My journey has begun

I've been big all my life, and I'm done with that. I have always struggled, every single second, with food, addiction, depression, self esteem, and body image. I've done a million diets and I've lost hundreds of pounds. Yet here I am. I have given up many times in the past, which usually resulted in gaining a few (10, 30, 60...) pounds. Done! I am done!

On January 29th, 2013 I had a consult with a bariatric surgeon in Eugene. I've been thinking about it for years. A number of doctors brought it up to me. The Husband and I discussed it. He went from extremely opposed to at least willing to attend a consult. I mostly just wanted to learn more about my options. So we went and met Dr. Jessica Folek. I had already attended an info night a few months prior where I met the other surgeon in the practice. It took us another week to finally decide I'd start the program. But I did, and now here I am. On the day of that consult with Dr. Folek, I weighed in at 308.6 lbs. I'm only 5' 5" so this put my BMI over 50. I was big enough to qualify for surgery without any comorbidities. It was the heaviest I'd ever been, and I hoped to never see those numbers again. I'm only 37 and I have so much life ahead of me, but I can't live a lot of it at 50+ BMI.

At the consult I learned about my surgical options and we all settled on the vertical sleeve gastrectomy ("the sleeve" or VSG) as the best choice for me. I learned about the risks of surgery (and my even bigger risks of staying super obese) and about the program I would have to go through to get to surgery. Surgery is NOT the easy way out. It is an intense, sometimes painful, lifelong change of lifestyle. The long term weightloss success rate of surgery is many times higher than that of diet and exercise. But the surgery itself doesn't make you skinny. It gives you a powerful tool, but you have to work for every pound. You still have to exercise and make good food choices. The surgery helps you lose 60-70% of your excess weight, so if you really want to get down to your actual healthy weight, you will have to work exceptionally hard for those last pounds. You will survive on 500 calories a day for months. You'll eat generally no more than 1200 calories a day for the rest of your life. It is not easy.

So in late January I made my decision. I started eating a little better since I needed to lose some weight before surgery. Every surgeon has different pre-op, post-op, and nutrition requirements. I think my surgeons are somewhere in the middle of the range in terms of conservativeness. My insurance required I lose 5% of my body weight before they would approve the surgery. This was around 16 pounds for me. Dr. Folek said she wanted to see me lose 20. So I cut out the chocolate cold turkey, and stopped stuffing myself. I started to go for more walks and I went hunting for a healthier me.