A Birthday of Love

Yesterday was my birthday.  Those who know me know that I claim the whole month as mine and all this month I have received cards and calls and packages of love and well wishes from friends and family.  I also gave myself some pretty amazing birthday gifts this year.  A trimmer figure.  A more active body.  Energy.  Health.  And a new found ability to love myself.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to give off the impression that before my Duodenal Switch I was some self-hating fat man in a constant state of depression.  No.  I liked myself alot.  But I find now that I love myself more.  How do I know?  Well, because I am more able now to let others love me.  With each card or present I opened, with each package that came, during the time I spent with friends and family, with each loving telephone call, I felt love from the other person on a deeper level.  It is more meaningful than it was before because when I hear "I love you" or "you're wonderful" I believe it is possible, because I love me and think I'm wonderful.  Conceited?  Perhaps.  But, I deserve it.

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I see you.  Slowly emerging from my body.  Who are you?  You have my eyes, but the rest is unfamiliar.  I do not understand how you move; you are becoming lanky.  I interlock your arms or bend your legs in funny directions just to see if I can.  I have never moved like this before.  Your fingers can touch the small parts of my back.  Your shoulders have become muscle and bone.  What have you done to my shoulders?  You are a strange man in the mirror as I leave the shower.  I am less startled if I fixate on your eyes.  You have my eyes.  But curiosity gets the better of me.  I follow beads of water as they drip from my hair and slip down the sharp angles of your face.  They glide down your neck and pool on your clavicles which peak beneath my flesh.  I have never had clavicles like yours.  They are foreign to my touch and odd to my sight.  You fit clothes that are too small for me to wear.  You exercise, and enjoy it.  I have no idea who you are and yet you are what I've become.

We have to stop meeting like this.

Christmas is October

I am surrounded by copper, magnesium, and potassium.  Tomorrows mail promises to bring even more exotic offerings: bio-source iron, 10:1 cherry extract, lemon lime pre-digested fish oil, and 35 billion CFU probiotics!  I am officially having a vita-addicts Christmas... or perhaps, this is just the Universe showering me with gifts in "my month" (my birthday is October 20th and I claim the whole month as my own).

Last week, I found myself so rushed it was hard to get good foods in.  I even found myself stopped at one of my old haunts and Cleveland's best Puerto Rican place Rincon Criollo.  There, I indulged in chopped chicharones - fatty, moist, salty, crisp pork bites sure to bring any diet to a screeching halt.  Instead, I managed to drop 5 pounds in a couple days.  I love my duodenal-switch!

I spent this weekend at my mom's house in the country.  I love being there.  She is so supportive, happy, and helpful.  Plus, being in nature surrounded by the changing leaves of fall is always calming.  She stocked me up with great food that will help me keep on track.  As I type this post, there is chicken paprikash in the slow cooker, thanks to good'ol mom.  I really don't know where I'd be without her.

Time for bed.  I need to fall asleep before the smell of chicken begins to fill my apartment and I can't get to sleep due to over-salivation.

Body Amnesia

As I left work the other day.  "Are you loosing weight, sir?" the stranger-woman on the elevator asked me.  "Yes, I am" I responded with a smile as the doors slid open and I began to exit into the parking garage.  "Well, you look great!" she told me.  I had just enough time to get out a sincere, "thank you" before the doors closed.

Then, I began to think.  The conversation with myself started as I walked to my car, continued as I drove home, and finishes, I guess, with this post - HOW FREAKING FAT WAS I?!  I mean really, for a total stranger to notice my weight loss, notice it to the point of commenting on it, means that at some point that same total stranger had to have seen me and said to herself, "damn, that man is HUGE."  Then, as we rode the elevator together, she thought "self, is that the HUGE man we saw a while back?  He looks like he has lost weight - alot of weight - you should say something."

Don't get me wrong.  This woman was sweet and made my afternoon.  But, I have to take pause and ask myself what impression I have been leaving on people.  Now that I have lost so much weight, it is hard for me to remember what my face used to look like.  I forget the curves of my hips and how plump my belly was.  Perhaps it is my minds way of preventing the pain that is caused from loosing my physical identity - I simply don't remember ever looking any differently than I do now.  But, the thought that "gargantuan" is what I was giving off is depressing.  I just have to look forward and hope that in the future, people see me as more of a Denzel than a Marshmallow Man.

Back in the Paddle Again

Hoo-rah!  I rowed for the first time in two weeks - when my ankle started hating me.  In even that short two weeks the calluses and blisters on my hands from rowing have gone down, dried, and peeled away.  Perfect then that my rowing gloves/pads came in the mail.  Now I can get buff and hot while keeping my hands silky smooth...LOL!  Not only did I row, I rowed with no pain.  This is a good thing because I really want to keep my weight dropping.  But, you know what?  Even with two weeks of no/minimal exercise I still dropped ten pounds in the last seven days - Duodenal Switch, gotta love it.