Rocky Alexander has always had a love for cooking. The meals that he would prepare were absolutely delicious but extremely high in calories, fats, and sugars. He loved cooking so much that he would even film fun little cooking segments with his 5-year-old daughter just for fun.
Rocky found himself in a predicament when his weight started impacting his health. At his highest weight of 363 pounds, he was struggling with type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and a clogged artery. Concerned for his health, Rocky's endocrinologist told him about surgical options for weight loss (WLS).
Rocky had bariatric surgery on April 28th, 2014 and has lost a total of 147 pounds. One day, Rocky's daughter, asked him why they no longer played kitchen and he explained to her that he needed to eat healthy foods and could no longer make the recipes that he once did. His daughter replied with, "why don't you become a health chef!"
That heartfelt conversation he had with his daughter changed his life and inspired Rocky to get back into the kitchen, as well as to create a small Facebook group called "Rock's Kitchen". That small group started with about 50 people and has now transformed into a vibrant support group of almost 30,000 people.
The central principles of the group are:
- Believing in yourself
- Pushing yourself
- Never lying to yourself
- And understanding what you are eating
Rocky has traveled the country giving cooking demonstrations as well as motivational speeches about his surgery. His focus is to remove the stigma that seems to hang over bariatric patients, the guilt of "taking the easy way out".
"I stand proud of this procedure and tell everyone I come into contact with that I have had VSG."
