Big Girl Down

I wasn't always overweight. Growing up, I never cared about food or eating. Actually, until my early thirties, I was average weight. I can remember being 125 lbs and thinking that I was fat because I wasn't 105 lbs. Looking back, I can safely say that I did not have a realistic body image. I wasn't at all fat -- I was average. I wasn't super model thin, but I wasn't chunky.  I was average and I didn't realize it or embrace it.  Then, life happened:  A bad marriage, two pregnancies, divorce and a return to the work force. Through it all there was one constant -- food. Regardless of whether I was stressed or celebrating an accomplishment or milestone, food was always in the mix.    

Fast forward 18 years to a cold morning this past January. After chain-smoking five cigarettes during my drive to work, I find myself waddling across the parking lot and in to the building.  As I enter, I am very short of breath and feel my heart beating almost out of my chest. I get in to the elevator and the doors close. It is just me in the elevator because the majority of my colleagues take the stairs up to the second floor where our work space is located.  I'm huffing and puffing, trying to catch my breath. It is in this ridiculous moment that it suddenly becomes very clear to me that something terrible and serious is going to happen to me in the very near future if I don't make a change now. I think about the conversations I've had over the past few months with my family and a couple of my friends because they were worried that I was going to have a heart attack or stroke because of my weight and poor breathing. I think about how much it would devastate my sons. Boys need their mother and I promised my guys that I'd be around until they were tired of me. Then there was my fiance, Vanilla. Before I met him, he lost 106 lbs. on his own by exercising and reducing his calorie intake. Vanilla loves me no matter what and could care less about the size of my waist because he understands the struggle. Yes, if something happened to me, it would not be a good thing. 

For a couple of years I had been considering having a bariatric procedure performed in order to help me loose weight. I've known a couple of people who had the Gastric Bypass and were able to loose well over 100 lbs each. Both looked like completely different people and have been able to maintain their weight loss. My sister has a friend who had the Gastric Sleeve performed in September and recommended that I give her a call. I did and it turns out she has lost on average 15 lbs. a month and only regretted not having the procedure sooner.  

As if through some type of Divine intervention, the very next night I was paging through a community newspaper and saw that a bariatric group was having an informational seminar about weight loss surgeries the following week. I attended and received lots of information about bariatric procedures. I saw the doctor the next week for a consultation. The doctor scheduled my surgery for April 19th. Before my surgery could be performed, I would have to obtain a series of clearances from other specialists. The doctor and I decided the best fit for me was the Gastric Sleeve because of the amount of weight I needed to loose. The doctor advised me that I needed to loose 150 lbs. and that I was on the verge of becoming super obese. Talk about delusional! I was shocked! I did not realize that I had gotten that out of control. 

You're probably wondering how this could happen. It's easy. All you have to do is not weigh yourself. Not take any photographs of yourself. Promise yourself that you'll start a new diet next week. Repeat these steps tens of hundreds of times and you too will be morbidly obese! 


Up until the week of my surgery, I was seeing specialists and having tests performed for clearances and to determine if I had any additional medical conditions that needed to be treated prior to my procedure. Through this process, I learned that I had Sleep Apnea, Type II Diabetes and a Stomach Ulcer. I had no idea that I had any of these conditions! It was an alarming reality check confirming for me that having the surgery was the right step for me to take.