still seems so remote and so far away, and so unknown. Who will I be without the weight? When I blend into the background, what will make me special? I'm so used to being the fat girl, my whole identity is changing and now I have to find other things that make me "me" - it's like a whole identity shift.

Time to get Wicked!

Here's a few things that I know about me that haven't changed:

1. I'm a loyal friend and I require the same from my friends
2. I'm pretty loud
3. I can be really melodramatic and a bit of a drama queen!
4. I don't have very thick skin, and I take things personally a lot
5. I struggle with anxiety and depression every single day
6. I have a strong work ethic and believe in working for what I want out of life
7. I have an aversion to injustice and I get really mad if I feel like I or my loved ones have been treated unfairly
8. I have a tendency to make friends with people who don't always treat me well and then find it hard to let go of them because I'm afraid of being left with no friends at all
9. I am a good person with a good heart
10. I deserve more than what I have accepted in the past and it's time for me to do what I need to do to make myself happy rather than to make other people happy.

As people shift in their perception of me, I don't ever want to forget what it was like to be socially rejected because of my weight. Yes the attention is lovely, and very encouraging - but the people that are all nice to me now were not all nice to me then, and while I accept and appreciate everyone I don't want to forget those who were on my side from the beginning. THOSE are the people I will be investing my time in.