In the beginning...

I have been overweight and obese my entire life. There was a short time, pre-puberty, when I was somewhat "normal" (I have a few pictures that seem to indicate that this was true), but I really don't remember not being overweight. It was part of my identity. It was just the way things were.

Over the years, my weight has fluctuated drastically. When I graduated from high school, I was around 200 pounds. I remember being 315 pounds at one point in my career because it was "the highest I had ever been". I went back down to about 215 pounds when I got married in 2003, but the weight slowly started inching up. At one point, I weighed 365 pounds and this was "the highest I had ever been". I worked hard and lost about 100 pounds and all was better. Unfortunately, the weight started creeping up again and I hit 426 pounds, which truly is the "highest I have ever been". 

Over the years, I have tried every weight loss program you can think of, and while I am able to lose significant amounts of weight, I can't seem to keep it off for good. In March of 2017, I had Gastric Bypass surgery. I have thought about this surgery for a very long time. Many years, in fact. Unfortunately, I could not convince any insurance company to pay for it, even though I had a BMI of almost 70!   After much saving and sacrifice, I was able to finance my own surgery. And so the adventure began.

In the beginning, I spent a lot of time being sick and lost a lot of weight. My stomach went from being able to hold approximately 32 ounces to approximately 2-4 ounces. The toilet and I formed a tight bond as I spent a lot of time seeing my meals again, right after I had eaten them. I was nauseous and vomiting regularly (some times multiple times a day!) for at least the first 9-10 months. Eventually, this slowed down and my stomach can now hold approximately 8 ounces.

By March of 2018, I had lost approximately 170 pounds! My body was starting to stabilize some what (translation: I wasn't throwing up every day) and I was starting to feel "normal" again. Whatever, normal feels like.

I have been thinking about starting a blog for quite some time. It is hard to be honest with yourself and to keep yourself motivated and moving forward. While the first year was very difficult physically, I am starting to realize that the second year (and beyond), will probably be the biggest challenge. It's "easy" to lose weight when you are sick and throwing up all the time. It is much more difficult to figure out the mental part of weight loss and health. People don't just get fat because they are lazy. It is a very complicated story of doubt, self doubt, and self loathing. 

I feel that it is important to share my story. Partly because I don't feel like I was properly prepared for the surgery (even though I did a lot of reading and research) and if I can help someone else to understand it, I feel like this is a great thing. However, I also know that it can be helpful to self-reflect and work on figuring out how I am going to live my life from here. Because, everything has changed. Or, at least it should.
Location: Utah, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Achievements

I feel like I should make a list of my current achievements since surgery. It is easy to get bogged down in what I don't like or can't do and to forget about what I can do. So, here are a few of my accomplishments in the last 15 months. I also feel like I need to be direct and honest, so some of these pare pretty personal. 1) I am able to drive our little manual transmission car. I was too big and my legs too short and I couldn't work the pedals before surgery. 2) I am able to easily hug my kids. When I was so heavy, it was very difficult to hug my kids. I just physically, could not do it. I am a touchy person, so it has been wonderful to be able to do this with my kids. On this same note, I can also cuddle up with my kids on the couch (particularly my baby. She loves to cuddle!) with plenty of room to spare. 3) I was able to out walk a person 20+ years my junior. I went for a walk with a coworker a while back and I was waiting on her! She is averaged siz...
Read more

Things I wish I had known...

Don't get me wrong, I am 100% sure that I would have still done the surgery, even if I had known the following things. However, this is a list of things that I think would have been helpful to know, before I had had surgery. In no particular order: 1) I would be nauseous ALL.THE.TIME Now, if you are like me, you HATE being nauseous. It is the most evil thing that your body can do to you as far as I am concerned. I spent a lot of time eating ANYTHING and then laying on the couch feeling nauseous. It didn't necessarily matter if I ate the "right" foods or if I ate the "right" amount, I was still sick. I still get this now, from time to time (I am almost 15 months post-surgery), but it has gotten better. But, it still happens, and I HATE IT! 2) I would throw up a LOT and that I would feel bulimic There are a lot of reasons to throw up after surgery. I throw up because I ate too much. I throw up because I ate too fast. I throw up because I ate so...
Read more

When your body says no

One 'advantage' of surgery is that my body cannot tolerate certain foods. Since surgery, I have been eating low carb, less gluten, less milk, and less sugar. This is partly to lose/maintain weight, but it is also because I get nauseous and sick if I eat too much of these. Unfortunately, I can eat it some, before I get sick. Case in point: This past weekend, we had a lot of things going on. We had a Girl Scout event, a church picnic, and another event. Two of these events involved food. Good food. Comfort food that I love. Foods that I haven't had for a long time. I'm sure you can see where I am going with this. Now, the Girl Scout event had food, but since it was a huge event, the food was limited. So, I really didn't eat too poorly while there. They just didn't have a lot of options for me to get myself in trouble. Unfortunately for me, church picnics are of the devil! In my part of the world, a church picnic means potluck and everyone brings their favor...
Read more