DAmanda
I've been a fat grrl nearly all my life (at least since puberty when I shot out instead of up overnight!). I spent years working on learning to love myself as I am and came to appreciate my voluptous form as well as that of others. After all, I looked like a Goddess figurine (Venus of Willendorf in particular)! I was also a fat activist.
Unfortunately my health was significantly going downhill. At age 28 I was having seriously difficulties walking due to problems with my left foot (heel spur) and an old knee injury that was really aggravated by my weight. I was limping on a fairly regular basis, my knee was perpetually swollen, the heel spur was going to require surgery (with no guarantee that it wouldn't return)...you get the idea. I couldn't even enjoy a day out with friends without suffering the whole time in addition to suffering for the next few days. I was seriously concerned that if my mobility deteriorated at the rate it was going that I wouldn't be able to walk at all in just a few short years.
In addition to problems with mobility, I also had a laundry list of other problems made worse by my weight: high cholesterol, blood pressure going up, fast heart rate, sleep apnea, hypoglycemia and on the way to becoming diabetic, depression, acid reflux disease (I was actually vomiting because of it), etc.
So being tired of feeling like a 28 year old in a 50 year old body, I decided something had to be done. I was concerned about starting a yo-yo diet cycle as well as the possibility of ending up with an eating disorder by taking the wrong approach. I hadn't done any dieting since high school when I did start to develop an eating disorder. At that time I had curtailed my eating to about 700-800 calories a day and walking several miles/day. As you can imagine, I did lose weight with that method. It finally dawned on me that everyone around me was praising me for my success in going down the road to anorexia and harming my body and mental health! So I knew that wasn't a good approach and made the decision at that time to not diet or exercise until I could learn to love myself for who I am and do it for the right reasons (health) rather than the wrong reasons of just wanting to fit societal ideals of beauty. Fast forward twelve years and I decided I was finally at a stage where I could not only approach this with a healthy reason, but in fact needed to approach it to resolve my worsening health problems.
I have to credit my friend Kari M. (also a member here) with getting me started on the road to WLS. She started researching the surgery and spent months trying to talk me into it before she had it herself. At first I thought the idea of surgery was too extreme and I thought it would be even harder to do than just diet/exercise. But I watched Kari go through her surgery and the first few months post-surgery. After seeing her do it I realized, hey, I can do that! So I started some research myself and learned that surgery was really the only option for me! At a starting BMI of 50.1 the odds of me succeeding with the diet/exercise route alone were almost non-existent. Plus, having the physical restrictions that surgery entails would make it easier to start new habits of eating smaller quantities of food and cut out the high sugar, high fat fast foods that I ate fairly often because they make me sick (dumping syndrome) often enough to avoid them for the most part. Sometimes I still indulge because I don't always get sick, but sooner or later I get sick enough to avoid them for quite some time before trying them again. So at least my indulgences are now in moderation and less frequent!
Anyway I'm really glad I had the surgery, it was one of the best decisions of my life. Physically I feel so much better than I have since I was a kid. I'm finally starting to have the body of a (now) 29 year old! I can participate in martial arts classes, something I've wanted to do since the Karate Kid movie came out. I can spend the whole day tramping around shopping etc. with friends without paying the price for days on end. I can go on hikes, walk along the beach, and even move from one home to another (moving furniture, boxes, etc.) without spending days in bed recovering. No more chiropracter, no more sleep apnea machine, no more constantly on the lookout for someplace to sit!
