3 months post-op appointments

Today I saw both my bariatric surgeon and the head nutritionist of the wellness center. It was a fine, even proud, day in every way. The weather was beautiful. The radio played both "Brick House" and "Radar Love" when I was in traffic, and I rocked out to both with a song in my heart.

I have now lost 52 pounds, 13 of it in the last month alone. The results of my bloodwork? "Perfect". My diabetes and high cholesterol? "Resolved themselves". My diet? "Very good". Protein, vitamins, all present and accounted for in spades. They said my vitamin D levels were the highest they'd seen and how unusual that was.

This feels...good. More than good. I, the person whose former addiction to food has thus far only been matched by her addiction to words, can choose no word for this feeling. (Perhaps it will come to me at 3 AM, as such things often do.)

I also found out that I had misunderstood my surgeon all these months--I thought he had said my ultimate goal weight should be 125 pounds, and I thought he was crazy. What he meant was a 125-pound weight loss would be optimum, which would make my ideal goal weight 150 pounds. After he and I clarified this, I hemmed and hawed a little, and he started to write a goal weight of 175 pounds in my file. Before I knew what I was saying, I heard myself protest, "No! Say it's 150." As a side note, my husband weighs 150; he is 5'4" (one inch taller than I) with a 32-inch waist and wears a size medium shirt. I could CERTAINLY live with being that size, and because I am having this fabulous day, I believe it may well be attainable.

It came to me suddenly--I could learn to love that number. 150 sounds like a poem. Nice. Round. I remember being that exact weight once--in my mid-teens, before it all went horribly wrong, before bulimia kicked into high, before you could rock a baby in one of my bras. I have another defiant reason to learn to love 150; my biological father, drug-addled idiot extraordinaire, once threw a scale at me with all his strength for weighing that very amount. (Fortunately, I ducked.) In honor of what a delusional and abusive fool he was, I am taking that number back with as my goal, with intention and hope of its achievement.

That said, 175 would be just fine too. I was eighteen years old when my weight was in that vicinity; my boyfriend at the time called me his Botticelli and wanted me to pose nude for him. (Sometimes I wish I had--not for him, but for myself, to prove I could have ever been mentioned in the same breath as a Botticelli.)

Mr. Salted and I went to an '80s party last weekend to celebrate a dear friend's 40th birthday. We had a great time--a lot of the people there hadn't seen me for a year or more. Everyone told me how great I looked, how healthy. It was extremely good for my ego.

My entire mental process around this surgery, my weight loss, my relationship to food--all are really interesting, even revelatory (at least to me). Shallow as it may be, the clothes are my favorite part so far, I cannot tell a lie. I'm watching my feminine shape rise out of the huge wall I spent my life building around it with food, and I'm not horrified or threatened by it as I always was in the past; I don't feel the need to hide it with clothes that are two sizes too big. I actually feel okay--not only about being a woman, but about looking like one. And I'm allowing myself to feel good--about all aspects of this. Good is not strong enough a word--"miracle" comes closer.

My nutritionist said to me today--in the gentlest of voices--"Just enjoy this." Her tone sounded as peaceful as I feel right now. That's what this is all about, after all--peace. Feeling good. Making peace not only with my body, but with being female. These are things that not so long ago I could never have envisioned as being possible.