Dimples1969

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I guess I am a pretty typical story, my entire life I have been battling my weight.  I was on my first diet, that I can remember at the age of nine.  I was always very active and healthy, but big; you know the "healthy as a horse" body type? The "pretty chubby girl", the one that would be stunning if she could just lose 60 lbs..That was the way everyone described me, but it never made me sad or depressed, or kept me from dating or having friends, or having such bad pain that I just didn't want to do anything but stay home. I was 21 when I had my first son, I gained 100lbs.. Even though I breast fed, I didn't lose the weight after I had my son. When he was around 8 yrs old or so, I heard about a program called Optifast, it was supervised through my local hospital and I decided after 8 yrs of gaining and losing 20-40 lbs and trying every diet I heard about, just to regain and fail,   I would get on this program and hoped that because it  was "doctor supervised"  it would work for me. After 5 months I had lost 70lbs and was looking and feeling great.. the bad thing was, I was living on 500-600 calories a day and once I was off the shakes and back on "real" food, I started to gain weight back immediately.. Within a few years of excising and struggling,  I was up to being 80 lbs overweight again. When I became pregnant with my second son,  I gained another 70 lbs on top of where I was.. breast fed again.. still lost nothing, and after I stopped breast feeding, I found I still had a huge appetite, my boys were 10 and 11lbs and they were born eating 6-8 ozs of breast milk per feeding, it was all supply and demand and I lived on yogurt, milk, dairy good carbs and lean meats.. but it just seemed anything over  5-600 calories would just be stored, I was not able to lose weight because I was getting too many calories. I was just so hungry all the time and it just didn't matter that I made good choices, I just could get any weight off.. I really think Optifast slowed my metabolism to such a slow rate, that even years later, anything over 600 calories was just stored as fat. I knew the only way to get the weight off was to get back down to 600 or so calories a day, but on my own it was impossible.. I just would be miserable and hungry all day.  A few friends of mine had Lap Band and Gastric Bypass, so I decided to see if I could qualify under my medical insurance for the surgery and I did, it took 6 months and tons of test and doctor visits; but I was approved. I went through with Gastric Bypass on 9/9/08 and I have lost 50 lbs in 3 months.. I would love to lose 80 lbs more.. I guess time will tell.. but I am hopeful.  I am also grateful to be losing again at all because I truly thought I would be trapped as a M/O person for the rest of my life, which was a sad and painful existence, being "chubby" was not horrible, but being M/O was just terrible, when people are making fun of you publicly to your face almost daily; it really puts things in perspective. It isn't as if I agree with how society values people, especially when judged on visuals alone, but  I was placed in a genre that was very isolating and a place I didn't like nor wish to ever be again.  Thankfully, this is a very easy tool for me to use.. I don't feel like I am starving or deprived and because I get to eat until I feel full, I am not miserable.  I think this is what I needed to get myself where I would like to be in life, which is at a healthy weight and able to be active and pain free. Would I do this surgery again? In a heart beat.. it is a lot easier and cheaper than any other program that I have ever been a part of, and that has been many, many, many programs..   This is the first life style change that I have ever made that makes me feel better on every level;  physically and mentally I know I am becoming the best I can be..