Allegra Cole

The low point for me was being hoisted into some bariatric scale contraption that had to lift me into the air off the hospital bed to take my weight because the bed wouldn't register my weight. I had an incision from my sternum to my pelvic bone and it was extremely painful to be moved. On top of that I was already on a hard bed made for patients over 400 lbs. I was never comfortable since there was no padding. I weighed in at 402 lbs. It would be a year and a few months before I had my surgery but the feeling I had that day stays with me. I felt like I was being moved like cattle for a weigh-in. It was so humiliating.

Hi! I am single female, just turned 41 two weeks ago with a daughter who will be 20 years old next month. I have been a Social Worker for nearly 20 years but have been home for 4 years after massive emergency surgery where I almost died. I was a serious workaholic (80 - 100 hrs/wk) and this change of pace has been quite an adjustment for me but I have learned to stop and appreciate the small things in life. I have been significantly overweight since my mid-20's lingering around 270 lbs at 5'3" but over the years I put on weight, perhaps 10 lbs per year. I reached my high point 402 lbs in September 2012 and 'sort of' tried dieting and lost about 20 lbs. I have sleep apnea and high blood pressure but in July 2013 are started testing as pre-diabetes with sugar levels of (105). It was enough for me to be approved for surgery by November. My surgery date at 368 lbs was December 2, 2013 where I had the VSG in New Jersey. I lost a good portion of my intestines in the first surgery in 2010 so the gastric bypass wasn't really an option for me despite my weight and I really did not want to do that one. I have a 2 year old (this month) chihuahua/jack russell mix named Sheldon (after The Big Bang Theory) He is quite the character and keeps me company. I got him as soon as my prolonged hospital stays came to an end because I had a hard time staying home without a nurse being there. I love to read, murder mysteries are my favorite especially those told from the crime/forensic science perspective. Some of my favorite authors include Patricia Cornwell, Jonathan Kellerman, Tami Hoag, James Patterson, etc. I absolutely love the classics Jane Austen - who I can read over and over again, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, just to name a few. I like watching movies romantic comedies, tear jerkers, drama, comedy, action. I like going to the movie theater but I can watch them at home too. Clearly I have too much time on my hands. I used to fill my days writing but I stopped a few months ago and plan to start again. It was cathartic. Of course there is the Internet. I like Facebook. I don't post a lot of personal stuff there but I have friends who love to and it is always interesting to read the morning posts. I walk every day with my dog despite the fact that I am struggling right now with eating. At four months post op, I have experienced a tremendous amount of early success and I need to get my focus back. I am now 295 lbs but I was as low as 281 lbs in February 2014 but I let my eating get out of control and regained some of my weight. Still I look at my before picture at 368 lbs and realize I still nearly lost an entire person so I have to focus on the small things for now. I look at my face in the mirror and I actually have a chin. It's weird. I actually am confident enough to put on a pair of jeans for the first time in 20 years so that is really big for me. My daughter came home from college for spring break and couldn't stop staring at me in those jeans, neither could her dad. I just laughed. They were both happy for me and my success since they hadn't seen me in months. I just recommitted to this journey yesterday after a nearly two month hiatus due to relationship problems. Now that is over and I can regain perspective on what is important. I feel like I am being reborn yet again.

