Gintama and the denial of one’s own atrocities

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I recently started watching Gintama on Crunchyroll. It’s a very funny show about a guy named Gintoki who lives by his own odd code of honor while performing odd jobs to get by. He seems lazy and unreliable, but he’s always true to himself and his friends. The show is filled with references to other anime like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Prince of Tennis, and probably many more I don’t recognize. Overall I have really been enjoying it.

However, as the story continues further into the overarching premise, I’m more and more aware of the obvious allegory. While at first I simply thought of it as an interesting intellectual exercise, it’s become more troubling to me in light of recent events.

In a nutshell, the plot of Gintama is this: in the Edo period, when Japan was known as the nation of samurai and Tokyo was still called Edo, aliens came to Earth and subjugated the people. The opening narration mentions that the aliens forced Japan to “open their country” and also that they cowed the government through a show of superior force (they fired a huge beam weapon and at least partially destroyed a castle). Subsequently a “no sword” law was enforced, and all the former samurai were forced to find other ways to support themselves, often unsuccessfully. Now the aliens live among the people of Edo, blatantly oppressing them, hiding behind diplomatic immunity.

The parallels with Japanese history are pretty obvious, if you omit certain inconvenient facts. The “opening” of the country recalls Commodore Perry’s black ships, which frightened Japan into agreeing to trade freely with other nations for the first time. The show of force and sword ban bring to mind Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the subsequent signing of the US-mandated constitution forbidding Japan to engage in warlike activities, including the formation of an army. And the aliens’ oppression of the Edo people calls to mind the Occupation.

What there aren’t parallels for, at least not yet, are the atrocities Japan itself committed in its history. The closest thing are the wars the Edo people fought for over ten years trying to cast the aliens out…but in the context of Gintama, this war is honorable, as the warriors are the victims, not the aggressors. The Anti-Foreigner group that Gin’s war buddy Katsura runs, which depending on your perspective can be called a terrorist group or a group of freedom fighters, seems like something more out of modern Middle Eastern history than Japan’s.

Through all of this, Edo is painted as the victim. And yet the similarities to Japan’s history are too striking to be coincidence.

At first, I thought there wasn’t really much harm in this. It’s an anime. It’s for fun. It’s an interesting story. I’m still not sure the author is trying to make a political statement with his premise. But I do wonder if this premise doesn’t indicate something about Japanese culture, about people’s perceptions about their country and history.

The mayor of Nagoya recently stated that he’s not sure that the rape of Nanjing actually happened. From the Japan Times:

Speaking Monday to a group of Chinese Communist Party members from Nanjing, Kawamura said he was skeptical about whether the Imperial Japanese Army actually raped and slaughtered thousands of Nanjing residents during the war.

[...]

“I don’t have any intentions of retracting my comments or apologizing,” Kawamura told reporters Wednesday.

[...]

Disputes over the Nanjing Massacre are a constant source of friction in Sino-Japanese relations, and Kawamura’s comments are merely another example of the skewed perceptions held by Japan’s politicans.

This made me wonder if the premise of Gintama doesn’t imply a sort of culture of denial, a general feeling that Japan is a blameless victim.

This sort of thing doesn’t just happen in Japan. Recently, a Japanese translator I follow on Twitter posted a picture from the American History museum in Washington, DC. It was a board on which visitors could stick up Post-It notes with their thoughts about the US’s use of internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Among the varied opinions, I spotted this one and others like it:

Well…they did attack PEARL HARBOR.

In this case, rather than deny the atrocities happened, people are trying to justify them, but it comes down to the same thing: people seeing what “they” did as horribly wrong, but what “we” did as right and proper. Anything can be acceptable if you assume righteousness is on your side: war, rape, torture, profiteering, prejudice, ignorance, silence.

Everyone wants to believe they are doing the right thing. It can hurt to take a step back and evaluate whether or not that’s really true.

Do we have anything to gain from entertainment that perpetuates our feeling of self-righteousness? Wouldn’t it be better to improve ourselves?

Edit March 22: Tofugu has an interesting post about Japanese textbooks that goes along well with this topic.

Lent

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As an adolescent and teenager, I often observed Lent by giving up some treat that I’d normally regularly indulge in. The two main ones I can remember right now are chocolate and soda. I don’t recall going crazy on Mardi Gras beforehand–actually, I’ve never really done anything for Mardi Gras–but on the years I gave up chocolate, I excitedly awaited Easter and the accompanying basket of goodies.

