Come On, Baby, Light My Fire

Sep 01, 2010

I am “morbidly obese”.    At 5’4”, I weigh nearly 300 pounds. This is after losing nearly 40 pounds through dieting solo. I don’t expect it to stay off. The cycle for me goes like this:  

--Get fed up with being enormous

--Start a serious weight loss program

--Lose 30 to 40 pounds

--Hit a plateau

--Try everything I can think of to break the plateau

--Realize that my weight is climbing back up

--Manage to maintain loss a short while by eating so little I am constantly miserable with hunger

--Get fed up with being hungry all the time and decide being enormous is better

--Repeat  

I can’t even begin to calculate how many pounds I’ve gained and lost over the years. At the start of the 2000’s, I was between a size 18 and a size 20. By mid-2001, I was a size 22. November of 2002, I was barely able to fasten a size 24. I hit a size 26 the following month. Since the start of 2003, I have bounced between a 26 and a 30 and back again several times.   In truth, though I love to beat myself up over it, there has been one major factor holding me back. In 2005, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. I gained 50 pounds in the six months following my first symptom – thanks to depression and a suddenly sedentary lifestyle. Since then, it’s been even harder to get my weight to drop.   I have made a decision. I am going to have weight loss surgery. It’s narrowed down to Lap-Band or Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass. Which will depend on what the doctors decide is right for me. If they suggest bypass, I hope I’m a candidate for laparoscopic surgery. The recovery time is shorter and the scarring is minimal.   I have been “obese” for a decade. I have been “extremely obese” for five years. I am verging on the edge of “super obese”. Pardon me why I quote Jim Morrison:

  “The time to hesitate is through.”  

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