I marked the date of my last post January 21, 2014 4:31 am "400 lbs of Pain." I posted a couple of follow-up responses after that and then it happened. By mid-February I dropped down to 281. I still remember seeing the scale and thinking 'Wow, I never thought I'd be under 300 lbs again.' Nearly 100 lbs lighter something happened to me...I met and began dating someone on January 24, 2014. Having lost weight and now receiving attention, I was way out of my comfort zone and I guess I just went for the first person who smiled at me. She wined and dined me for sure and I started eating, not large amounts but bad for me, off the diet food and alcohol which is a complete no-no. I started drinking sweet beverages. I had drank NOTHING but Water for months and here I was with sweets. I didn't stop with alcohol, I ate Desserts too. My food monster was back and the more time that passed the bigger that monster raged his head. The problem for me was and I say WAS because I ended the relationship last night, she IS an alcoholic and food addict. Deep down inside I knew it from the beginning but I think I was drawn to her addiction. She was normal sized and ate much much more food than I could and I loved watching her eat. She even ate the food I couldn't eat. My appetite grew bigger as time went on and I found myself getting hungry more often and requiring more food. The problem with being in a relationship with this particular alcoholic is she was increasingly verbally and emotionally abusive. For the past 5 weeks, she broke up with me every Saturday after getting drunk Friday night and then begged me to take her back the next day. Then she would take me out to eat. This weekend was no different, except I was different. Something, somewhere deep inside me had changed and I decided no more. She started her drunken rampage early and by nightfall I ended the relationship and stopped taking her calls. During the past 2 weeks I started throwing up again. I eat too much and it immediately comes back up. I am now 295 lbs and I need to get my eating under control and back on my diet immediately! The idea of being 300 lbs again scares the hell out of me. I don't know how to start over or what my diet was. All of this rich food I have been eating made me forget I even had surgery and am not supposed to eat like everyone else. I need to remember why I started all of this in the first place so I went back and read my post from January 21st. Food was just a chore then and I was losing weight really fast but then I was side tracked and lost my way. I am afraid I stretched my stomach to an extent. My next appointment is not until June. I don't know what to do. Has anyone stopped their diet and had to start again? For how long? Any help or suggestions anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all for your responses. PdxMan and LindafromFlorida you are right she is not done with me. She texted and called me all day. I ignored her. True to form she even asked me to try again and that was very painful for me. It was a difficult day. I did start the morning by clearing out my refrigerator of all leftovers and sweet drinks. I don't buy snack or junk food and keep it in my house so that part was easy. Fortunately for the first day in awhile I didn't feel like eating and I guess that is the emotional part. I had been on an emotional roller coaster and eating every feeling that I had: happiness, sadness, pain, you name it, I ate it. Fortunately I do have someone to talk to but I spent a lot of time focusing on her and I need to shift the focus back on me and what I need. I had my gastric sleeve on December 2, 2013 and lost a lot of weight because I was afraid to eat anything. I had a lot of problems with keeping food down, especially Protein so the food I was eating were those soft slider foods and by February 14, 2014 I went from 368 lbs to 281 lbs. I was tremendously excited and perhaps overly confident about my success. My surgeon was happy albeit concerned that I really wasn't eating and losing 8-10 lbs per week. We talked about developing an eating disorder because of my food aversion but I didn't care. I thought the sleeve had solved my problem - eating - and I would deal with the fallout later. So when I met my ex and began to eat small amounts of food, I was relieved not to be throwing up any more after about 2 weeks. I was on several nausea meds that made my throat dry and I couldn't seem to quench my thirst. That's when I started drinking sweet drinks like lemonade, it helped. No excuse. Eventually I could eat anything including small amounts of steak. Of course, I have to take Miralax everyday to digest what I eat so that is stupid but technically I could eat. Before I could barely eat chicken breast. We were going to different restaurants 3-4 times per week and each week the pounds started to slowly climb back on. I remember when I first tried alcohol, my stomach couldn't handle it. Then I tried again and it wasn't so bad. I have never been a drinker really 1-2 drinks socially maybe once or twice a month, but I was drinking a couple of times per week which also contributed to the weight. I stopped drinking two weeks ago on my birthday. Things were strained between me and my ex because I decided not to be around her at all when she was drinking and took all alcohol out of my house. I took some time reading other posts yesterday where people talked about the sleeve being a tool in the weight loss journey. I realize I need to find a happy medium with eating and develop a healthy relationship with food. I know I can't go back to not eating at all or eating everything there is so just figuring out where that place is will help. I will try listening to my body and trying to see when I am actually hungry or just filling a need. Also making sure I am not eating too much. I will go back to my small plates and see how that works.