There were times when I would fast for a day as well, drinking only water, looking forward to the next day when I could eat again and the food would be twice as sweet.

I used to think these periods of stringent self-denial helped to build willpower. Now, though, I think that they didn’t, at least for me. A critical problem is that I always knew they would end. And once they ended, I’d celebrate by overindulging. That’s not willpower, really…it’s more like anticipation. It’s not behavior modification, but simply a deferral of desire. True willpower–at least in the “ideal”–would be to give something up forever, without hope of ever regaining it. Realistic willpower would be to make small changes in habits and diet over time, maintaining them for the rest of your life.

A friend has been exploring the paradigm of denial and indulgence in western culture, the “I deserve it” mindset, the outlook that one has been “good” or “bad” and that food can act as a reward or comfort. It’s interesting to see her take on this. She didn’t grow up within it, at least not in the same way I did. (To be fair, my family has always rejected the “I deserve it” mindset, but the other pieces are there.) My friend observes all this with a sort of bemusement and detached frustration. One of her thoughts is that this approach toward food demonstrates a lack of discipline, and she identifies “pre-1970s” as a time when the people of America had “values” rather than “obsessions”.

While this somewhat smacks of the “good old days” fallacy, I think she may be on to something, at least in terms of the relationship of Americans to food. Food is so plentiful here that it has become just as much a consumer product as anything else, and we are nothing if not a consumer culture. And as a consumer culture, we continually demand more for less. Even as the quality of food declines with price, we buy and eat more of it, because we feel we are getting a good deal.

As an example, I used to make and eat an entire box of macaroni and cheese myself. Why not eat it all? It was delicious. I’d offer some to Sean, but he’d always decline, saying he didn’t eat macaroni and cheese by itself; if he ate it, he wanted it with a meal. Sean, who was raised with significantly different food values than me, was, quite frankly, horrified by my eating habits. He doesn’t generally air complaints if he doesn’t think they matter in the grand scheme of our marriage, so I’m not sure I fully grasped just how grotesque he found my relationship to food until I started to share his opinion. And that didn’t come until after I had weight loss surgery, and I started eating more the way he eats. Now I look back at the way I used to eat and it seems shocking, unbelievable.

We were out at Ted’s Montana Grill with friends not too long ago and I tried a small taste of their chips and dip. The dip is an amazing French onion that I enjoyed very much. I related how I used to like to sit with a huge bag of Ruffles and a tub of French onion dip and just eat and eat and eat. And then I paused. “This has been a ‘This Is Why You’re Fat’ moment!” I concluded into the awkward silence. I’m not sure that I would have confessed such a thing before having weight loss surgery, or that I would have been able to make a joke about it.

My friend argues that our food obsession has Judeo-Christian roots. She points to the language used in advertising, phrases like “you deserve it”, “reward yourself”, “indulge”, “sinful”. These phrases either offer the consumer a reward for being “good” or encourage the consumer to be “bad”. Either way, they play on a cultural obsession with good and evil that is invisible to those of us who grew up with it. It’s odd to my friend mainly because it’s so alien. (Imagine how other religions are depicted in American media, when they are depicted at all. They seem foreign, unknown. Often all that can be done to make them acceptable is to add humor. Other attempts often feel preachy.)

It is fascinating to me to take a step back and see my own culture as it’s perceived by someone with one foot firmly in it and one foot firmly in another, or by someone completely outside it. I enjoy having my expectations and understanding shaken. I like to think about what it all means, how much of me has been shaped by my culture, whether there are universal values…there is so much to explore and try to grasp. More than one could ever hope to study in a lifetime.

I haven’t observed Lent in many years. At this point, in terms of food, there’s not much more I could give up anyway. But I’m glad I took part when I was younger, even if the lesson I learned was different from the lesson I thought I was learning. And I’m glad to have my culture, something that is mine, a place that is cozy and known. No matter how philosophical I want to get about it, it will always be my home, and a place of love.

Fat dream

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Last night I dreamed about going to some sort of meeting. I don’t really remember what the meeting was about, just that there was a guy who seemed to be the leader who said several things that he’d already said in the email he sent out when he called the meeting. I was glad to be there; I felt I was with like-minded people and that we could perhaps accomplish something, though I don’t remember what.

