SoCS “throw in the towel” 1/28/23

Your prompt for #JusJoJan the 28th and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “throw in the towel.” Use the phrase “throw in the towel” somewhere in your post. Enjoy!

This year I have a lot of health goals and challenges to meet. There are hopefully three surgeries, with the first one probably mere weeks away. _{“Hopefully” three surgeries? That’s a weird sentence to write. I guess it is even weirder because it is true.} The two biggest ones are for bilateral knee replacements. I want to go to Scotland, to see if I can have an in-person relationship with a man I’ve been having a virtual relationship with (Discord: text, voice and camera) for months, and I have to be able to walk. Walking is good. To get my surgeries I need to lose some weight. You’d think the medical professionals would be behind me on that, right?

Oh. My. God. I’m trying to lose weight in a totally weird and outrageous way [total sarcasm font], and that is: lower my calories in a reasonable, healthy, sustainable way to achieve a rate of loss that is entirely do-able and reasonable for my current weight. I want to add in some weight training. Exercise is difficult because of my knees. I can’t do anything weight bearing (walking, bending, getting on the floor, etc. — swimming would be great but I can’t due to logistics and finances). Once I have knees, my goal is to walk!

Instead of support, the medical (including psychiatric!) people I’ve been seeing have been rather passively discouraging. I’ve already lost quite a bit of weight, but I hit a plateau and was hoping for some guidance. Instead, I got the doom and gloom about how difficult it is to lose weight, that it is next to impossible “at your age” to lose weight through diet and exercise, that there is insulin resistance that will make it too difficult, set point theory,* that statistics show that people don’t do it, can’t keep the weight off, “wow, that’s an impressive weight loss already, most people will regain it in a few years…” (!!!) and on and on. There was more, but it gets a little too specific for my actual, personal, health history, and so just let’s leave it that my internal conversations with a few of these “professionals” were along the lines of, “Really? Why did you even say that? Why was that the first thing out of your mouth?”

Sigh.

What I have facing me this year is daunting. Hard. I don’t need the rug pulled out from under me, too! I had one appointment a few days ago, and that doctor was doing a running commentary of all of the negative statistics, despite the fact that I was sitting right in front of her (Zoom) with a decent amount of weight already lost, being motivated, being compliant and just wanting some fucking help. I left that appointment** with two competing thoughts and feelings, defiant and yelling, “I’M NOT A STATISTIC!!!” and “Maybe they are right. It is too much. Maybe I should just throw in the towel?”

Truthfully, those two poles are still pulling.

However. I can be a tenacious lil so-and-so at times. Wanna see me dig in? Just tell me I can’t do something that I know I can do. “OH YEAH? Well just watch me, you fuckers!”

Immediately after that appointment, when I was inwardly screaming “I’m not a statistic!” a song from 1978 flashed in my head. I’ve been playing it, in my head and on the computer for days. This is such a frustrated, defiant anthem at the moment.

*Emphasis that set point theory is a theory, with competing theories.
** In between the depressing, defeatist, discouraging “help” a few of the health care providers have actually provided some health care help! For instance, even though I don’t think she thought it was terribly necessary, when I called my primary care provider and said I’d like to do a thyroid check because of the plateau, she did request the test. Surprise! I was low thyroid. She is treating that. The sports doctor who gave me the steroid injections into my knees was also helpful, and actually he wasn’t one where I was looking for a lot of help. My mental health therapist has been excellent (she’s not the clueless psychiatrist who gave a backhanded compliment and another exclamation of discouragement). So it hasn’t ALL been “ffs, I feel like throwing in the towel…”