Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.
I was always a bit heavy, even when I was a kid. I had a round face and kids would tease me and call me names. So even though, looking back and seeing that I was definitely overweight but nowhere near what I *thought* I looked like, I always felt ashamed and embarrassed of being me. As I got older, the weight kept piling on and I tried everything. Every diet and every program and every method. My self esteem was so low that I imagined people laughing at me all the time. I was going to the gym 5 days a week, cardio training as well as working with weights. Everytime I stepped into the gym, I had to talk myself into staying rather than putting my tail between my legs and running for the hills. I felt like everyone was looking at me and judging me. "Who does this fat girl think she is? She has no right to pretend like she works out. She couldnt possibly really be putting any effort into it if she still looks like THAT!" Of course, nobody actually said that, but that's what I imagined they were thinking. I felt uncomfortable on the bus in the mornings on my way to work, it being so crowded and trying to find a seat. I could see people avoid making eye contact with me so that I wouldnt see that unspoken invitation of 'come sit by me' in their eyes. Nobody wanted to sit next to the fat woman. I attended Weight Watchers regularly and would lose about 40 lbs before it slowly started creeping back again. I paid week after week only to be told that I must be doing something wrong or that I couldnt possibly be following the program properly if I was still gaining. The program was designed to work so the problem had to be me.
I even tried a 12 week liquid diet where I lost more than 50 lbs but the second I started eating solid food again, gained it all back and then some. All the way up to 300lbs. The Bariatric Centre finally put me on their waiting list for surgery and I used the year long wait to research and prepare myself for surgery. My mother was my biggest supporter through all this, being obese herself and struggling with it all her life too. She once told me that if she could hope for anything, it was that I didnt have to go through everything she had gone through by being fat. My mother died just days after my surgery and it was the worst time of my life. I am grateful that she hung on to see me home from the hospital and I try to take heart in knowing that her one wish for me came true. I would no longer live that unhealhty and traumatizing life of disease, embarrassment and humiliation by being overweight.
What was (is) the worst thing about being overweight?
The worst thing about being overweight is the lack of self confidence. It holds you back from doing so many things and taking any sort of risks. Not only physical risks, but career related and in your personal life as well. You feel worthless and degraded, a burden on society. In public, you see yourself as being a target for jokes and people's stares. You settle for men who are wrong for you because you feel unworthy of anyone else. You settle on a career behind a desk instead of in the public eye just so you wont be seen. You stay inside and become invisible for all intents and purpose, just to avoid the humiliation of facing the world as a fat person.
If you have had weight loss surgery already, what things do you most enjoy doing now that you weren't able to do before?
Run.
I love to run. I love the feeling of being ABLE to run. I love the peace and beauty that comes from a long run in the woods. I love the feeling in my lungs when they are working hard and the feeling of my heart pumping blood through my body. I love how my muscles ache the next day. When I first started running, my hips hurt and my knees hurt and my lungs felt like they would explode or perhaps catch fire, whichever came first. Now? A "short" run is a 5km run. My first actual race was a fundraiser race called the Santa Shuffle in -19 temperature. It was held at my mother's old workplace and when I came around the finish line, it took every ounce of self control not to burst into tears. She had always been so proud of me when I never felt like I deserved it, I just couldnt even imagine how she would have felt at that moment. I know if she had been alive that she'd have been standing at that finish line cheering me on, regardless of the cold. I imagined she was watching me anyways and just wanted her to know that for the first time, *I* was proud of MYSELF....and to thank her for teaching me that.
Sirene
