Blah, blah, blah...

I work for this amazing company and I have lots of opportunities. But I'm always second guessing myself and unsure of the quality of my work or where to start when given an assignment. I know that this anxiety and self-doubt is a huge part of why I over eat and eat the wrong things and in general, don't take care of myself.

I've always gotten great performance evaluations and last year received the highest award granted to only 10 employees each year. I feel like an imposter. I'm told I do great things, get lots done, blah, blah, blah, but none of it sinks in. I think any minute now, they'll be on to me and my charade will be over. Everyone will see that I'm not really a genius, but little bits of smart just duct taped together. Very often, I am CERTAIN that any minute now, my boss will fire me. He's never said a cross word to me, in fact, none of my bosses ever have and I've never been fired. In actuality, I was with my first job for 10 years and when I resigned, they did what they could to get me to stay, but I chose to leave anyway. I've been with my current employer for 11 years. I resigned 5 years ago, but they gave me a 25% raise to get me to stay, so I did. I'm not bragging, I'm just highlighting how crazy my anxiety is. Anybody else ever feel this way?

I have always had a very dysfunctional relationship with my dad. He would say awful things that no man should say to any adult, let alone to his own child. He'd come home from work, and you never knew what to expect. A good mood that would stay good, a good mood that would turn abusive due to some imaginary or blown out of proportion reason, or a bad mood that would never get better the rest of the night. I remember when I started going to friends' homes and being completely shocked... SHOCKED that the kids didn't all hide when they heard their dad's car come home. My sister and I hid until we knew which personality came home that day.

And so it begins...

So a little about me, eh? I am a 42 year old woman and I had gastric bypass in October 2002 when I was 316 pounds, and with a lot of hard work and exercise got down to 185. I still had about 40 pounds to lose but no amount of elliptical, walking, dieting, crying, and pleading would get my body to give up any more weight. After 2 years at 185, I gave up and without a lot of hard work and exercise, in 4 years I was back up to 280.

It's my fault and it sucks. Yea, pretty much everyone in my family is overweight and I don't believe I have a metabolism. But if I think about it, and not even too hard, it's really the junk and couch potato-ing that did me in.

How much more hopeless can I feel that not even weight loss surgery can fix me? How much more mortified can I be after proselytizing how great WLS is, when I see people I hadn't seen in years and I'm almost back up to my starting weight?

The good thing is that I've matured since I've had the surgery and I've kept a diary since I was 12. Not that I wrote in it daily, but I can see that when I was loney or anxious, only Mr. Twinkie could come to my rescue. Heck, I don't think there was a bad time for Mr. Twinkie. When I first went away to college and for each new job I had, I really struggled with adjusting. Instead of crying on a friend's shoulder, seeing a therapist, or drinking alcohol, my drug of choice was anything with lots of sugar and artificial ingredients. What an eye opener! I still have a lot more to go to work on this, but I'm sure glad I kept those diaries, as painful and raw as some of the entries are.