What I do remember about this dream is catching sight of myself in a mirror and being taken aback by how fat I looked. I was wearing jeans and a pink-purple sweater, an outfit I’ve worn before, and I was sitting down, which is the worst way to see yourself when you’re obese. I didn’t look the way I look now. I wasn’t 179 pounds. I was probably 260.

I looked something like this:

me at approximately 260 pounds

me at approximately 260 pounds, June 2011

It was really jarring…and yet really familiar. I recognized myself. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t horribly depressed. I had a sort of resigned acceptance, like, “Yeah, that’s me.”

The thing is…that’s not me. I don’t look like that. I look like this:

me at 179 pounds, today

me at 179 pounds, today

And there’s another weird thing. I can’t recall ever identifying as obese in my dreams before. In my dreams, I always just identified as me. I kind of assumed that my dream self embodied my ideal self.

Maybe my subconscious is confused now that my real body is transforming into something closer to my ideal body than to my obese body, so to keep the existing balance, it’s just flipping the roles. But I really don’t want to think of myself as obese when I’m not. (Technically, I’m still obese, but I won’t be forever.) I want to have a healthy understanding and acceptance of my body as it is. I don’t want to wish for an impossible ideal or long for my known, comforting blubber.

I’ve been thinking more about how I’ve used weight as a shield. I’ve used it as an excuse not to bother learning how to do hair and makeup, because why bother to try to look pretty when you’re fat? Only now when I want to look cute or beautiful, I don’t know how. I’ve used weight as a security blanket, irrationally believing that no one would want to rape me because being fat made me unattractive, and this is now leading me to irrationally believe that I’m turning myself into a target by losing weight. I’ve used my weight as a way to avoid fundamental questions I’ve been having as to what it means to be a woman–the fatter I was, the less feminine I felt. (The infertility contributed to that, too.) I’ve quietly used my weight as an excuse as to why I’m not a social butterfly, why I don’t get invited to parties, why people all around me seem to instantly forge connections while I struggle to make one good friend. That “people would like me if I was pretty” feeling defined my high school existence and sent ripples out into my adulthood, even though I knew the real reason was that I’m simply not an extrovert. I felt comfortable getting fatter and fatter because I could use it as an excuse as to why no one ever called or texted me.

Thankfully, in recent years I have begun to deal with that last problem, so I probably won’t be shocked when I become thin and the world doesn’t come rushing to my door. I have friends, good friends, relationships that I have worked to maintain. I may not be clubbing or partying or whatever, but that’s not who I am. I’m happiest when I’m learning, discussing, hearing someone’s story, appreciating beauty, exploring. And I’ve found friends who also love those things.

But that still leaves all the other things, and perhaps more issues I haven’t identified yet.

So, right now, I reject the idea that my obesity and infertility make me less of a woman. Hell, I reject the idea that womanhood can be so easily defined, and I reject the idea that it needs to be. I reject the idea that obesity defines me. I reject the idea that it’s too late for me to learn how to do hair and makeup–please! And I reject the idea that I can or should do anything to my body to make myself more or less appealing to a lowlife rapist.

I’ll press on, one foot in front of the other. I’ll keep writing when I need to. I’ll identify these mental demons when they rise up, and then I’ll knock them the hell down.

me at 179 pounds, today

Greek yogurt

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A number of duodenal switch patients discover after surgery that they are lactose intolerant. In order to avoid the more unpleasant DS side effects, the ones that are often mentioned as cons to having this particular procedure versus another form of weight loss surgery, these patients must avoid dairy products for the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, this was not true in my case. Lactose intolerance would have severely crippled my efforts to get enough protein, as milk products such as cottage cheese, cheese, and milk itself have been essential joys in a world where suddenly I am very picky about food.

One of the greatest sources of protein (and deliciousness) I’ve found is Chobani’s plain Greek yogurt. I buy it in huge tubs. Recommended to me by my aunt, one measuring cup of the stuff packs 26 whopping grams of protein. Being plain, there are no additives to mess me up. Most flavored yogurts have lots of added sugar, and I have to avoid (or at least minimize) all sugars, even natural ones. The only sweetener I can really use is sucralose, and I can’t find any yogurts that are sweetened that way.

So I do it myself, at home.

