I'm A Surgically Altered FREAK!

I've had such a long, long struggle with my weight. Literally my whole life has been focused around gaining or losing weight. It all started in elementary school when my parents put me on amphetamines (diet pills) to lose weight. All I lost was sleep. It was the 1960's and they were all the rage. Yeah, adults might have lost weight on them, it was speed after all!

I joined WW in high school and lost 57 lbs and gained a cute boyfriend. I got to go to the prom and have fun dates and all the trimmings. Yeah! In college I gained about 15 or 20 lbs... then I met my husband and started having babies. On rolled the pounds. I reached a high of 275 at age 23.

In 1983 at the age of 25, I had my stomach stapled. I lost 150 lbs in 10 months. I also lost lean muscle mass, almost all my hair and most of my energy and ambition. I was in poor health at such a young age. I got no nutrition follow up, and there wasn't any internet, so as soon as I could eat, I ate sugar and candy. That went down easiest and that's what I ate.

Over the course of many years I gained all the weight back. When my husband went on the road as a truck driver for 3 weeks at a time (and my son was in Iraq), I consoled myself with ice cream. Not a bowl of ice cream, gallons of ice cream. My weight reached an all time high of 284 lbs.

I tried unsuccessfully for a vertical gastric sleeve. It was impossible due to my previous stapling. I diligently went to the gym and said no to every little thing and got down to 200 lbs. I couldn't get below that number! I counted every calorie here on SparkPeople. I went to the gym and varied my routine. I tried every single tip that anyone gave me, to no avail. Months and months went by without seeing a single pound loss.

I knew I had to do something else when I jumped on the scale for my weigh in and it said I had gained 10 lbs. I was eating 1200 cals per day and burning 700 in cardio at the gym. Unbelievable! I started investigating weight loss surgery again. I found Mexico's president of bariatric surgery, Dr. Aceves.

The good doctor was the one who could give me a VSG. But, as luck would have it, he got inside and looked around and decided that indeed the sleeve was impossible and he could only do the bypass. I woke up to the news that I had a RNY.

My weight on day of surgery was 209.

I'm 5 days post op and already today (6/19/10) I went to the gym and walked on the treadmill! Off to a great start!