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

Although I was a normal weight as a pre-teen, I felt fat because I was participating in sports where thin was better. I also developed young and big breasts in sports were not an asset. As a high school student I thought of myself as fat when I was a fit and muscular 125-130 pounds. I was ashamed of having full breasts. Most of my family members struggled with being 20-30 pounds overweight and they were all paranoid about gaining more. My mother and grandmother were often dieting. I hated it when they were "counting calories". In college I gained 10 pounds per year and 10 more per year in graduate school. A couple of pregnancies and I was at 200 pounds. I was really upset to hit the 200 mark and I dieted with Optifast. It worked, I lost 15 pounds, but I was so burned out with the dieting process that when I stopped the diet, I decided to just eat what I wanted. I was OK for about 12 months then I started a new job where I did not move much and had more stress and I started gaining again. Two years later, I was almost 220 pounds. Things got really bad at this point-- from a social/emotional level. I went to a family wedding and my cousins would not talk to me or meet my eye. A secretary at work was mocking me. Leaders at work would not take me seriously. For the first time I felt that being fat was crippling me.

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

When my cousins would not look at me in the eye and talk to me at a family event. When leaders at work did not take my ideas seriously and I was not sure if it was the quality of my ideas or because I was fat.

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 can see clearly that my fears that my ideas were being discounted because of my weight was true. I feel that my ideas are given more credibility now. It is sad that my ideas were judged badly because I was obese.