At first all I did was throw a cup or a half cup of Chobani into a bowl and mix in some Splenda. However, lately I’ve tried a few variations, and it’s been rather nice.

Hershey's cocoa in Greek yogurt

The first thing I tried was putting in some Hershey’s cocoa. Worked like a charm. You have to be careful not to put in too much cocoa, but otherwise, it makes for a nice creamy chocolate dessert.

The next experiment was raspberries. I know, I know, natural sugar…but I only put a few berries into the cup of yogurt, then mashed them up and mixed them in. The swirls of tartness made me suck in my cheeks with delight. I obviously can’t eat a lot of fruit all the time, but a little here and there shouldn’t destroy me.

My latest flavoring is cinnamon, and I think it might be my favorite. I’ve always loved cinnamon, but I never really thought about it. When people would ask what my favorite treat was, I’d probably say “chocolate”…but to be honest, chocolate is getting a little old these days. I like a tiny bit here and there, but it’s not how it used to be. I don’t want to eat a whole box of Oreos (not like I even could).

In any case, cinnamon and Greek yogurt go together really well. I haven’t really been measuring anything but the yogurt as I’ve been making my concoctions, but I think it turns out to something like 1 cup Greek yogurt, 2 T Splenda, 1 T cinnamon. Experiment with it…I think you’ll like it!

cinnamon in Greek yogurt

cinnamon in Greek yogurt

Women’s clothes sizes

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Shopping has always been a pain for me. I’ve tended to only go to a few stores, where I’m reasonably confident I can find things that fit and flatter. I never really thought about why it was so difficult to find clothes; I just assumed it was because I wasn’t proportioned like a fashion model. But it turns out that the stores themselves make things unreasonably complex by each using their own sizing system.

The Guardian’s DataBlog has a new piece: What’s your perfect fitting top, skirt and dress on the highstreet? Author Anna Powell-Smith, frustrated by how difficult it is to shop for women’s clothing, gathered data from all the shops she could and compiled them into an online application that tells you what sizes to look for in each store. It’s called What Size Am I?

What Size Am I website screenshot

What Size Am I? website screenshot

This is going to be very useful to me when I hit my final weight and finally go on that shopping spree I’ve been planning. All you do is pick whether you want UK or US stores, inches or centimeters, and then put in your measurements. Right now the app tells me,

Your closest fits are probably:

  • Top: Express size 16
  • Skirt: New York & Co size 18
  • Dress: Express size 16

Being supremely unfashionable, I wear pants most of the time, so I wish those were included. Maybe the skirt size works for pants too? [Edit: Ms. Powell-Smith let me know on Twitter that skirt and pants sizes were the same at most stores.] Regardless, it will be neat to put my measurements in as I continue to lose weight and see what my sizes change to.

The US stores included in the app are Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Anthropologie, Banana Republic, Express, Forever 21, Gap, H&M, Hollister, J Crew, New York & Co, Old Navy, The Limited, and Urban Outfitters. I am pretty sure I have never bought anything from any of these places! I think I remember trying on a blouse in Ann Taylor once. And I walked into a Gap one time, but all their sizes looked too small, so I walked right back out. So yeah…when the time comes, this is going to be an adventure.

Beauty

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They tell you when you decide to have weight loss surgery that the physical changes you undergo will touch off emotional reactions. Here’s how my handbook puts it: “Although you have intentionally undergone the surgery to resolve your obesity, weight loss changes the life style you knew so well. Even with its problems and tensions, obesity was comfortable, it was known. Now that life is gone.”

This is not something you really understand until it happens. I read these words. I read about the stages of grief, which many patients go through after weight loss surgery. I thought I knew what it meant. I thought it meant that I was comfortable with my old eating and (lack of) exercise habits, and that I’d have to be strong to adjust to the changes.

So I prepared myself to change my eating and exercise, and I’ve worked really hard at both. And while I do find it depressing that it’s difficult for me to get enough protein each day, I’ve felt strong, and I’ve persevered. Every day is a victory.

But that wasn’t what the handbook was talking about at all.

Today, I am just barely (by .1 pound) into the 170s. My body has changed so much. Sometimes I don’t recognize myself. My face is slimmer, but to me it looks like Play-Doh, like a field of enormous dimples. In the apartment complex fitness center the other day I looked in the mirror and saw an ugly old woman, thin hair pulled back from a big pasty face. It was me.

