Angie_M
My story in a nutshell....
I've been overwight my entire life. I didn't have a lot of bad childhood experiences because of it except for always being the best friend of the guys I liked instead of the girlfriend. The only 2 bad memories I have were from when I was in grade school. The first one was when our group of neighborhood kids were siting around thinking about what we'd be like when we got older. They decided for me that I'd always be fat. The second one was when I was in 6th grade and I weighed more than a senior in high scool (it was over 200). In high school, I had a pseudotumor cerebri which is extra fluid on the back of the brain indiciative to young obese women. This should have been a warning to me but I ignored it and moved on.
I didn't really start trying to lose weight until after high school. i went on Optifast, Jenny Craig, and Nutrisystem. I did relatively well on each of these for the first few months but then whenever I stopped, I gained the weight I had lost plus more. When I was 24, I decided to have the VGB surgery. A coworker of mine had done it and I jumped on the bandwagon with her. I had a presurgery weight of 411 and lost 95 pounds. There were no support groups or behavior classes available. I don't remember when I started to gain the weight back. It was a mix of not paying the needed attention to it, stress, laziness on my part and realizing that I could eat without getting sick. I think after I got married, I just chose to ignore it. There was SO much weight to lose, that short of divine intervention, I didn't think of it as attainable. I still always told myself that aside from running (who needs to do that anyway), I led a normal life.
In the last 3 years, it has slowly started to sink into my brain that that is no longer the case. My first horrific realiziation came to me when I was with my husband's family at the zoo and HAD to stop walking. I made sure everyone else went on ahead but sitting there realizing I COULDN'T keep up with everyone was embarrassing! I told everyone I was fine and tried to forget that day. The following year, my shins, feet and ankles started to hurt and swell up. I could push my finger into my skin and the depression would stay there. It was painful but i didn't want to go see a doctor because I thought it would go away. When I finally did, I was diagnosed with cellulitis in my lower legs. It has since stopped, but again I chose to ignore the warning signs. This past year, I've had severe back and knee pain. Of course I attributed it to getting 'old'. I finally think my body has hit maximum capacity. During all this time, my husband and I have tried various weight loss methods (South Beach Diet, Adkins, watching our flour and suger, etc). All of which helped but we keep falling off of these lifestyle changes.
After 2 funerals in 2 months of close family members, I've finally decided that life is too short and I need to quick ignoring the fact that I am morbidly obese. I think I've always taken the approach that if people talk to me, if i have friends, if I'm ok to be married to, then I don't have a problem. It wasn't until the funerals and the physical pains coincided that I realized I HAD to do something and this was MY problem. I went to Dr. Rizk's bariatric surgery seminar on February 19th, 2007.
And so the struggle begins....
