When I told my brother I was counting calories, a vulnerable admission of defeat, he reacted just as I should have expected: he rolled his eyes, sighed as if he was exhausted by my weight struggles, and told me “don’t be mom! Just be balanced.” As if it were that easy. I made the mistake, at first, of trying to explain that after years of balance and reasonably steady weight, I was no longer stable and I felt the need to do something drastic to try to reign in my body; I gave up pretty quickly, after multiple interruptions and dismissals. It’s not that my brother is insensitive – he’s actually more sensitive than most dudes and most of my family, not that that’s saying much – but he doesn’t have a lot of patience for any kind of struggle to which he doesn’t relate. Worse are the struggles he thinks he relates to, like weight. A few years ago he felt he was getting ‘tubby’ and so he cut out junk food and cut back on carbs and started doing pull-ups in the doorway of his
Life after Gastric Bypass surgery