Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.
I have been overweight most of my life. The weight started to come on around the age of 8 years old or so. It got to the point that my weight go out of hand. One thing that caused my weight gain is that I have an underactive thyroid. I still have an underactive thyroid to this day. It got to the point my weight got to it highest at 565 pounds. I did see a doctor and a dietitian and my weight start to go down, and I did loss about 150 pounds. It came to a point that I stopped seeing this doctor and dietitian for personal reasons. Years later, I started to see this doctor again and start to see a dietitian again. By this time about 100 of these pounds came back on out of the 150 pounds that I have lost. I know by this time that I needed to have weight loss surgery. So I started my journey in August of 2009 for WLS and I had my surgery in June of 2010. I had the VSG (Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy). The best decision I ever made in my life. The rest is history. Now I am enjoying my life. I got to be doing something everyday. I take each day one at a time.
What was (is) the worst thing about being overweight?
Shopping at a plus size store, not having enough energy, walking and getting tired, having to sit at a table in a restaurant and never in a booth, having man boobs, being made fun of because of my weight, having low-esteem, looks that I got from people, in other words I didn't like my life the way it was.
If you have had weight loss surgery already, what things do you most enjoy doing now that you weren't able to do before?
Since I had the Gastric Sleeve (VSG {Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy}) I'm loving life now as I know it. Doing stuff/things that I haven't done in a very long time let alone doing for the very first time in my life. I love going to stores like Target, K-mart, Sears, etc. to buy regular size clothes. I'm checking off stuff/things on my list that I want to do and enjoying it, I have a long list that I want to check off and I hope I can do everything that I can on the list. In other words I'm enjoying life now since I had the Gastric Sleeve. My heaviest weight was 565 pounds and my pre-op weight two weeks before weight loss surgery was 476.4, as of 06/20/2014 I weigh at 181.5 pounds. Life is great now for me, I'm enjoying everyday of it.
Watson