I contemplated having the gastric bypass off and on for about 10 years and ultimately decided against it. The surgery seemed so drastic and back then you really couldn't get solid research on how long a person lived post-op. The interesting thing is the same thing can be said for the gastric sleeve but it did not matter any more. It was time for me to make a change. My highest weight measured was 402 lbs. I lost about 20 lbs and lingered there for nearly a year until I started preparing for surgery. My weight at surgery on December 2, 2013 was 368 lbs and I am 5'3". Fortunately I was never immobile or using assistive devices but life was/is hard at 300lbs. There is no great mystery how I got to this weight - I ate my feelings, every pound. I have had a lifetime of traumatic experiences beginning in early childhood too numerous to dwell though probably not unlike some of you. I was abused as a child and starved as a young child. Through my teen years I became a bulimic to try to gain some semblance of control over my life. , To be honest I got the idea of binging and purging from an actress who appeared on TV talking about it and though already thin at the time, I could eat all the food I wanted and just throw it up. I couldn't deal with what was going on in my life any more and food became my way to escape. I finally stopped throwing up in my early 20's after I became pregnant but the binging never stopped. You would think adult life would relieve the trauma but I found abuse in my relationships too and continued to eat. I won't even pretend that I needed an excuse. Food was my best friend, my source of comfort and I could control when and how often I ate which was all the time. Other traumatic experiences continued to fuel this....emptiness....that no amount of food could seem to fill and for over 14 years I have been over 300+ lbs. In July 2009, I was a victim of a violent crime. It shattered my world to the point I left my job and became reclusive for a long time. I still haven't returned to work and am on disability. The truth is I believed my weight was my protector from the outside world. I had worn it as a shield, learned to pretend I didn't care what people thought of me, didn't notice the looks, held my head high and I was a leader in the community I worked. I couldn't reconcile what happened to me at my size. It was something that only happened to skinny beautiful people. It is just not something you ever hear about but I guess that was my own disillusion and now everything has changed. It's been 7 weeks since my surgery and food no longer gives me the comfort that it used to and eating is this chore that I have to do. Initially all the same urges to eat were there but that has passed, Now I lay awake some nights with the aftermath of what food has done to my body and it seems I can't lose weight fast enough. I just want to wake up and it all be gone but I know that is not real either. My current weight is 312 maybe less but I won't be sure for a few days and I realize how close that is to 299. I haven't been 200 anything in 14 years. I think I will cry the first time the scale says anything under 300. That will be a day to celebrate! Can anyone relate to what I said?

Thank you all for your love and support. It really means a lot to me.

I am 7 weeks post-op and I remember feeling the same in the beginning, that they really hadn't done anything except made me believe I have to eat differently. Now I am on real food and I dread eating every day. I still WANT though not crave the bad stuff but eating is a chore. Still your post was really funny!!

I had the gastric sleeve on December 2, 2013 so today marks 7 weeks post-op and I am incredibly nauseated. I have a hard time dealing with eating food most of the time. I am really tired today because for the last few days all I can manage is Breakfast and Water throughout the day without throwing up. I have an appointment in three days with my surgeon so I am not incredibly worried. I hate eating, everything seems utterly gross to me. The only thing I can manage is eggs, yogurt and occassionally Protein shakes. I know I am really malnurished at this point which is scary since I am still over 300 lbs. Has anyone else experienced this?

Initially I was able to eat anything in the first 2 stages but when it came to food I started having good and bad days which became progressively worse. Now I can barely eat anything without throwing it back up. I had a CT scan around week 4 and the surgeon said my stomach looked fine but I guess I can ask him about the hole being large enough. I can't eat most meats or vegetables. I don't eat rice, bread or Pasta per diet orders so my options are limited. It is all very frustrating.