Lake Placid News Editor Andy Flynn walks up Main Street during the 2015 Lake Placid Half Marathon. During the race, he beat his time from the year before by about one hour. (News photo — Lou Reuter)

May 10: 490 lbs.

May 31 (surgery): 460 lbs.

Dec. 27: 393 lbs.

Total lost: 97 lbs.

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Wearing his Lake Placid Diet racing shirt, Lake Placid News editor Andy Flynn shows off his finisher's medals, including two from the Lake Placid Half Marathon, a Biggest Loser 5k in Plattsburgh, and the Lake Placid Classic 10k. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

This is what holiday eating feels like seven months after bariatric surgery.

I’m in a movie, a fighter pilot struggling to regain control of my aircraft as it spins, lifeless, plummeting toward the earth. It’s dizzying, frustrating, and it’s taking all of my strength to get back on track and control my emotional eating after the holidays — a time when I let myself enjoy food again.

Sound familiar?

It’s hard to let go, even though I’ve decided enough is enough. I felt this way even before weighing myself on Tuesday morning, Dec. 27. I gained 8 pounds in one week — Christmas week.

Now I’m ready for the holidays to be over, even before New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, this feeling that I must treat myself to whatever food I desire, even if it’s smaller portions than before my sleeve gastrectomy on May 31. I’m ready to go back to behaving myself and using my new tool — a shrunken stomach called a sleeve — to lose more weight.

For those struggling with weight issues, these feelings during the holiday season are normal. It’s like a broken record: Overindulge, feel guilty and make plans to get back on track after the new year begins.

This year, though, I feel as though the stakes are higher. I never want to go back to weighing 499 pounds again — my highest weight recorded in June 2021. I never want to get above 400 again. And, if all goes well, I never want to get above 300 again. I’ve come so far, yet I have a long way to go.

Let’s look back at 2022. On May 10, just before my preop diet began, I weighed 490 pounds. Then, as I began losing weight, I hit a number of goals.

¯ Tie my sneakers: June 28

¯ Fit in my car (2012 Ford Focus): July 4

¯ Stop using a cane: Dec. 1 (although I still need it periodically when I get too sore from exercising or when a storm front comes in)

¯ Put my socks on without the socks machine: Dec. 3

¯ Walk normal again: It gets better every day.

I wasn’t able to walk a 5k and 10k in 2022 like I wanted, but I was able to walk as far as 2.3 miles at the North Elba Show Grounds this past summer. A few months earlier, I couldn’t even walk to the end of my street before turning around.

Struggling with emotional eating is no surprise. I expected this behavior, as it’s one of the biggest challenges bariatric patients face on their roller coaster journeys. Although you can’t really plan for this hurdle, the folks at the Adirondack Health Bariatric Center encouraged us to begin healthy habits before the surgery, and to keep making more healthy habits afterward. We’ll need it, they said, when the emotional eating returns.

So that’s the key. That’s how I went from 490 pounds in May to 383 pounds on Dec. 15 — 107 pounds in just over seven months. And that’s how I will rebound from this week’s setback — a weigh-in of 393 pounds on Dec. 27– to below 300.

Healthy habits.

It was easier staying on track when my diet was more restrictive. It was survival mode — consuming liquids only, then pureed food, then soft food before my sleeve was strong enough to handle regular food, such as beef. I only began eating beef recently, more than six months after my surgery. In the early days of recovery, I had no room for deviation or emotional eating. It seemed as though my life depended on following the doctor’s guidelines, as I didn’t want to injure my sleeve while it was healing.

But now that I can eat more types of food, I’m struggling with emotional eating. That’s always been my downfall. Unfortunately, the surgery does nothing to help with emotional eating. When I’m feeling stressed, it seems like a free-for-all, and my brain says, “Try this. Try that. Test your limits. Don’t worry; you’ll be OK.” It’s like a temptress, seducing me into overeating. And so I listen. I give in, instead of fighting. And now it’s getting me in trouble again.

This is the time — the new year — to fight and get back into a healthy routine, a healthy frame of mind.

This must sound familiar to many.

So that’s where I am right now — trying to get back to those healthy habits and make new ones, like exercising regularly. I haven’t quite figured out the exercise habit yet. I’ve started to go back to the gym, but it’s not part of my routine yet. I know it’s essential if I’m going to make this work.

What keeps me motivated is the success of 2022, and past successes, like when I walked the Lake Placid Half Marathon in 2014 and 2015 and other races. I keep my finisher’s medals hung around my yellow Lake Placid Diet racing shirt in my dressing room at home. (It’s a 4X shirt and just about fits over this former 6X body again.) And I keep looking at a photo of me walking the 2015 half marathon. It fuels my fight. It keeps me going. I’m looking forward to getting back there in 2023.