After Year One

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...

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, a...