Mindy Shepard
Hello to anyone who may stop by! My name is Mindy. I am 24 years old. I am married to a wonderful man named Paul who is so incredibly supportive of me and my dreams to lose weight. He always says that he fell in love with me....not my dress size. I love that man! I have an incredible 4 year old daughter named Haley. I am a stay at home mom and wife. My family has become a larger part of my life then I ever imagined they could be. I always thought that I would be a career woman, but staying at home is more rewarding than any career to me!! I am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to be with my family all the time.
Here is my story....not just the WLS journey that I am embarking on, but the reasons why I want the surgery and everything that has lead me here....
For the last two years my husband and I have struggled with infertility. This can be a very personal and hard to talk about topic when it comes to talking with people who have never experienced it. It was a journey of heartache and constantly crushed hopes. We held strong through it all though. We put our lives on hold. We didn't get ourselves commited to anything that we couldn't easily get out of JUST IN CASE we did get pregnant. Unfortunately, we didn't get pregnant. For 24 months we were hopeful that we would only to have our hopes crushed at the end of every month. Infertility treatments are expensive, intrusive, and very time consuming. When we had tried for 2 years we both talked about how hard it has been. We both needed a break. A long, well deserved break. We talked about things that we would like to do while we took our break. His goal was to go back to school and mine was to get healthy.
My first "get healthy" goal was to lose weight. To reform the habits that I inevitably helped me to gain weight over the years. I want to reshape my attitude about food and exercise and change my life for good! I have been overweight since I was 16 years old. I had a terrible reaction to birth control and my body went into hyper-drive creating extremely highn levels of estrogen. It was explained to me that the estrogen kinda holds on to the fat and doesn't let you lose....or atleast makes it extremely difficult to lose. This may or may not be valid. My infertility treatments did show that I have high estrogen levels even still....nearly 9 years since I last have been on birth control. Apparently, I make my own brand of birth control!!! LOL It sure keeps me from ovulating!! HAHA.
I have tried so many diets over the years...as all of us have. I can't count how many. I can't even remember them all! I just want something to last. Weight loss has never lasted for me. So...here I start my journey towards getting banded.
