My Story...

Technically, I haven’t been overweight my entire life, in fact between me and my siblings I had the lowest birth weight.  That didn’t last long, my sister has always done a pretty good job of taking care of herself and my brother is one of those beanpole skinny types with a metabolism blessed by the gods. 

I have, however, been overweight all of my adult life. I don’t know what changed but beginning of third grade I was skinny and one of the fastest runners in my grade, by the end of fourth grade I was one of the slowest 

and the brunt of many “chubby’ jokes (children can be so mean).

To be honest, while I have been overweight all my adult life, I have only been “morbidly obese” for about 12 years, in fact my senior year of high school I briefly got down to what was almost a healthy weight.

I have been on a bunch of different diets (like most obese people) I have tried Weight watchers, Jenny Craig, Atkins, Jared’s Subway diet, Metabolife, Slimfast, (and several others), I was even under a doctor’s care for weight loss for about a year and a half (calorie counting and exercise).

As far as the science goes for each of them; they all work to some degree and I usually lost weight on them.  The science has almost never been the problem (except maybe Slimfast, which made me sick). The problem with them is that none of them are really designed for the morbidly obese who need to lose over 100 pounds.  Sure every diet program has its success stories, and they end up being the poster children of each diet.  Statistically none of them really work unless you need to lose 20-50 pounds, in fact they have done studies and in the morbidly obese over a 5 year period 95-99% end up losing less than 50 pounds and gain all of it (usually more) by the end of the five years.

That is what happened to me time after time I would lose 40-50 pounds (65 once) then gain it all back and then some and the cycle would start over.

Now here I am 36 years old, 420 pounds, and several co morbidities, including nearly constant sore knees and ankles, lower back pain, obstructive sleep apnea, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

I also have a lot to live for. I got married just over a year ago to the love of my life and want to have a long happy life with her.  We also plan on having children and I want to be around for them as well. So I have decided to do something about it.

I have decided to have bariatric surgery, specifically a roux en-y gastric bypass…

Obviously I have also decided to do a blog to share my experiences as I get ready for , go thru, and adjust to life after my gastric bypass surgery...stay tuned!