Weight Loss Progress and Being Brave

I said before that I've been losing weight in anticipation of my surgery. Weight loss is a funny thing and the way the body reacts to losing weight...consistency, behavior, etc...does nothing to reinforce the idea of "intelligent design" in my book.

I keep track of my weight using an online website. Here's my current chart displaying my progress since I started using the site back in early January until today.

Sadly, you can tell when I was finally low enough for the home bathroom scale to measure my weight.

I wanted to see if there was a trend. I'm no mathematician or statistician but I would think that if I drew a line between point A and point B, I should be able to predict the trend down the road of where I'd be. So I did.

Again, not a math wiz, but there's obviously a problem here. Namely my weight chart isn't a line, it's a gradual curve. Uh-oh. What does that look like?

Um...curves aren't good in this case. Why?

Because if you combine them, you see this:

If it's still not quite clear, that curve, if you extend it out, levels out. Or worse, I suppose it could curve back up. The trend isn't a straight line, it's a curve, and it looks like that curve fits the chart points rather well to me.

At the very least it shows that the weight loss is slowing. Most would tell me that it is natural, this happens in weight loss. It appears to also be a large amount of weight loss, given the timeframe involved and compared to what I've read from other weight loss surgery patients and their weight loss pre-op. Or compared to most dieters, period. But I don't like the implications of this chart.

This is yet another reason for me to go through with the surgery. I'm scared, to be sure. I read another blog today where a woman said she has no regrets of having the surgery, but she suffered from a complication wherein her bowels twisted on themselves. The numbers she gave showed that this was very rare, but of those that do have it happen, it kills them %40 of the time. Plus she's had two kids and she said the pain was worse than childbirth. She made it clear that it was an extremely rare occurance, but how can this not stick in your mind when you're about to undergo the same procedure? Wasn't this the thing that killed Heather O'Rourke?

Well, maybe not...something about stenosis of the bowel, septic shock from bowel obstruction...but still you're talking about the same general body parts going wonky.

Seeing as the procedure is scheduled to happen in four days, I'm sure I'm going to keep having bouts of the heeby jeebies about this. I'm sure there will be plenty of coincidental discovery of, or focus on, the negatives and potential consequences of the operation. But the hunger, the apparent signs that the weight loss I'm undergoing now is slowing, these are reasons to press on.

Part of me hopes that this will be a positive thing for my son to look to his father for when he's older. I want him to know I'm human. I am afraid. Parents aren't magical, and we don't have all the answers. But I want him to know what it means to be brave, too. Bravery doesn't come from the absence of fear. It comes from the willingness to confront those fears despite the overwhelming desire to turn and run. Bravery is doing the right thing when you aren't sure how you're going to get through it.

I hope my son will see me as someone being brave, and in the end will learn to be brave himself. It's one more intangible gift we give our children, a trait that gets passed on from one generation to the next.

By the way...thanks Dad.