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I had a moment this morning where I both laughed and cried over probably THE craziest thing. As I walk to my bathroom from the living room, I can see myself in the bathroom mirror. I caught a glimpse in the mirror and stopped for a second, looking back at the reflection. For the first time in my 25 years of life, I said to myself "Damn, I'm looking good." Then followed a happy smile with some tears of joy.
 
I know I have a LONGGGGG way to go but am happy with the progress thus far. This Thursday marks my one month anniversary and I would love to hit a goal of 50 pounds lost. The weight loss includes what I lost on my own prior to the pre-op diet, the pre-op diet and post-op diet.
 
Thanks, Mr. Sleevie

So I thought I'd begin my blog by talking about what my life was like leading up to the surgery. My story is probably quite similar to many of yours. I have been overweight since I hit puberty at age 11. In that same year I was molested by someone I trusted and there was never any resolution. All of that coupled with the fact that my family (especially the southern - Mississippi family) did not have any restrictions on how much or what we ate, I was doomed from the start. I ate my way through middle school and high school. I was always the fat kid; the girl picked last and picked on. During this time, I moved around a lot. My mom and stepdad (who raised me) were getting divorced, my mom was on Meth, and life at home was hard so I tried living with family in Montana, Oregon, and Mississippi. And through it all I ate.
 
High school was particularly troubling. I never had a boyfriend; I was ostracized by the other students at school. I was very unpopular due to my weight. I went to my prom...alone. All I wanted was to be accepted, but no one could see past the fat. My one saving grace was that I was smart and graduated with honors. I was now living in Las Vegas with my Step Dad Brian (who raised me and who I consider to be my Dad). He encouraged me to eat better, but after years of overeating, it was easier said than done. College made it worse. I started at community college and worked a full time job at the same time. Needless to say, my eating habits took a dive in college due to my busy and stressful schedule. I had moved out, took on a second job, and transferred to the university. In my desperation and loneliness, I started seeing a married man (one of the single biggest regrets I have in my life).
 
After college, I got a job working for the local cable company, but always felt like an outcast because of my weight which had spiked at 255. Then my doctor turned me on to South Beach. At first it worked great! I lost nearly 65 pounds. I started feeling better...but as with every diet I tried, I started to plateau, got frustrated and the rate of loss, and fell back into poor eating habits. To make matters worse, during the plateau I was out of work for 4 months due to the recession and gained all the weight I had lost back and then some.
 
I finally found a new job in HR at one of the casinos and tried to get back on track with healthy eating. I gave up eating from any restaurant with a drive through and gave up drinking soda. It worked at first and I got back down to 255, but it was short lived. My office was right across from the employee dining room and all the free lattes I could drink and brownies I could eat. In the course of a year I ballooned up to 268 pounds. My company started to offer onsite weight watchers programs so I joined up with my best friend of 14 years and we started to lose weight. She lost 60 pounds, I lost 10. Frustrating right? So I went back to good old South Beach which I had success on before. I didn't lose more than 20 pounds. I was getting very down and for a time completely gave up on myself. I started eating fast food and drinking soda again. I figured that I was one of those people who couldn't lose weight and why bother fighting it.
 
I had flirted with the idea of weight loss surgery for about 8 years up to this point but always had a reason why not to do it. Then I had 2 major wake up calls, the first is I developed sleep apnea as a result of my weight. If you have ever had this you know how terrifying it can be to be jolted awake in the ***ht, heart pounding, gasping for breath. My doctor said the only way to get rid of it was to lose weight. The second wake up call came when I had an appointment with my OB GYN. My period had gone from a 4 day light flow to a 30+ day light, then heavy, then light flow. As it turned out I had developed menorrhagia. To top it off, my ovaries had stopped regularly producing an egg. To put it bluntly, my weight was making me unable to have children. I never realized how much I wanted kids until I was told I couldn't have them...unless I lost weight.
 
