BJUpNorth
Well, I have been heavy most of my adult life. Since I am 45 years old, that has been way too long. I was thin as a child, but very tall. So I would always get the comment "Wow, you are a BIG girl". Then, low and behold when I was 11 and started into "womanhood" I was blessed with very large breast (size c-d cup). So here I was tall and big breasted. I really was just a big girls, but the more I heard that, the more I took it as I was fat. So by age 13, I had started the dieting rollercoster.
In high school, I was probably 165 -175 pounds and wore a size 16-18. Not huge, but not a size 4 like so many of my friends. Peer pressure is a killer. At least by my sophmore year the boys were finally starting to grow and they were as tall or taller than me. In that time I tried so many diets like TOPS, Nutri-System, Richard Simons. I would lose a little, then gain it back.
After I got married, I was able to lose about 40 pounds on Weight Watchers and keep it off for about 4 years until I had my oldest daughter. From there it was a steady gain. I lost quite a bit of weight after my second daughter was born, but quickly gained more from there. The last 13 years has been a real struggle.
About 5 years ago, I was very interested in having the lap-band done. I went through all the testing and pre-op stuff, but was denied by my insurance because I didn't quite weigh enough and my co-morbidities hadn't been documented long enough. I thought it was the end of my journey andI would just have to be fat the rest of my life.
Then in the summer of 2010, I had had enough. I wanted to try for WLS again. I wasn't sure if I wanted the RNY or the Lap-band, but started researching - agian. Then I found out my surgeon I had pick had started doing the VSG. Man, I began looking for anything I could find on it and was happy to discover it was exactly what I had been looking for!
So I started the WLS process over again. Although it took 6 months for the supervised diet, mental evaluation (lucky I passed - my family says I am NUTS) and one really big denial and an appeal, I was sleeved on April 5, 2011.
It has been a wonderful journey so far. If any of you are on the fence about if this surgery is worth it, I would have to say, HECK YA - GO FOR IT AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER!!!!!