When I look at my naked body in the mirror, I can see that I’m starting to have a more pleasing shape. But I can also see how being fat has destroyed my skin. I’ve got the surgery scars, of course, but worse than that, I’ve got stretch marks. Everywhere. Stomach, arms, legs, breasts, everywhere.

I have always held in my head this perfect image of how I’d be if I wasn’t fat. I’d look great in a bikini. I’d have a cute face with big eyes and smooth skin. I’d look young.

I’ve never really worried about age before. I’ve never worried about whether or not I could look like my perfect image, because I never thought it was possible to not be fat.

I didn’t really know this until today.

Now I’m looking at myself in the mirror and I’m disappointed. I’m not approaching that perfect image. When I reach whatever final weight I reach, I’m not going to look 22. I’m not going to be able to wear a bikini.

I had never thought of myself as vain before. I always thought I was “above” that somehow.

Now I know that I was just using my obesity as a shield.

Eyesight stuff

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So, next week I see my neurologist again. You remember, the one who told me I’d go blind if I didn’t lose weight fast? The last time I saw him, I had pictures taken of the backs of my eyes to see if my weight loss surgery and subsequent dropping of about 40 pounds had made a difference. Unfortunately, we didn’t seem to have any pictures from before the surgery. (I could swear my Augusta neurologist ordered some, but maybe not.) So it was impossible to tell anything other than my eyes were still really messed up, and I needed to continue taking medicine.

I had copies of those images in my hands for several minutes, and I could have taken a picture of them, but for some reason I didn’t even think to. But basically, when you look at the backs of someone’s eyes, you see a white ring in each one. They should be crisp. Mine look like someone went over them heavily with Photoshop’s Blur tool–or at least, that’s how they looked in mid-November.

I’d like to know if now they are less blurry, because that would imply the initial premise is sound and that weight loss will save my vision. So whether the neurologist thinks of it or not, I’m going to ask him to order new pictures.

Smallville season 11

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Smallville Season 11 digital cover by Cat Staggs

Smallville Season 11 digital cover #1 by Cat Staggs (DC Comics)

DC has announced a new digital-first comic that picks up six months after Smallville leaves off. The series will be illustrated by Pere Perez (interiors), colored by Chris Beckett, and written by Brian Q. Miller, who the news release identifies as a former Smallville “series scribe”.

I looked Miller up on IMDb, since I didn’t recognize his name. It turns out he wrote nine episodes between October 2008 and the end of the series, and in the last season he was the executive story editor.

Sean and I only recently watched Smallville season ten. When it aired, we kept missing episodes, so we waited until it was on Blu-Ray to catch up. This took a long time; the Blu-Rays didn’t come out until late November, and then I decided to wrap them as a Christmas present when they arrived, so we actually didn’t see how things ended until after the new year.

The pacing felt very uneven. There were several very interesting themes raised right before the series ended, then never properly dealt with. Maybe those themes will come out in the comic series? One example is how Lois starts wondering what happened with Lana, and discovers that Lana made one hell of a sacrifice, and then…nothing. No closure. You could argue that Clark and Lois’ relationship should have nothing to do with Lana, and I’d agree, but I’ve also always felt that having Clark and Lana be star-crossed lovers, rather than having their relationship fundamentally not work, was a mistake. It mars Clark and Lois with the whisper of what could have been. If you step back and don’t think of Clark and Lois as having a “destiny”, and you evaluate purely based on the story you were given in the show, then it really seems like Clark and Lana have a larger destiny than Clark and Lois do.

Really, I never liked the “destiny” idea anyway. I always thought Clark and Lois were about flouting destiny and fate. I mean, Superman is not human. His “destiny” is not to have a human love; it is to be a solitary savior. What I wanted to see from Smallville was not a shoehorning in of Lois into a “destiny” that only exists because the audience knows the original story, but a conscious choice on the part of two individuals to throw caution to the wind and accept that they love each other, despite all the reasons they shouldn’t be together. Two people who realize all the good they can do together. Two people who intelligently assess the situation and transform an oppressive fate into hope. I would have liked to have seen this happen between Clark and Lois because Lois is too bullheaded and passionate to accept that fate can’t be changed, and her optimism would drive Clark to do greater things. And this would have shown that she was superior to Lana as his love interest, because Lana could only see herself as a burden to Clark, not as his inspiration.

