Surgery

Growing up I always felt bigger than my siblings but in all honestly I was never a big kid or teen.  I was active growing up and my family rarely ate out.  Soda wasn’t usually in the house and my parents where good at keep the junk food to a minimum.  Once I moved out on my own I stayed active but started to eat out more and didn’t really watch what I ate. 

 

 

Then I hurt my knee.  I don’t know what it was about hurting my knee but I went from wanting to get in shape for firefighting to a more relaxed attitude.  Slowly I started to gain weight.  I knew I was getting heavier but it wasn’t until I started to grow out of my EMT uniform that I started to worry.

 

Through the years I started to get gym memberships, pay for personal trainers, go on diets, lose some weight and then find myself frustrated because the scale wouldn’t move and I would quite.  When I got married I marred someone who didn’t like being active.  His idea of a perfect weekend was to sit in front of a TV and stay at home.  He was an amazing cook but we also ate out a TON.  I then started fertility meds to try and start a family and the weight just kept going up. 

 

I tried weight watchers, more trainers, more gyms, and tried to start the couch potato to 5K program more than ones.   Thanks to my PCOS and crazy hormones I was fighting a losing battle.  Every time I would get frustrated and stop I would gain back everything I lost plus some.  I remember feeling total frustration when my now ex quite soda and dropped over 10 lbs, me, well I gained 3.  It wasn’t fair.  Then my ex left me and any self esteem I had was gone.  But I kept trying.  I was sure if I could just loose the weight I would feel like my old self again.  I started to get more active and by doing so found myself and now I really love who I am becoming again.  The only problem, my body didn’t get the memo and instead of losing weight it just kept gaining. 

 

I am officially the heaviest I have ever been coming in right around 280 lbs.  I am very well aware of my weight and never feel like I look good in anything I wear.  Most pictures where my gut shows I either crop or delete. 

 

I have had more kids tell me how fat I am in the past 6 months than ever before including my 3 year old niece tonight at dinner.  As she told me her looked at me very seriously and told me she didn’t like big tummies.  It stung, it always does.  When I see people I haven’t seen in years I can see them looking me up and down and I feel embarrassed, fat, and ugly.  I just want to hide, I want to cry, and I want to scream.  Sometimes I don’t even want to be.  If I walk up a flight of stairs I get winded.  It doesn’t take much for me to get flushed in the face or start sweating as I am always hot.  If I go on walks in the wrong pants I get “chub rub” on the inside my thighs, which hurts and stings for days after.  Being this overweight just hurts.  My back aches, my knees feel tight, sometimes I swear I am going to step wrong and snap my ankle.  People treat you different too.  And dating, well no one really wants to date the fat girl.  It drives me crazy how everyone seems to know how to make me loose the weight, even though I know everyone means well.  No one really understands the true struggle of it all unless you have been in the shoes of someone who is truly overweight.  I promise you when I say it is completely different to lose the freshman 15 or the extra holiday weight then it is to lose a large amount of weight and to keep it off. 

 

In the last few years I have been told my heart is now starting to stress due to my weight.  That scares me more than anything.  The last thing I want to do is become a burden to my family and friends because of poor health.  This past summer my Dr heard a mummer.  Right now it isn’t anything they feel they need to jump on but for me it caused additional stress.  Then she brought up gastric sleeve surgery and how she thought I would be a great candidate for it.  Surgery was something I hadn’t really thought about it.  To me it seemed like almost a lazy way out and I thought that all you were doing was starving yourself. I wasn’t so sure but I started to look into it more.  I talked to my friend who did it last year and has been really happy with her results.  I talked to family and friends.  I read articles on it.  I went to a class on it.  And I decided it was the best step for me; trust me when I say it isn’t the easy way out.  Overall it is just a tool and a lot of it will still depend on what I do it I want to keep the weight off.  It is major surgery and I will have to spend 2 days in the hospital after.  I will have to really change the way I eat and how I see food.  But it will help me not feel hungry and loose a large amount of my excess weight.  It is shown to have least a 40% improvement with amount of headaches I get, improve or even completely resolve my metabolic syndrome, improve or completely resolve my PCOS, and many more benefits.  Most of which are not resolved by diet along (which is why it is so hard for me to lose weight and then why I gain it back plus more).  I am having my surgery Nov 29th.  I will have 6 weeks off work while I recover and learn what I can eat.  I am excited and scared all at once.  Surgery always terrifies me and I always get super sick after.  I am going to miss my having my mom around to check in on me and worry about putting people out.  But I am more than ready for this change!!  In 24 days my life is going to be very different, bring it!!