My weight, My body, My choice

So I guess it is time to make some revelations and talk about the dreaded numbers!!!  Dun, Dun, Duhhhhn.  First I should start out that I have been over weight my whole life.  I can not remember a time when I was not bigger than the girls in my class and most of the boys and that includes high school.  I have done the trend of slight loss of weight and then subsequent huge gain of weight after dieting but have never really lost more than 30lbs and that was when I was on Nutri-System in middle school.  Anyone 14 years of age and on a strick calorie controlled diet would lose weight.  But for a 14 year old that strict calorie controlled diet was far from realistic, especially to a child that had been making all of her own food decisions for the better part of 10 years.  Calorie control was just not part of the plan. 

The year before I had surgery I was pregnant with my second child.  I ballooned to over 300lbs, 309lbs to be exact on the day that I delivered.  Which I guess was a first at the hospital becasue the anesthesiologist could not correctly calculate the dose for my epidural.  Large numbers are a challenge to some.  Even though I was 9 months pregnant and having a baby and was privy to all the wonderful excuses that come with being pregnant and eating whatever I wanted, it was the largest I had ever been and I have never felt more miserable physically.  I couldnt move, I couldnt tie my shoes and my selection of what I could get my fat foot into was limited to flip flops and this terrible pair of wide width baby dolls that were thankfully made of fabric and not leather but were stretched to the point of agony. 

So the baby comes, healthy, beautiful and magical and the harsh reality is that I now have 2 children to chase after, because babies walk before you know it, 2 children to raise and 2 children to live for.  I put things on hold for a moment, now I am a master when it comes to excuses, justifying and turning things in my favor usually so I dont have to DO anything.  I will tell myself becasue I did not have 3 slices of sourdough bread slathered with a 1/4" slab of butter and only had 2 I was making a real effort to make positive changes in my health and I would for sure notice a difference in my clothing the next day.  Or becasue I walked for 20 minutes 1 day this week I could allow for a handful of chips, after all you did burn 1,000,000,000 calories during that walk so go ahead and have a treat.  If you are reading this and you are an eater like me you know that the 5 chips you plan on eating turns into half or the entire bag.  By the time you have finished your "treat" and the fog clears all you have left is an empty bag.  And I mean EMPTy!  Flattening the bag and banging the tiny pieces to the bottom corner while placing your mouth at one end, tipping your head bag and shaking the remainder into your mouth will just not do.  You have turned that sucker inside out and licked the bottom creases so as not to miss any of the grease, salt, or crunchy pieces begging not to be forgotten since all their "full-sized" buddies have been selected to go on to the happy hunting grounds known as your stomach and it would be cruel to leave them there in the darkness alone, moist fingers from licking them and a shirt which probably needs to be changed from all the salt and chip dust flying around during the feeding frenzy.  

So deciding to DO something came only after realizing the afore mentioned realizations and understanding that being a single mom will be hard enough with 2 children, I should be as healthy and in as good as shape as I could possibly be in to take care of them.  Plus I remembered what it was like to be a fat child and I didnt want that for my children.  Fat adults usually raise fat children, you can see it on every talk show or magazine cover out there and even if my children werent fat having a fat mother can be a hard pill to swallow when you are getting teased on the playground for it. 

It was time to change my life and it was time to do it in any way I could.  I already new about gastris bypass because I had had gastric bypass surgery in 1999.  Yep the plot thickens.  I started looking for surgeons in my area and by shear happenstance I was put in the care of Dr. Alan Wittgrove in La Jolla, Ca.  Little did I know that this renowned doctor had been fixing my not-so-little problem for years and was going to reveal to me exactly the damage in my body and do a beautiful job fixing it. 

Date of surgery: 12/14/2009
Weight: 284lbs
Weight today: 253.6lbs

Next week: My Surgery Stories