My alarm sounded this morning at 3:40 a.m., and while I was bleary-eyed tired, I smiled and remembered why I was getting up in the wee hours – to attend the last class in a zoom course (which was being taught in the UK time zone).
It was yet another opportunity to live into my commitment to get out of my comfort zone and stay out – a commitment I made to myself after bariatric surgery.
When I had my gastric bypass in 2004, I knew I would have to make changes. I knew, as I like to say, the SAME person would become obese again. So, I vowed to myself I would do DIFFERENT.
I set out to transform myself and the way I viewed my bariatric adventure, to never give up, and to meet what would sometimes feel like failure with compassion and determination.
That was the commitment my client Elizabeth made as well. It’s been about seven years since she passed away. She is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a human being challenging herself to not give up. In fact, she continued to work with me even as she transitioned into a nursing home.
Elizabeth found ways to stay engaged in her bariatric self-care, worked to make connections with others in her facility, grappled with the snack machine, and stayed way out of her comfort zone.
She decided to do DIFFERENT, and to persist, until the day she died.
Elizabeth never did reach her surgeon’s goal weight, yet she did lose enough to fit comfortably in her wheelchair, which gave her great joy. She made peace with her lifelong struggle with food and weight. Her self-care during her time in the facility evolved and she realized with compassion that she had done everything she could and that it had been enough.
She was enough.
One of the inspirations Elizabeth focused on was a concept I had read about in Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich. Hill identified steps we can take to help us be persistent. He believed those steps would help people “convert dreams into physical realities” and lead people to “the mastery of fear, discouragement, and indifference.”
Elizabeth and I agreed those things were coming true for her and she was thrilled about it.
I hope her story inspires you the way it continues to inspire me.
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From Katie Jay’s Small Bites newsletter. Subscribe and get your complimentary report: The 21 Most Common Mistakes People Make after Bariatric Surgery at www.BariSupport.com. © 2022, Katie Jay. All rights reserved.