Support ...

Right after having surgery in September I started attending the in-person support group meetings held by my bariatric center of excellence.  I felt that it was an important part of my program and helpful for me to have the face to face support and check in with others on the same path.  However for the past 4 months I have not been going to Bariatric Support Groups (BSG) meetings.  There are a variety of reasons for my decisions to quit attending the BSG that I will go into in another post, but lets just say that it no longer provided me with the support that I needed.  

That was fine because in this day and age of the internet there are multiple online support forums that can help fill the void and I had joined three before surgery so I still had a place to go for support, advice and the push to stay on program.

Well for other separate reasons that have nothing to do with the in-person meetings, but were just as irksome, I have not been logging on to the online support groups either.  For awhile it didn't bother me that I was floating alone with no support.  I felt I was fine and that I had what I needed to be successful and didn't need the groups.  But now ... now I am finding that that is not necessarily true.

I wouldn't call myself lost or stumbling, but I found that without the support groups and talking with others that have had the surgery, that my focus has wandered.  I have not been as diligent to the program as I should be and I have been allowing myself to rely solely on my tool - the pouch, rather than just using it as an actual tool.

Now that I have moved, I no longer have in-person support groups that I can attend, even if I wanted to go back.  (Which I don't)  So I have been skimming and lurking the forums a bit more after realizing I missed the support.  The thing is that I am not yet comfortable returning to the presence that I had before.  So what does that mean for me?  Well if I am not comfortable with the old forums and support groups that I used to attend, then I need to look for a new place, a new home, a new group to call my own. After all I did all this work to get here, I need to set myself up for success.