gdiddyk
My story is probably similar to many others on here. I've been overweight since I was about 5 or 6. At that time I was diagnosed with asthma and it really limited my physical activities. On top of that, my relatives lived about 2 hours away and so we ate a lot of fast food on the weekends when visiting, and then the fast food became a more consistent aspect of my life. As I got fatter, my asthma probably worsened and my activity level declined. Even when I played in a kid's soccer league and was active, the weight kept piling on.
In 8th grade, I started losing my hair. This was awful because I was an early bloomer and just got accustomed to all my new hair and then I lost it thanks to alopecia. That wasn't so bad, I could handle the hair loss. My parents wanted to do what they could to get the hair to grow, listened to a doctor who put me on steroids and meds and before I knew it, I went from around 250-260 range up to around 315 pounds in less than a year. For the rest of high school I was fairly consistent with my weight and was quite active with sports. After high school, my activity level greatly declined and my partying increased and after a year or 2 I packed on another 20 or so pounds. A year out of college and I was up to 350 and so I tried the Atkins diet because I was desperate and it sounded so good. And for about 4-6 months I did really well with it and lost about 20 pounds. One night, my cravings took over and I had a bunch of fresh chocolate chip cookies and never regained my will power to stay on the diet.
In 2005 I was diagnosed with diabetes, which ran in the family, so I was expecting it anyways, just not happy of course. I tried following the dietician's meal plans and I did well for probably 6 months or so, but I got sick of it again and stopped. Needless to say I kept gaining and gaining. I was around 370 by the end of 2005. By February of 2007, I had essentially given up on any hope of losing weight and then got weighed in at 405 pounds. I never thought I'd ever get that high and it was my turning point. I knew life wouldn't be long at that weight and it wouldn't be a happy life for me, so I started looking for info on weight loss surgery and my doctor scheduled my for a seminar at Ellis hospital to learn about their bariatric program. I was hooked and knew that's what I had to do, no matter what the consequences, it was now or never.
Over the summer, I tried dieting a little bit by eating less and more frequently through the day and by the time I was ready to start my medifast diet, I was at 387 pounds. I started the medifast on September 24, 2007. By November 28, 2007 I was down to 333 pounds, which was 3 pounds off from my goal weight presurgery. I had only myself to blame because I did cheat during my medifast diet, although typically it was typically only with salads, but the occasional pizza did cross my path regrettably. Fortunately, the medifast made sure that the pizza didn't stay in my system for very long at all. My surgery went well and on December 7, 2007 I weighed in at 317 pounds. My goal is to get down to the 230-220 pound range.
And for any guys reading this, believe me, this is just as good as any "enlargement" pills or surgery that you could want. There's a noticeable difference, and naturally that makes me happy.
