This is going to be long. TL;DR at the bottom.
I made an account 8 years ago just to post in this sub. At the time, I was starting ANOTHER attempt at weight loss. Everyone here was super helpful and supportive (and still are!) but, like the myriad attempts before that one failed and I gained all the weight back and then some. And again. And again. I tried Keto, South Beach, IF, CICO, IIFYM, you name it. They all worked, initially. But then the hunger takes over. It always takes over. After careful logging and studying my past attempts, it seems that whenever I hit a certain scale weight, the inevitable rebound would begin. it was like stretching a rubber band - you hit a certain tension point and it just snaps back the other way. At a certain weight, food would be all I thought about from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. My brain was sending every panic signal it could telling me I was starving and needed to constantly eat or I would die. I knew I wouldn't literally die, but nothing turned the cravings off. I had two settings: Hungry and Not-so-but-still-a-little-Hungry. Weight comes off, The Hunger surges, weight goes on. Rinse and repeat for 5 more years.
Wasn't this supposed to be a "reclaim" post? Yes, yes, I'm getting to that.
I made the decision 2 years ago to see specialists and get help. Took nutrition classes, therapy, did sleep studies, hormone levels, tried prescription weight loss meds, avoidance diets, all with moderate but never long lasting success. 8 months ago a co-worker around my age and close to my weight (then) hit me up on a private zoom and laid out his admission to having recently had a gastric sleeve procedure. He talked to me for 30 minutes and it might as well have been a conversation with my own brain. The highs, the lows, the attempts, the fads, the pills, the depression, the specialists, everything. At the end of all of it, he turned his camera on and asked me if I could notice a difference after 3 months (back in June 2020) post surgery and I was FLOORED. He looked great! He referred me to his doc and told me to at least have the conversation (I had mentioned in the past that I wanted to avoid WLS if possible) if not for me, then for my 2 kids (age 3 and 1). That he had made the decision to give himself a shot at a longer life than his dad and grandpa had (both died in their 50s from obesity related issues) and that hit me hard. I was on that path. I thought of my kids' future and I called my primary and was surprised to find she was enthusiastically supportive and wrote the referral right over the phone and sent it to my email.
I made the appt back in October, met with the team at the hospital once in person and once online, and joined the program. I have been following all the steps since. Counseling (again), Nutrition Classes (again), Sleep Study (again), hormone panels (again), Support Group, and exercise plan. I had done most of these things before, but this time was at an actual bariatric center and not a strip mall weight loss management place (nothing against them, they were lovely people, all of them). I completed my last online nutrition class yesterday. I have been attending a support group that hosts both pre and post-op bariatric surgery patients for months now. I have one last zoom session with the clinical psychologist left and then I'm ready for scheduling the pre-op physicals and such. It's real. I'm going through with it. I'll be 44 in a month and have 2 kids under 4. I want to be around for their graduations and if I'm lucky enough, weddings and grandkids and such. I am taking my life back from obesity, come hell or high water.
At first I felt great shame. I felt that even meeting with the bariatric surgeon was a failure in itself and that I was a failure for not being able to succeed where so many others before me had. But I'm not other people. I'm me. I'm responsible for me (and my kids, duh) and comparison is the enemy of progress. The psych counseling and support groups have done wonders for my mental health and the nutrition classes are helping me make preparations and better overall choices. I'm down 30 lbs from my heaviest weight of 386 and hope to be another 5-10lbs more down before I schedule my surgery. I am lucky to have 3 co-workers in my department that have all had this same surgery in the last 18 months, all with great success, who are all very supportive and answer all my questions and concerns, and even reach out to check in on me! I can't stress how important support is in ANY plan.
Anyone considering it should know up front, it's not easy. It's not a quick fix. It is a life altering decision that will change the way you eat/drink/live for the rest of your life and you need to know those things up front. What I used to consider shameful, what I thought was a ''cop out" or a "quick fix" turned out to be anything but. It's a serious decision that takes effort and lifetime of change and hard work, both physically and mentally. Thankfully, I've never been afraid of the work and now I'm looking forward to the future with optimism.
It's been a long 8 years from creating this account to here and I genuinely appreciate all of you who extend your seemingly inexhaustible support to others on this site.
TL;DR, yo-yoed for 20 years, got therapy, got counseling, saw a bariatric surgeon, am having surgery.
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