thegraduate120
I've been overweight my whole life - or at least since I was six. I was just figuring it out and I've been obese at least since jr. high. I didn't "try every diet" - I was more of a "no diet will ever work" person most of my life. A little more than 10 years ago I somehow hit on the right combination of change in my eating habits and exercise habits and discovered the ability to lose weight. I did, starting at almost 300 pounds and ending up at 125 pounds. Me and my hanging skin. 10 years ago, bariatric surgery was pretty uncommon, there weren't 10s of thousands of people who had lost more than 100 pounds, plastic surgeons and primary care physicians rarely saw anyone who had lost that much weight and the internet wasn't really running at full speed. So even if there were a few surgeons out there with post-bariatric experience, I couldn't find them. Plastic surgery also seemed out of my budget for the foreseeable future. So I just couldn't do anything about the skin. I think that is one of the reasons that I couldn't maintain the weight loss. Another reason was that I just had no experience with it. Once I figured out how to lose weight, I thought I'd changed my whole lifelong way of thinking forever. But like any addiction, the overeating was just lurking out there waiting for the chance to come back.
Flash forward 10 years and I'm now over 300 pounds. I'd say probably 320 but I never weighed myself at my top weight and most scales don't go up that high. I'd spend many years telling myself I knew I could lose the weight, all I had to do was get started. And then adding an order of potstickers to my take-out order.
In October of 2007, at my highest weight in my life, seriously depressed, stressed about work, single and lonely, I went away for the weekend for a work retreat. I got a really bad stomach ailment, probably from eating all the heavy food available for two days. Once it all came back out, I didn't feel like eating anything for a couple days. That gave my system the chance to clear out and I started to feel better. I began eating "healthy" which at the time meant just not junk food, the occasional vegetable. Actually it meant soba noodles, salmon, broccoli, and soy sauce. My miracle food.
And somehow I made the choice - to get back to doing what I had to do to lose the weight. Some therapy and nutritional counseling later, I started going to the gym and eating a healthy approximately 1000 calories a day.
In March of 2007, I weighed in at 298 at the doctor's office. In June, 2007, I was down to 265. By my December 2007 check up, I was at 195. The first 100 pounds gone, and below 200 for the first time in years. I am still going at about 10 pounds loss a month although I keep expecting it to slow down any time now, as I get closer to goal. I'm expanding my exercise, trying new ways to exercise at home when I don't feel like going to the gym, walking places instead of driving, the whole 9 yards.
I'm going to make it to my goal. And this time, I'm going to get the plastic surgery!
