pagek77
I think I always was a little stocky for my age, but not fat. My mother was always on a diet and so she always had me on one too even though looking back I don't think I should have been on one. She was very emotionally and sometimes physically abusive to me my entire childhood. I grew up hating myself (seeing myself through her eyes) and thought I was always fat (because of her) when I actually was a very healthy weight. Probably slightly higher than what those height-weight charts expected me to be but I have a bigger frame for the typical Asian so I think for most of my life my weight was actually fine. I just didn't know it. I think because my mother limited my eating, I ate secretly whenever I got the chance and became am emotional eater also. Then came college and I did gain the freshman 15-20 and it just got worse from there. I always thought I was fat and I just kept getting fatter. When I got married I was about 160 (I think I was 175 when my husband proposed and I'm only 4'11") so I think I wore a size 12 and I was ok with my size. My weight distributes itself pretty evenly and I've always had a large chest which helps make me look not as fat as I am since it's always protruded more than my stomach, fortunately.
Several years into marriage I finally was averaging around 195 for a few years and I just didn't really care. I was working a ton of hours and my husband (we met in high school) loved me just the way that I was. When I finally went over 200 and could feel that I was not feeling as healthy as I used to, I started to get scared. But I had been yo-yo dieting for like 15 years and not making much progress. It was a struggle to stay at 195.
In 2005 we adopted a child internationally (I had PCOS and my husband had low sperm count so they said IVF was really our only option to try to successfully conceive). I was adopted internationally so it was something that I always wanted to do and it was an easy decision for us to just proceed with adoption because we were both a little scared about IVF. Then in 2008 we decided to adopt internationally again, but this time the rules had gotten stricter and there was a weight requirement that I did not meet. I tried dieting again for several months getting nowhere and I was working ridiculous hours at a start-up that I loved. After wasting away 6 months of getting nowhere in the adoption process, my husband and I decided that I should quit my job and make losing weight my full-time job because our first son was getting older so the age gap between the two kids was getting wider and wider. I quit my job to do this intensive weight loss program at my gym which consisted of meeting with a trainer 3x a week, a dietician weekly, a doctor, a weekly support group, watching education videos while riding a bike, etc. I spent 4-6 hours in the gym everyday and I was able to lose 70 lbs and qualify for the adoption.
I learned a lot from that weight loss program but having PCOS somehow made me always feel hungry. I was exercising vigorously 5-6 days/week and eating healthily and my weight was still slowly going up. I've always been able to eat a lot and I could eat a meal made for a lumberjack and feel starving 10 minutes later. Then my grandfather died unexpectedly in a horrible car accident (he was like a father to me so it was devastating) and we got to bring home our second son a month later. Between the two events, it was just too much and since I had slowly been gaining weight anyway following "the plan," I just gave up. I felt hopeless. I gained back all but 5lbs of the weight I had lost and I was worried for my health, now having 2 small kids that I wanted to be active with and live to watch them grow up. It was only a matter of time before I would get diabetes and who knows what other problems.
One day gastric bypass came into my head so I started researching it. I already knew all the nutrition stuff from the weight loss program I did at my gym and I felt like gastric bypass was the "tool" that I needed to level the playing ground with my PCOS. I knew that my emotional eating would always be something I'd have to deal with, but when you always feel hungry, you're an emotional eater, you're mourning a huge loss of a family member, fighting depression for years, and you're stressed and tired from taking care of 2 wonderful kids, something's gotta give. I did not have enough will power to try to keep exercising and "dieting" with all of that going on when with all of my best effort I was still gradually gaining weight.
My husband and I researched and discussed gastric bypass surgery. We both knew it wasn't the panacea to my problems, but I finally felt like it would give me a fighting chance against all of my food issues. I have a wonderful husband and he has been super supportive. He loved me when I was fat but now that I'm in my mid-thirties he was started to get worried about my future health.
My weigh-in for my surgery consult was 215 and I lost 12lbs before surgery. I'm down a total of about 76lbs and I feel great! I still am considered "overweight" according to my BMI but I really think I would look sickly if I got down to the weight the charts actually want me to be. So I'm just focusing on feeling good, being proud of my progress, and eventually I will try to change the distribution of fat and muscle in my body but still staying in the low 130s.
