Hi Everyone, my name is Toni and I am 49 years old. I have been married to my wonderful husband, DeWayne for 30 years in June and we had two sons, our oldest son drown on the Oregon coast in 2008, he was 1 month shy of 24. Our youngest son is now 25, married and we have two adorable granddaughters (Ages 7 & 2) that we adore. My husband and I are pastors in The Salvation Army and I absolutely love what I do. I love the outdoors, I collect Lighthouses, am a HUGE Portland Trailblazers fan.
I currently live in Centralia, WA - was born and raised in California, but my heart belongs to Oregon.
My weight loss journey is the same as many of you - tried lots of different diets, always with the same results... I would either lose to a certain point then I couldn't lose anymore or I get frustrated with either my progress or the requirements of the diet and it wouldn't be long before I was back to old habits and would gain the weight back and then some. It's funny how it seems to be so hard to lose weight but I can just LOOK at food and gain it.
When I decided to do the surgery I had High Blood pressure, borderline high cholesterol, back, knee and shoulder pain (ended up having to have knee surgery in May of 2012) and had sleep apnea. I was tired of the constant pain I was in, and with my 50th birthday coming in September, I decided that getting older has enough issues of it's own and I didn't need to add so much excess weight to the mix. Basically, I didn't want to be 50 & fat! And the fact that I wanted be around to watch my beautiful granddaughters grow up was the final deciding factor.
When I told my husband that I wanted to do this I was surprised that not only was he extremely supportive, but he had been thinking of it too. so we decided to go on this journey together. I had my sleeve on November 1st, 2012. My husband had his January 3rd. We are both so glad we did it and are enjoying this journey together.