Hunger

This is Jen. Pete and I are not small people. We've tried to lose weight time and again, but always seem to go back to our starting weight or worse. So, we've decided to get weight loss surgery. In the meantime, my medical weight loss doctor was able to get me a prescription to Wegovy, a weekly shot that helps you lose weight by slowing down digestion, thus the gland that shouts "I'm HUNGRY" doesn't shout as loud or as much. I didn't know what to think of it. It's weird giving myself a shot in the stomach. I get horrible gas the first few days of the week. It makes me nauseous if I don't eat often enough. All these negative things I get to deal with all with the goal of losing weight.

But then I started to realize that I'm not hungry. I'm typically a breakfast and dinner type of person. I rarely ever eat lunch. I'd snack throughout the day, especially when I'm home. I wouldn't think anything of eating candy, chocolate, you know, sugar. Then I realized I stopped snacking. All the little treats I'd give myself when I would get home from work didn't interest me. Boredom was no longer expressed as hunger. Obscene portion sizes became smaller. Before, the feeling of full wouldn't hit me until I was full to bursting, then I would feel awful. Physically awful. Emotionally awful. Now I'm able to evaluate my hunger vs boredom.

It's like the feedback from my stomach to my brain was suddenly silent. It felt like there was so much noise along with the actual hunger signals that I was interpreting it as everything was hunger. Then the noise was gone, leaving me with clear signals as to when I was hungry and when I was full. Hunger is smaller, less significant now. Fullness's tiny voice can be heard clearly. I can stop before I'm painfully full. I don't like the term 'miracle' but this is pretty damn close.

These types of medications should be available to everyone who needs them. I was lucky that I was already in a weight loss program when we decided to go the surgery route. Pete will be eligible just about the time we're going to do the surgery, so he can't have it, even though it would help him. That is frustrating. I could go on an endless rant about insurance and our health care system. I probably shouldn't.

I have never endured hunger a single day in my life, and that's including the two day fasting prep I needed to do to get ready for my colonoscopy. I never learned what hunger truly was. For most of my life hunger was just another voice in the noise. I would throw at it whatever I thought would quiet it, like food, video games, anything distracting. Boredom was hunger, annoyance was hunger, sadness was hunger. When everything triggered feelings of hunger, you kind of stop listening to anything and just eat your way through it.

For not knowing what to write about, I think I did a somewhat coherent job of talking about my journey to a healthy weight. This is likely the biggest healing journey I've had to work with so far. There are so many things tied up with a person's weight: emotions, feelings of body shame, disordered eating, to name just a few. It's a lot to sift through in the 6 months you have to work with a dietician before you get the surgery. It's scary to know that I will have a vastly different relationship with food after the surgery. I'm both looking forward to it and mourning the loss of my ability to really relish a food experience. What celebration or holiday doesn't have food included?

I'll probably write more about my weight loss journey as I get closer to the surgery. But for now, I have a cat standing in the way for attention, and I think I'll just start to babble. Good whatever time of the day you're seeing this.