The journey begins…the background

As some of you may know, I have struggled with my weight for years. This wasn’t always an issue. I was skinny as a kid and young adult until I started having children. Four children later and an extra 200lbs over my high school weight, I have decided to have gastric bypass surgery, also known as RnY. For those of you trying to do the math, yes I am starting at about 330lbs which is almost 3x my high school weight of 120- 125lbs. At 5’9″ tall, that was skinny! Yet, I never thought I was skinny. I had muscular legs and a bubble butt which made it hard to buy jeans that fit in the 1980s. Ditto jeans and Gloria Vanderbilt were not my shapes. My 23″ waist and 36″ booty was not going into those jeans made for the stick-shaped girls. If I only knew what I know now, I would’ve enjoyed that body and cherished it so much more!

With each pregnancy, I gained weight, took some of it off, then got pregnant again, etc. I remember when I broke the 200lb mark and was devastated. There is a certain amount of shame that goes into weight gain, especially when you have a parent that is obsessed with you being thin. It’s a lot of pressure! I got into the food business when the kids were young and we struggled as most young couples do. The benefit of working with food is you never go hungry, even when you can’t pay the rent. Food is always there to comfort you when you might not have anything else.

We lived in NE Georgia from 1992 until 2012, so I learned to love southern food with it’s buttery, fatty, gravied goodness. Talk about comfort food! Yum! I still tried to lose weight several times. I sound like a smoker, ” I quit smoking every time I put my cigarette out”. Over the years, I would lose 20-30lbs here and there. But, I had to get to close to 300lbs before I took it seriously. I watched calories and lost 60lbs, put it back on then did it again to lose 100lbs. It never stuck. The weight always came back with a vengeance!

My last attempt was after moving back here to San Diego. I did a boot camp program called “The Camp Transformation Center”. Very restricted diet and exercise plan. I looked and felt great after losing over 100lbs again and more inches than anything else in the past. I made it on the wall of fame and after a year in the program, walked away. Over the next couple of years, I gradually put it back on again. This time resulting in a weight higher than I have ever seen, 330lbs.

So, here I am today. My kids are all grown up and out of school. I am no longer in the food industry, but I sit on a computer all day long. My knees hurt all the time, my blood pressure is starting to go up, it’s hard to walk upstairs and I generally hate how I look in the mirror. Side note: even with all the weight issues, I am not diabetic and do not have any other major health concerns. A year or so ago, I went to the doctor because of chest pains, mostly precautionary. A new doctor (new insurance) so I got a complete exam. This was also shortly after my brother died and my dad had a stroke so I was under a little bit of stress, to say the least. The doctor referred me to a cardiologist and spent some time really listening to me. Her response was that I really need to take care of myself so I can be there for the ones that depend on me every day. This really hit me hard. She asked me if I would consult with a surgeon for weight loss surgery. At the time I was pretty opposed to it but thought a consult wouldn’t hurt anything. My insurance is kind of a pain in the ass, so getting the referral took quite a while. In the meantime, the cardiologist ran every kind of stress test, etc for my heart and it was just stress. Again, she was a fantastic doctor and listened to all my concerns without disregard. We talked about my weight issue as well and she said the consult was a great idea.

Things have settled down with the family and I went to the consult. The doctor was amazing (and a bit good looking honestly) and highly recommended the RnY surgery explaining the difference between each time with benefits and downsides. Ultimately, I decided on the surgery. In my next post, I will discuss the process that I had to go through to get approved for the surgery even with a pandemic going on. My plan is to talk about each phase of the journey and how it affects me and my family.