Natalie D.
My story hmm, where do I start. I was a chubby baby but a skinny child. Even skinny through my parents first divorce when I was 5. I remember the first time I overate. I think i was between 7 and 8 years old and though my parents were divorced but I suppose trying to work things out. We had gone out to eat at a sit down restaurant but nothing really fancy. They brought rolls to the table for before the meal. I must have eaten 8 of them, I think I was trying to impress my dad, let him know I was there too or something. It seems like all the attention seemed to focus on my unruly older brother. He was acting out for attention too. So before the salad came I was sick to my stomach and up came all the rolls all over everyones dinner plates. My family rushed out of the restuarant before we even got to order.
My parents remarried each other after that but it was pretty short lived 9 months. Long enough for us to move away or the school year and then move back home before the next school year started.
I'm not sure what the start for overeating was, I do know that my school pictures from First grade are a skinny healthy girl and Second Grade looks ok but somewhere after that I really started packing on the pounds. by Third Grades I was getting the schoolyard teasing and I eventually quit going ot to recess with those kids, but would go hang out in the school library or the bathroom so I wouldn't be teased.
I know that about that time is when we started staying home by ourselves or going to my grandma's after scholl instead of going to a babysitter. I had learned to cook eggs and oatmeal for myself by the age of 5 so we could make all kinds of things for ourselves as after school snacks. My mom was more worried about paying bills and that sort of thing so she didn;t pay much attention to our diet I think.
At grandma's she was one who proved her love by making sure you were well fed. She would be offended if you didn't sit down and have a snack after school followed by dinner at her house too. We made cookies at her house each week and samples a lot too.
So even if I went home first and ate then came to her house after, I'd end up having at least one extra meal a day.
I recognized at about 10 or 11 I had a problem and Richard simmons became my idol. At the time he had an early morning exercise show so I tried as best as a 10 year old can to watch it when I was able and begged for the Never Say Diet Book for Christmas.
I was an avid reader and spent lots of time inthe city library after school waiting for my mom to finish work. I remember trying to research diet and exercise and going home and trying the things I learned out.
I continued to strulgge with my weight and going between times when I tried to be ok with my weight and accept it as well as times when I was frustrated with my weight and wanted desperately to do something about it. So I have about 30 years of yo-yo dieting under my belt, no pun intended.
I think I graduated high school at about 220. Graduated Jr. college at about 250 and I've put the last 100 on and off plenty of times for the last 17 years.
My extended family is big into eating as a part of every celebration or jsut every day, so over the years every celebration or meal with family was met with an over abundance of food. Making it really easy to graze without even realizing I was doing it.
As I got more and more successful with my carreer it became more convenient and affordable to eat out than to fix a meal for one person. So lately I owe my obesity to convenence foods and lack of exercise.
I knew that being overweight can put me at risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, and other things but so far I only had high blood pressure and my mom has had it since she was in her late 20's and my grandpa had it too, so I jsut figured it was a family thing and didn't worry about that too much.
Even when it got so I couldn't do stairs anymore, had to purchase a stool for myself in the shower, and lets just say I've found some creative ways to keep up with my personal hygiene; I never thought about them being related to weight.
I never got serious about it until I watched Big Medicine and Brookhaven Obesity Clinic on TV. On those shows they talk about some of the co-morbidities that people have who are sent to Brookhaven. Suddenly I started to see a connection with what is happening in my life and what happened in theirs. It finally hit me that I could actually die if I don;t get things under control. I've been told that, and I thought it would never happen to me. I knew I needed to get serious and do something permanent, but I also knew that all my past experiences told me I couldn;t do it alone.
When I started my current job I learned in one of the benefits meetings about 5 years ago that they have a benefit for WLS. I've been thinking about doing it for that long. I wasn;t very serious about it because I was saving it as a last resort thing. I'm a very independent woman and figured if I couldn't do it on my own then it would just not get done. Just like I have always done.
I had one naggin issue that had been bugging me for years. My mother had a really close friend back in the early 90's that died due to complications of her own WLS. It was a horrible ending to her life. I know she must have been super morbid so I'm sure the complications had to do with the riskiness of the surgery in the first place. But I worried that my mom would not approve. ( Hmm seems like I have some approval issues reading over this)
My mom came to visit me in September and we were visiting about this and that and I brought up that I'd been watching those TV shows and ws considering WLS. I told my mom I never wanted to offend her but I needed to get serious and was not sure what else to do. She told me that WLS is a life saving surgery and If I thought it was right I should do it, I started to cry because I'd been praying on it for a while and was worried about telling her. She told me she had been talking with my younger brother earleir in the week and he said out of the blue that I should get WLS, he would even travel 100 miles a day to come and take care of my dogs while I was under the knife.
The day before I signed up here at OH I went in to a Sleep Center for a Sleep Apnea test. That was when I really knew I need to work this out soon.
So here I am. Educating myself on the ins and outs of surgery. Working on issues that might be causing my gains. I'm optimistic about what the future holds for me.