I felt like this sort of thing could have happened in the show, but didn’t, and it was pretty disappointing that a starker contrast wasn’t drawn between Lois and Lana. In truth, it sometimes wasn’t clear why Clark loved Lois at all. (Because he was supposed to?)

But I digress.

While I wasn’t extremely impressed with how Smallville ended, Miller did write some cute stand-alone episodes, like Committed, Hex, Echo, and Warrior. (Bulletproof was also good, but a little too on the nose.) I do see from DC’s website that he’s a comics writer, and apparently his Batgirl is pretty popular. I’m liking the examples I’m seeing, at any rate. What concerns me is Miller’s ability to craft a compelling overarching story; I don’t really get that from his stint on Smallville. But maybe he’ll be more comfortable writing Smallville in his native medium. And Pere Perez, who works with Miller on Batgirl, puts out some fun and cute art, which for me is important.

So I think the new Smallville Season 11 comic series will be worth checking out, at least. Maybe it’ll deal with some of the TV series’ problems. We can always hope!

Thoughts of Birmingham

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A few weeks ago, Sean and I went to Birmingham, Alabama for his work. I took two days to explore some of the city’s attractions and had a really good time, despite the cold, rainy weather.

Last night, I had a dream that I was in Birmingham looking into some fictional university. The place was huge and architecturally impressive, and I also found it to be forward-thinking. For some reason Willow, the character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was there with me. It started snowing. (These two parts of the dream may be related to my watching several episodes from Buffy season three before bed.)

Then a tornado siren started going off. Thinking back to my time living in Huntsville, I wondered whether Birmingham was also within Tornado Alley, and whether frequent storms were something I’d have to get used to. Willow and I checked out the sky looking for funnel clouds, but my good sense prevailed and we holed up in the basement of a building on campus.

In the dream, I remember being really excited to move to Birmingham. Indeed, I enjoyed visiting, and there were many places I could see myself returning to again and again, like the Botanical Gardens or the Museum of Art. And really, I am the type of person who craves change and enjoys the challenge of getting to know a new place. For a laugh, I checked Google Maps to see how far Birmingham is from my family in Kentucky compared to where we live now, and it’s not that different. Plus, the route would be new and interesting: instead of old, familiar I-75, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, I’d take I-65 through Nashville. The thought of all these new adventures is actually pretty exciting.

But realistically, I can’t say I want to move right now. For one thing, there’s no reason to, beyond my illogical wanderlust. I can’t say that I saw enough of Birmingham in the two days I spent exploring it to know that I would be happy there. I don’t know what the job market is like. Birmingham is slightly farther from my family and double the distance from Sean’s. And the base for Sean’s work is here. He may get dispatched to Birmingham and other locations occasionally, but being here is the most economical.

Still, it’s fun to have these flights of fancy from time to time. At the very least, I know that if I want to, I can visit Birmingham as easily as I can visit Augusta. And I still have plenty more to learn about Atlanta. I’ve barely even scratched the surface.

There are plenty of adventures to be had without moving somewhere new.

(That sounded convincing, right?)

I’m sick. :(

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I have had a cold for over a week. Last Wednesday, January 25, I felt it coming on–a few sniffles, a sore throat, some coughing. It’s been nonstop since then. The cough’s gotten worse, then a little better. The sniffles turned to sneezing and lots of nose-blowing. My throat is no longer sore, but I have sinus pressure and a headache, and for the past few nights I’ve had trouble getting to sleep and then staying asleep. I’ll be in bed for 12 or 13 hours but I’m not sure how much of that time actually involves rest.

My mucus is clear and I don’t have a fever. There’s been no throwing up or anything like that. It’s just a head cold. But it won’t go away.

At this point I am considering trying to use my CPAP to get some restful sleep. I haven’t needed it in weeks thanks to weight loss. I’m not sure if it would even work, but I feel so terrible, it’s worth a shot.

Since I’ve been sick, I haven’t been able to work out properly. I’ve tried a couple times, only to feel exhausted and lightheaded way too soon.

I’m wondering if the rapid weight loss period after weight loss surgery makes one more susceptible to illness. Is my immune system weakened by the ordeal my body’s going through? If so, is there anything I can do to break free of this cold? I do have some generic cold medicine, but that of course treats symptoms, not the cause.