Ms_Teacher28
What am I supposed to put as my story? Ugh, it's so hard to write about myself. Okay, here it goes. My name is LaToya, and I have been overweight all of my pre-teen to adult life. I was a very active child, but having two parents in the military who didn't get along with each other didn't help me. Our eating habits were never consistent, and as a child, I learned that it's much easier to stop at McDonalds for dinner instead of making a dinner for myself. In my house, family dinners only happened during holidays.
I had a hard teen life as well. I grew up all over the world, but when my mother decided to divorce my dad, get out of active duty, and move back "home," I was uprooted to a very small town in Minnesota. Previously, I have always lived in major cities all over the world, and now I was dropped into a situation where I was the only African American kid in my school, I was teased and bullied from 6th grade all the way through graduation. On top of all of that, I struggled with my sexuality throughout high school, and ended up "coming out" to my mom and sister when I was 14. With all of these stressors, eating became a comfort for me. I would rather eat than take anti-depressants because eating made me feel better.
In my adult life, I have tried pretty much every diet, workout regimen, and even went days without eating, but what it really came down to is that I was lazy. I would do something for about 3 months, then give up.
After graduating from college and jumping into my career, I found that a lot of my co-workers were fit, healthy, and active; they had a lot more energy than I did. So, I went in to my doctor for a physical in April of 2012 and causally asked her if she thought I would be a good candidate for bariatric surgery (after a lot of research, interviewing people who had it done, and going to support groups). She said yes because of my age and health. Even though I was severely overweight, she would always say, "You are the healthiest fat person I've ever met." I always had normal everything, never even "pre-diabetic."
Flash forward, I went to the information session about bariatric surgery, made an appointment to meet with a nurse and nutritionist, and the rest is history, basically. I worked really hard to lose 40lbs before surgery, I had to do a sleep study, I had to eat right and exercise and be determined about it, and I did.
On December 20, 2012, I had my Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery (laparoscopic). My surgeon said everything went well, liver looked perfect, gallbladder was perfect, and commended me for being so dedicated before surgery to lose the weight; I had no complications. After surgery, I went home and drank my little cups of water every 15 minutes. I hated the medicine, so I rarely took it, and I was back to work on Jan 2nd.
So, I guess that's my story. :) Thanks for reading.
