How did your weight loss affect your career?
Good Afternoon Everyone!
I'm pre-op and excited for the changes coming my way. I'm reading all I can but what I'm not seeing much discussion on is how your weight loss has affected your career? I'm looking for more confidence in my field and for people to take me more seriously. Do you find that your career is moving in a more positive direction?
It didn't affect mine. Well, I guess better health benefits one's career. But I work as a freelance writer and that's what I did before surgery, too, and it's pretty much the same at whatever weight.
Please note: I AM NOT A DOCTOR. If you want medical advice, talk to your doctor. Whatever I post, there is probably some surgeon or other health care provider somewhere that disagrees with me. If you want to know what your surgeon thinks, then ask him or her. Check out my blog.
Hi there. It didn't affect mine either. I was pretty much at the top of my particular ladder when I had surgery. A sex change operation might have affected it more than weight loss. Now I just get the odd inappropriate look or comment now and then. But no weight loss did not affect anything substantial in my career given where I was at already.
It has not affected my career one way or the other. But it is too early in the process to say.
Now, I do feel that if I was to change jobs, I think weighing less would make me more confident in interviews. I always wondered if I did not get some jobs because I was so obese.
It has affected my sleep patterns. I was a night person before. Now, I am in bed before 10 and get up at 5:45 to be at work at 7. Before surgery, I was working about 8-6, now it is 7-5. As an accounting manager, I have to put in longer hours. With year end and audit, I am working more like 7-6.
Surgery Date 04-22-14 HW 2011 388(lost 60lbs on WW, regained 40) Surgery Consult Weight 1/10/14 - 367 SW 357 - CW 9/15 210.
Stalls are your body's way of telling you not to get too cocky.
5K - 1st 59:00(9/14) PR 33:45(9/15)
10K - 1:14(10/15) 1/2 - 1st 3/20/16
haha...I love the sex change comment, you nailed it. Outside of that though, yes I do feel like it's helped my career. Now whether that's because people are treating me differently/reacting to me differently or because I have way more confidence now and am therefore more assertive, I can't be sure. But either way, yes, I feel like I've been more successful and had more opportunities post op than I did pre-op.
Not sure about "career" - by age 60 I had pretty much gone as far as I was going to. But my surgery allowed me to continue working.
One of the reasons I had the surgery was the financial meltdown, which destroyed most of my assets. More than half my retirement plan was gone overnight, and all my stock options, since I worked at the time for one of the mortgage companies considered responsible for the meltdown. So that meant I was going to have to continue working a lot longer than I had planned. And I didn't see that happening in the condition I was in then - barely able to function from joint pain, unable to walk without becoming out of breath and without severe knee and hip pain, etc.
So here it is 4.5 years later. I'm still working, feeling great, traveling when I can, and, thanks to a bit of economic recovery, planning to retire in a year (age 66) and do even more traveling. I still have *some* knee and hip pain, but certainly manageable, and until I retire, I'm certainly able to contribute with the best of em.
I am SO grateful for my WLS.