AKA My Fat Story
This is me and my cat Meow Meow the Flying Hairball. I'm about thirteen and close to 160lbs. I'm also about five feet tall.
I have been overweight/fat/obese/unhealthy/large/whatever-else-you-want-to-call-it since I was twelve.
I was a skinny kid, always moving, always eating, and a bundle of energy. I couldn't put weight on. My mom was told that I was underweight and needed to eat more to be healthy. In retrospect that doesn't seem like the most accurate description of my problem.
When puberty hit I gained almost 100lbs in a year. We chalked it up to puberty weight, to no loner having recess, to hormones, to just poor diet, whatever. I was also a really picky eater as a kid. I didn't eat chicken. Like at all, and vegetables were just out of the question. My mom gave me the option to eat what was for dinner, or eat cereal. Needless to say, I chose cereal almost every time.
I have spent the vast majority of my life not just overweight, but obese. By the time I graduated high school I was over 250lbs.
It was at this weight that I stayed for most of my adult life. Some times I would drop down to 240, but more often than not I would find my self tipping up, closer and closer to 300lbs.
I hit my heaviest this last year, topping in at 277lbs.
When I got on the scale I was shocked and mortified, humiliated and ashamed.
I had never gotten so close to 280lbs before in my life.
This was too much.
TOO MUCH.
I needed to make a change but this time a permanent one.
Like so many other overweight people I had tried every fad diet under the sun in hopes of losing weight, and very few ever worked for me. Those that did only gave me fleeting results that quickly flew away once I deviated from the regimen in the slightest degree. But even nose to the grind stone, day in and day out, I would see any weight I had lost come slipping back in.
I didn't want small change.
Not this time.
Let's face it, I'm almost 40 and I've never been able to look in the mirror and like what I saw there.
So, after sitting down and talking extensively with my husband I decided that I this year, I was going to pursue weight loss surgery. Not because I thought it was a magic fix, or that it would suddenly change everything, but because I need help.
Together my family has started making real and lasting food changes in our home. We're moving away from store bought breads and incorporating more homemade products like sandwich bread, tortillas, English muffins, and even a few poorly formed buns.
We've started to up our protein intake, especially for me as I was too carb heavy and way under on my protein.
We've also started to up our activity and we got memberships for the whole family to the Alaska Club.
And I reached out to the Anchorage Bariatric Center.
I have consulted with doctors there and with my own doctor about what surgery would mean, if its a good choice for me, and what time line would look like if we deiced to go down this road.
With my PCOS and medical history, we deiced that a Gastric Sleeve procedure would be the best fit for me and stared getting things going.
One wonderful thing about my insurance company is that they don't have a real time limit that you have to wait for to get surgery. They only require 12 visits with either the team at ABC or my own doctor where weight loss is discussed.
I am currently sitting at 11 of these 12 appointments with my final one scheduled this Friday. After that its time to schedule this crazy life altering surgery and hope for the best.
Don't get me wrong, I am under delusions about how much work this is going to be. We've started already, and I can tell you that as of this writing I've lost almost 16lbs and about 5% of my body weight.
Its a small change, but is a change.
I plan to document as much of this process as I can, not just for the sight, but as a reminder about how much progress I've made, how hard its been, and to keep me from losing hope when I plateau or have a hard day, and maybe to help inspire others to take their health in their hands and make the change.
I know that surgery is like the helping hand that pulls you up out of the dirt, you have to dust yourself off and keep going, this is just the launching pad for that.
I'm ready for the work.
I'm ready for the change.
And the gods know that I am ready to be healthy.
This is my journey.
Me this September at my heaviest 277 lbs