Morethanready
I'm here because, like others reading this profile, I've struggled with weight for as long as I can remember. I've been overweight since I was a young child. Many, but not all, of my immediate family members are also overweight. As a young child when my mother passed, my father gave us kids treats and comfort food as a way to distract us from the loss. As I grew up, I continued to use food as an emotional crutch, even though the fallout was making me more and more unhappy as the scale reflected the weight gained.
As an adult, I truly feel like much of my life is in a good place. I have a beautiful healthy family and a successful though stressful career. However, I've never been able to manage my weight on any long term basis. For a few years after college I was able to drop a significant amount of weight and went from a size 16 to a size 8. I was so happy and had energy to spare. I felt great and was happy with how I looked. I was more outgoing and confident and my personal as well as professional life excelled. I vowed to never return to my unhappy overweight self.
Then the weight slowly started to creep back up. I wasn't concerned about the first 10lbs... after all, I'd lost much more than that and it should be easy to lose a relatively small amount again. I was only fooling myself. When I was pregnant with my first child, I gained about 85 lbs and only lost about half after serious dieting and exercise. Finally, I found myself in tears in my pcp's office relating the way my struggle with weight was affecting my marriage and my life in general. She prescribed me phentramine, and it worked. I took it for over a year and lost almost all of the weight I'd been struggling with since pregnancy. But I was getting strung out on the medication. I was sleeping very few hours at night, and I was having difficulty with digestion and mood swings. When I tried to stop taking it, I couldn't get out of bed that day or the next. I was so exhausted and weepy, I knew it was a problem. I weaned myself off of the medication and my weight quickly rose about 20lbs. It was a fair trade in my mind for getting off of the meds. Then, I was pregnant with our second child and my weight skyrocketed to new highs. During the pregnancy I reached slightly over 300lbs, and I just stopped looking at the scale during my appointments. I never had gestational diabetes or any medical reason for the huge gains. After the second baby was born, I exercised 4x/week during my 3 month maternity leave and counted calories and brought my weight down to about 265.
I've finally admitted to myself that I can't do this alone for the long term. I need to be healthier for myself and my two young children, and I need to make a drastic change to improve my own happiness and my marriage. So, here I am! Somewhat defeated but also encouraged by reading the perspectives and successes of others who have struggled in the same way.
I was referred to a weight loss clinic in my area on April 20, 2017, and had the first orientation visit on July 6, 2017. The initial visit with a nutritionist and psychiatrist was on July 17th, and I met with my surgeon on July 19th, 2017. I'm planned for RNY in mid September and freaking out a bit!
Thanks for listening and learning about what's brought me here. I will try to update this info as things change. I am hoping that they change for the better!