I'm Ready

Due to a generous financial donation, I now have the possibility to seek some help for this weight problem that has plagued me for nearly 28 years (23 or so, if you count the first 5-6 years of my life when I was pretty normal). It's something I've thought about for the past 10+ years, but I never thought I would really need it. Now that I think about it, I see it as a catalyst, a gateway to helping me overcome this addiction I have to food and all that goes with it. What is this option? It's simple:

Bariatric Surgery

Tomorrow afternoon, I will meet with a surgeon, who will discuss with me the possibilities of gastric bypass surgery. There are still plenty of hoops to jump through, and I'm not even sure that my insurance will cover it--or that the surgeon will even think I'm a good candidate for this surgery (although if he doesn't, I'm not sure who is!). I'll still need to get a psychological evaluation, meet with a dietitian, and see an exercise specialist. It will completely change forever the way I think and feel about food. I'll have to say goodbye to some of my favorite restaurants, like Tucanos. No more soda, either. And I'll have to cut back extremely on my carb intake, which is my one weakness (I just love bread!). So why do it?

Because I owe it to myself and to my family to get healthier. There's no way I can have another child until I tackle this problem of mine. I will do all I can to avoid my children living with the trauma of having an obese parent. I want to believe my husband when he says I'm beautiful and sexy--I want to feel that way! I want to overcome this. I want to look back and say, "I did it." And I'm ready to conquer it. It's a long road ahead of me, but I say bring it on.

My History Continued - Pregnancy to Present

It was while I was pregnant with my son, Joshua, that my weight really started to pile back on and I felt powerless to stop it. I remember the mortification of stepping on the scale at my OB's office, only to find out that their scale only went to 350lbs. I was more than that. Granted, I was pregnant, but still. It was severely embarrassing and I'm sure was one of the factors that led to me developing pre-eclampsia over the course of that pregnancy and ultimately my need to be induced. But then again, I would justify my increasing weight with the fact that I was pregnant and my growing child needed the nutrition. I never actually knew how much I gained during my pregnancy because the scale just didn't go high enough.

I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight by my 6-week post-natal checkup. That felt great, and I resolved to eat better and lose even more weight as time went on. Unfortunately, that resolution was short-lived--I was nursing a growing baby, who always seemed to require more milk than I produced (and which somehow I took to mean I needed more food to make more milk, so I ate more), and I was unhappy at work. I told myself I had no time for exercise, what with working a full-time job, caring for an infant who rarely slept more than 2-3 hours at a time, supporting a husband who was having a difficult time with school and working a night job from 12-4am, and my eventually taking on a work-at-home job in the evenings. I took all the stress on myself and stopped caring if I ate healthy or not--after all, I didn't have any of the health problems that other obese people did, right? I had good blood pressure, I wasn't diabetic, I could still walk a mile or so.

But time went on, and I got bigger. And bigger. A year ago, I decided it was time for a complete physical. Imagine my shock when I got on the scale and realized I had grown to over 400 pounds. I cried when the nurse left the room after taking my blood pressure. And this time, there was no mistaking it--not only was I morbidly obese, but I now had some of the symptoms caused by such a lifestyle: high blood pressure, which would need to be controlled by medication, joint pain, and even some indications of pre-diabetes. I was only 27 years old! It was almost too much to bear, and instead of being the incentive it should have been, I found myself falling deeper into depression.

And now, here I am, all 430+ pounds of me. Sometimes I wonder how I let this happen. I tell myself I've just been through so much stress and hardship, what with our money problems and having to work to support a family, and I just have so much on my plate that I don't know what to do. My clothes don't fit anymore. I don't have shoes that feel comfortable on my swollen feet--the only things that work are sandals and flip-flops, which is really bad since we had snow on the ground this morning. And most of all, I just don't have the energy to keep up with my very active, very hyper almost-three-year-old. It's so very hard, and I almost feel trapped.

My History - Childhood to Marriage

Weight has always been a struggle for me. Even as a child, I had problems it. Among my so-called grade school "friends," this generated cruel nicknames and loads of teasing and mocking, which only led me to eat more, to drown my sorrows, so-to-speak. Oh, sure I had a few friends throughout those years, but they were few and far between. Upon my graduation from high school, I was just over 300 pounds. 

College brought change. My freshman apartment was made up of five girls who became my absolute bosom buddies, and there were even a few dates throughout the year. I moved off campus, joined a gym, and started feeling better about myself, but I still was never able to get to a normal weight range. I don't know how many nights I cried about it, feeling as if I would never find love if I couldn't even get guys to look past my larger-than-normal exterior.

I then served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil. Walking miles every day, sweating in the intense heat and humidity, rarely eating much past 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and an abundance of fresh fruits and other foods helped me lose over 60 pounds. It was a great feeling, and I returned home in April 2005, feeling confident and fresh and ready to tackle the world.

I think that confidence and my new, smaller (though by no means "small") figure helped attract a number of men during the following months, and I finally fell in love with and married my husband, Cody. Even though I gained quite a bit of weight back while we were dating and first married (gotta love what eating out does to you), he always assured me that he found me attractive and beautiful. That meant so much to me and still does today.