Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.

Hi! My story is much like other "weight" stories I have read. I have been fighting to lose wt and keep it off for 50 yrs. The best part of my story is that I can now win that battle thru wt loss surgery. I am >60 yrs old, YOUNG, but I am as thrilled about having laproscopic gastric by-pass surgery an the next person! Growing up I was always the "pudgy" one of the family. Yep - leave it to brothers to keep reminding you just how fat you really were! My Mom tried to comfort me by saying that I was just "pleasingly plump". My parents believed in "eating everything on your plate"...if you were full or not. And, we were told that meat needed to have fat on it because that was where all the good meat flavor was. They convinced us that eating fat would not harm us. I cannot fault my parents for their efforts and ideas about the food they put on the table for us. It certainly has been difficult to eradicate those ideas that were engrained in us as kids. Over the years I was better able to understand what healthy eating was all about. Despite that acquired knowledge, the many diets I tried all failed. I begin to think that my obesity problem was my own fault, that I would never be able to maintain my wt losses, that I would have to accept the fact that my future life would include depression and low self esteem. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

What was (is) the worst thing about being overweight?

I never felt very "pretty", I was always too afraid to hope for a future with a maintainable weight, and I had very little self esteem.

If you have had weight loss surgery already, what things do you most enjoy doing now that you weren't able to do before?

i haven't had wt loss surgery yet - but I soon will! I look forward to a life with more quality, to a life without high blood pressure, sleep apnea, shortness of breath [due to obesity], and, I look forward to a happier life with a whole lot more good self-esteem. January 14, 2012