I Lost 201 Pounds, but I Didn't Get Healthy

When I had my roux-n-y gastric bypass surgery in 2005, my goal was to lose weight. Specifically, I wanted to lose 225 pounds.

At just over five feet tall and 343 pounds, I was super morbidly obese. Those are the facts, but what is also true is that my weight has been the bane of my existence for my entire life. Or, at least, since I was about three years old, when I first realized that my weight fell on the less socially “acceptable” end of the spectrum.

So, yes, weight loss was the goal I set for myself, but what I see now is that all I really wanted was to slip into the spectrum of acceptability enjoyed by women who wear single digit jeans. It was about fitting in. It was about not standing out. It was about being “normal.”

At no point was it ever really about being healthy.

In the two years after my surgery, I dedicated my days to working out and eating as little as possible. Ultimately, I lost 201 pounds. It wasn’t the hoped for 225, but I was a size eight - victory, right?

Not exactly. Even at a size eight, I struggled with body acceptance. I still felt like a fish out of water and worse, I couldn’t seem to sync up with the woman in the mirror. I had a new body, but I didn’t feel like “me” anymore.

And worse still, I didn’t feel healthy. Sure, I’d lost 200 pounds. By all the usual measures (and certainly by societal expectations), I was “cured,” but I felt sick. My energy was low, my sleep was all over the place, and I was incredibly frustrated by a diet that seemed barely sustainable for any length of time.

That diet piece was my fault, of course. So determined to lose the weight, I worked hard to hit my daily protein goal, even if that meant I consumed hard boiled eggs three times a day and literally nothing else. For much of the past 11 years since my surgery, I’ve been riding a roller coaster. I’ve lost and gained weight over and over, the pendulum swinging back and forth and my emotions following. I have suffered serious vitamin deficiencies and still struggle to disconnect guilt from the simple act of eating. In this state of mind, it’s been easy for me to sacrifice overall well being for short-term gain, or in my case, loss.

Despite the fact that I didn’t really feel that great, it still took a while to realize why. When weight loss was the goal, I needed only to focus on the aspects of my new life that supported it: protein, calorie counting, and obsessive exercise.

Health has been the missing piece all along.

Focusing on my health has required a total turnabout. It means that I’ve had to reevaluate my goals. I’d lived so much of my life with oversimplified ideals: thin equals good, fat equals bad. The reality is more complex, as it so often is.

Looking at my journey over the past decade-plus, I can see the fallout from my terrible mentality of weight loss at any cost. But, at what cost really? At the cost of my sanity? At the cost of my self-esteem? At the cost of my health?

People say you have nothing if you don’t have your health, and as I get older, that truth can no longer be ignored.

Today, I am 89 pounds heavier than my lowest post-op weight. Typing those words makes the old me cringe… I feel waves of embarrassment, shame, anger, frustration, and the ever useless guilt.

The new part of me, the one I am working to healthfully feed mind, body, and soul, feels hope. I feel hope because I remember the young woman that weighed 138 pounds, and I know that I was less healthy standing on that scale back then than I am today in my double digit jeans. This new woman I see in the mirror still wants to lose weight, but as a byproduct of a healthy life.

Health has become my personal mission. I wasted a lot of time hating myself to obesity and then hating myself thin. My plan now is to love myself healthy. To do all that I do in the pursuit of weight loss and health with kindness to the woman in the mirror, no matter how she looks.

If any of what I’ve written resonates, I hope you too can break free. My wish for you is that as you walk your own path, you keep your eyes trained on your health goals and not simply on the scale.