My weight had skyrocketed to 285 pounds and I knew that if I didn't make a PERMANENT change that my life would be short and unhappy. Enough was enough. I started getting serious about the surgery option and doing a lot of research. Then after a year, I had sleeve surgery on July 10, 2012. It was time for a change. I chose the sleeve over the band because I knew myself well enough to know that I would probably chicken out at some point and have the band removed and balloon right back up to where I had been before. With the sleeve, I took that option away. I needed something permanent! I now have 2 birthdays, the day I was brought into this world, and the day my new life began…July 10th, 2012.

I've decided that I was going to attempt to start a blog to use as a sort of open online journal / diary of how I got here and what I'm doing or not doing to contribute to my weight loss success or lack thereof.
If this helps anyone who takes the time to read it, great. Some of you might find it a good read or facinating, or humorous at times or maybe inspirational or a source of motivation, while others might find it to be a boring bunch of crap. Either way is fine with me.
I guess if I'm going to do this, I might as well start at the beginning, or at least what I consider to be the beginning.
I was born and raised in Connecticut in an Italian household where food was more than just sustanence, it was a means of showing love, gratitude, hospitality and probably a million other things. As soon as you walked in the door, my grandmother would see that as a signal to head for the fridge to find something, anything....even leftovers to spring on you. And God help you if you said no thank you or "I'm not hungry".
To Gram (as I called her) everyone was ALWAYS hungry, or was supposed to be! If you were a friend, she'd just ignore you as she was preparing something for you to eat (I always thought she did this because if you said you didn't want anything, she figured you just didn't know what you were talking about....of course you wanted to eat!) and if you were family, you might get a slap across the back of the head, followed by a meal in front of you and a "shuddup and eat". One thing which we seemed to always have was gravy (we NEVER called it sauce) and meatballs, whether fresh made, which was every Sunday, or leftover. Sadly, Gram passed away in 1984 at 76 years old, but I swear to this day I have never tasted better meatballs by anyone, including myself, who was taught by her how to make them, or any restaurant EVER!
She even taught me how to make homemade pasta, including ravioli, from scratch. I can remember clearly the day before Easter in 1983. We were in her kitchen until 2 in the morning making dough, rolling dough, making the ricotta filling and making the ravioli and cavitelli for tomorrows Easter dinner. We'd lay them out on a sheet on her bed to dry so we could cook them the next afternoon. I was the one grandson (she had 6 of us who all lived either on the same street or around the corner....a REAL Italian neighboorhood!) who took an interest in how she made stuff, and to her I was gonna be the one who took over after she couldn't do it anymore. Little did we know, she would sadly be gone the following year.
Let me say here, even though I haven't yet mentioned my mother, she was no slouch when it came to cooking either....after all, she was Grams daughter and she was right in there with us most of the time, and her "gravy" was the best!
My mother and father (he was Irish) were divorced when I was 8 and my sister was 2, and we were raised by my mom and Gram. I don't think there was any joint custody in those days...the kids always went with the mother and personally, I am glad it was that way.
So, as I mentioned earlier, we had relatives all around us so no matter whose house you went to, there was usually something waiting for you to fill your face with. If I went around the block to my aunt's house to see if my cousins could come out and play, the usual answer was, "Sure, but get in here and eat something first".
As a teenager, our Sunday routine was 9 o'clock mass, then home for some fried meatballs (they were always fried in olive oil, never baked) of which a 1/2 dozen or so were left out for us while the rest went straight from the frying pan to the now boiling pot of gravy to finish cooking. Some already browned Italian sausage (or sau-seege) as she called it was also left out. Me and usually one of my cousins would wolf those down with a couple of cups of coffee before heading out to the Italian bakery for some fresh Italian bread and grinder rolls. We loved this because the bread and grinders were always right out of the oven! We didn't even mind standing in the line that formed outside the bakery and sometimes halfway down the street because we could smell the bread and socialize with the other kids and neighbors who were in line also. (It wasn't just OUR Sunday ritual!)
Then, after a stop at the Italian import store for some pepperoni, cappicola, provolone and whatever else Gram, my mother and aunt wanted we'd head back home where we would immediately start tearing off hunks of that fresh Italian bread and dipping them in the gravy until we either got yelled at for almost eating all the bread (after all, it was for Sunday dinner for the family) or chased out of the house by Gram or my mother wielding a wooden spoon at us like it was a broadsword.
There was one thing about my childhood which wasn't so idyllic as far as food and eating go. There were a few things I wasn't particularly crazy for like homemade soup, canned asparagus, and over easy eggs for example. I can remember being around 10 or 11 years old, and perhaps younger when I was "forced" to eat that stuff. I'm 56 now so we're talking about the early to mid 1960's here, in a household where you ate what was put in front of you. We were by no means even middle class then so the menu wasn't very diverse and you didn't waste food because; one, we didn't have the money to cater to everyones particular tastes and two, according to them wasting food is a sin.
So, not only did I have to eat this stuff (funny how in later years I grew to love homemade soup, grilled or sauteed asparagus and eggs!) but I had to finish everything in my bowl or on my plate. As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a little timer on the kitchen stove which they would set if I seemed to be stalling with my food. If that timer went off and I wasn't finished, they would REFILL MY PLATE AGAIN!
Now, on this point I want to be clear. This wasn't done out of any type of abusive mean behavior, it was because they wanted to make sure I ate because believe it or not, I was a skinny kid. But this instilled 2 things in me which would become demons of mine later in life:
1. Eat everything on your plate.
2. Eat it fast.
 
