“It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
Ursula Le Guin
I never thought this story would be so difficult to write. It has been 8 1/2 years since I have been at my highest weight yet it seems like a lifetime ago. I have struggled with my weight since I was a little girl.
I have been on so many diets I have lost count. I have been on every diet you can name. Looking at my before picture brings back many emotions. I was a different person back then. I had so much I wanted to do but felt held down by my size. It wasn’t that I did not want to lose weight, or didn’t try to lose it. It was that I did not know how and I hurt… I hurt all the time. It was crippling me. I decided to do something drastic. I had weight loss surgery in August 2003.
At that time, I kept a little blog… looking back I wish I had written more but I was reborn. I was getting my life back as the pounds were shedding off and for the first time in a LONG time I was enjoying life again. If you want to read some of the beginning stages I went through with the surgery you can go here. But this post is not about a weight loss surgery.
I would however like to share a little excerpt from it:
10/8/03: Things I want to do:
-Crossed legs comfortably
-Sit in EVERY chair comfortably
-Fit in Air Plane seat belts
-Fit in sisters clothes
-Weigh less than my boyfriend
-Ride on a rollercoaster
-Sky dive
-Wear a skirt with knee high boots
-Walk up a flight of stairs without having to stop to catch my breath
-Wear jeans
-Go up in the Arch (too afraid now I wont fit in the ride to the top)
-Wear a two piece (wow think that will ever happen?)
Some of the little things we take for granted (even me now) a person extremely overweight worries about on a daily basis.
A year after my surgery I got married, 3 months after that I was pregnant with my first baby. (the picture on the right was taken right before I had gotten pregnant) As you can imagine being a pregnant woman, all diets are out the window. You might ask… Well since you had weight loss surgery aren’t you limited to the amount of food you can eat? Not quite. After awhile your stomach starts to expand, you can eat like a “normal” person once again and you can eat the foods you loved once again without getting sick. You can gain weight. You can even gain ALL of your weight back.
And I did gain weight… especially after having TWO children. I gain back almost ALL of the weight I had lost. I was scared. I was desperate. I did more extreme things to lose the weight. Even trying such diets as the HCG diet. (I will talk more about this diet in upcoming posts)
This is a picture of before the HCG diet and after. Sure this diet worked… but once I had gotten off the HCG…. I started to gain the weight right back again.
Desperate once again I started looking for solutions. And then… June 2011 there was another turning point in my journey to weight loss. I was introduced to a place called Complete Fitness Results. I had been to “gyms” before but this place was different. This place really gave me a love for exercise. As I felt my body start to change, felt stronger, more energy… my WANT to eat right came with it. Since I have started there I have lost around 25 pounds (mostly because I waited awhile before I started to eat right haha). There is still around 60 pounds I want to lose… the difference now then before? I am FINALLY doing it right. And so my journey continues….
“If you are facing the right direction, all you have to do is keep on walking.”
-Buddist saying
Gastric Bypass Surgery Things You Don't hear: Years After Gastric Bypass
Sunday 16th of October 2016
[…] with my weight loss journey, you can see some before and after photos and read more about it here. It’s been almost 10 years since I had gastric bypass surgery. I had a Roux-en-Y gastric […]
Sam Athelete
Thursday 9th of January 2014
Losing weight shouldn't be as hard as many people try to make it. People who are desperate to achieve weight loss are often prone to take more risks. The only reason most people fail in their fitness goals is that they have good intentions at first to adopt a new lifestyle, yet after a few weeks or months, they abandon their good intentions and slip right back into their old bad habits that gave them the excess body fat in the first place.
Cheridene Boucher
Tuesday 3rd of December 2013
You are a great source of inspiration!!