Kary Loredo-Welch's Blog

This is a posting that I did on our YahooGroup Fremont Gastric By-pass Support Group Site. The support groups are amazing. There is one bi-monthly for everyone including pre-ops, post-ops and support members, everyone is welcome. They are held the second and fourth Friday of each month in Fremont. Most meeting have no less that 50 people in them, many times there are more people. The Fremont Bariatrics Department does 12 gastric by-pass surgeries a WEEK. They have an incredible team of doctors and support staff. We meet regularly to help answer questions for those going into surgery, and for those that have had the surgery to stay encouraged. There is a second group that meets the first Thursday of the month and it’s for post-ops only that are 6 months or more out. We’ve found that there are things post-ops deal with down that road that they need to talk about amoungst themselves. It’s been a wonderful group and as you can read below VERY HELPFUL. If you’d like more information about the groups please contact me and I’d be happy to tell you more about them.

“We had an incredible meeting for the post-ops on Thursday night and I wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who was there and to Juliette for getting us a place to meet.

We have been talking about the emotional side of eating and we really noticed how much some of us had in common. One of the big ones was the need to be in “control”. This has always been a HUGE issue for me and I am working hard to get a handle on it.

I am 16 months out from my surgery and this has been a huge EMOTIONAL journey for me. I’ve transferred my eating addiction to other addictions and it has hurt me physically as well as mentally since my surgery. It’s exciting to be a part of such an amazing group of people that can share openly their own struggles which helps hold a mirror up for me.

I am an addict and in working on controlling my addictions a couple weeks ago I thought of myself standing on a ‘balance board’, like a board placed on top of a ball. The board could tip at any time, any way and I could turn to food, shopping, alcohol, drugs, etc. There was something missing from my visualization though because I was feeling like a failure for not being good enough to hold my balance, until Thursday night! During the meeting we began talking about co-dependency and someone said “I’ve learned that I don’t have to catch every ball coming at me, that I can let a ball touch the ground once in a while.”.  OH BOY!!!  Now I picture myself standing on my board and trying to catch balls being thrown at me, even reach for some balls that are being thrown to someone else near me. No wonder I’ve lost my balance so many times!!!!

Now, I was soooo pumped from this realization that I came home and told my loving, non addictive husband and his response was… “Why are you standing on a board on a ball, why don’t you just get off the board?” He didn’t get the point and I felt bad about that until I remembered I AM THE ADDICT and being an addict I will always be on the board on the ball. HOWEVER with that help I realized that there are things that I could do to help me keep my balance.

I could stop catching balls that come at me until I am balanced enough and certain that it won’t throw me me off balance. I could get help by putting little supports under my board by going to support groups, reaching out to others for help and finding other things to help my board from tipping. I could strengthen my core by working on myself emotionally, recognizing the things that could set me off balance earlier so that I can correct myself BEFORE going off balance.

This is an amazing incite for myself… almost as good and “I am a Tigger inside an Eeyore suit” and that one helped me decide to have the surgery… so we’ll see where this one takes me. I thought I’d share.

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for reading this long drawn out story of mine, have a blessed day and see you at the next meeting!

Kary”