Next Week - Teens and 20's - Sports, Late Night Eating and a Wife

I have a few things to get off of my chest today not to mention the 150 lbs. that I need to lose. As I sit here at my window seat desk, I can see my reflection staring back at me. It disgusts me to see the rolls of fat as I sit crunched in this office chair. My uniform shirts seem to shrink even though I wash them in cold water and hang them to dry. I have my fan blowing on my face because it is hot, (105-108 heat index today) but I would rather put a jacket on to cover up the rolls of fat because I don't want anyone seeing them. Like people can't look at me with or without a jacket and tell that I am morbidly obese right? Anyway, I just want to sneeze, blink or click my heals together and the weight be gone. I failed to mention that another thing that I am constantly worrying about while I sit in my chair at work. There are offic chairs for normal size people and office chairs for fat people. So who wants to seriously go to the office supply purchasing agent and say "I need a fat persons chair"? Not me. One day while sitting here I heard a loud pop. I instantly jumped out of my chair and examined it. Everything looked fine so I gently sat my large ass on the edge of the chair unsure of what had just happened. Suddenly, a loud noise that sounded like a gun shot went off drawing everyones attention to me ( I sit in a cube with 7 other people and none of them are FAT! I jumped up out of the chair and the spring mechanism had broken, stripped, gave out or just decided that it couldn't take my fat ass anymore . Oh yeah, I forgot to add that this chair was only 9 months old. So, daily I hold my breath and hope that it doesn't happen again before I can get this weight off. I am sure that no one else has ever had anything like this happen to them, RIGHT? : )

You have to admit we have been through some funny stuff. There are all kinds of indignities to being overweight. But the stuff we have gone through in our VSG journey - all in the name of beauty - are above and beyond the norm.
 
I will do an entire post on the rope-down-the-nose test, but that was one of the weirdest things I have ever had to do. And I am convinced that the doctor knew what he was doing when he picked a cute, incredibly personable young lady for that job. 'Cause I'll tell you one thing, if she was not sweet, funny and personable, I would have strangled her with my slime covered nose rope. BLECH.
 
Or when the nurse, in getting me up to walk around the hospital floor at 10:30 at night was having to fix my gown. I do not know what she was doing back there but (no pun intended) it seemed to take a long time and my fanny was cold.
 
So, I will post here, as I am not sure that my silly humor is always appreciated by unsuspecting readers when I reply on the various forums.