First, the pictures:
I started this off in December of last year at about 350lbs. My goal is to at least get to the lowest I've been in my adult life of 240.
But I had done this journey about 8 years ago, when I went from 340 to 240 through working out and changing eating habits. But even maintaining that weight for over a year, I was always starving. I was eating plenty of clean and lean protein, green vegetables, and plenty of food. But I always found myself hungry, no matter how much I ate.
So I talked to my doctor, who referred me to a bariatric team, who determined that surgery might be the best course of action for me. So I worked with them for 6 months to get a gastric sleeve, returning to my original eating habits of lean protein, clean veggies, low carbs, and high cardio workouts (Which I had already been doing for about a year anyways, just upped it even more). Before the surgery, I had went from 350-315. Post surgery, I'm now at 277 today.
I was against surgery for my entire life, but I decided to talk with the bariatric team since my doctor referred me to them. And they explained why I was so hungry even when I was maintaining my weight. A lifetime of overeating had stretched my stomach out. And because of that, there are hormones in your stomach that tell you how hungry you should be. And if your stomach gets too stretched out for decades of overeating, it can cause an imbalance.
So taking out a portion of the stomach will rebalance it.
Now let me be clear: I am not recommending weight loss surgery. I would be losing this weight without the surgery just fine, and that's also what I needed to prove to the team. This surgery is NOT to help me lose weight. It's to help me maintain it after I've lost my weight. It's to stop me from being so hungry, even when I'm maintaining my weight and eating healthy. It's to bring me back to a level of normalcy after about 30 years of overeating.
I want to be very clear: Weight loss surgery is not a solution. My doctor heard my problems, what I've tried before, and knew I could lose weight fine. I needed help with maintaining, and that's why he sent me to a bariatric team. This is not a post recommending surgery, and surgery should not be taken lightly. Post-surgery was hell for over a month. I got new problems that I didn't have before, and I was completely miserable. It's getting better now, but it can cause some deep depression if you're not careful as well, which is why they assign you a psychiatrist before surgery.
Ultimately, what helped me lose weight was taking the eating habits they've taught me, and applying it to my healthy eating habits. They taught me to slow HEAVILY down when eating. They taught me NOT to drink water when eating and waiting 30 minutes before drinking again (Drinking will cause food to absorb the water, and stretch your stomach). They taught me ways to stop myself from eating too much and too quickly (I now place my plate out of view. I've found that having food out of sight makes me slow down my eating considerably, since it's not smack in my face and constantly drawing my attention).
This ended up being a lot longer than I wanted it to be. But I felt like there was no way to really explain how WLS is not a solution without delving into why. And I wanted to be absolutely sure that nobody thought that I was recommending WLS. I'm not. The only person who should be recommending that to you is your doctor, and only if he determines that it's what you should pursue. Nobody else.
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