StarAnge13

Journey through weight-loss and Bariatric Surgery

Hi, my name is Carol and I am an addict. I am addicted to food – I am drawn to it and once the first bite hits my tasted buds, I’m hooked and don’t want to stop.

This is a story of my life while battling weight loss and depression. First, a bit about my history – I’m currently 45 years of age and feel like I’m 70 – everyday I battle getting out of bed – I battle with headaches, shortness of breath, dizziness and pure laziness. Because of being overweight, I refuse to leave the house unless it’s absolutely necessary. If I had my dream job right now – I wouldn’t have to leave the house 24/7. I am embarrassed at what my body looks like – old friends of mine who I haven’t seen for years probably think I have been abducted from aliens – I make plans with every intention of meeting up with them and having a good time, but as the meeting gets closer and closer – the more I start experiencing anxiety issues and end up making an excuse and bowing out.

My health has slowly been deteriorating; I battle with thyroid problems, anxiety, muscle spasms, diabetes, COPD etc. Most of this is stemming from being obese and yeah, there is a bit from smoking cigarettes.

It’s funny when I think back over the years and the see-saw weight problems I experienced. Looking back now I see that my extreme gain/loss always pertained to a stressful time in my life.

Adolescence? Hah…what a joke….My maiden name is Carol Wahl but the grade schoolers knew me as Carol Whale – yeah kids can be heartless and mean. So all you psychologists out there know why I have issues with my weight – map it back to social issues and my peers. Now, my mom would always tell me – “Carol, you are not fat; you are just big boned.” What the f**k does that really mean? Does it mean that [i]Hey, I’m trying to find a nice way to tell you that you need to shed some of that fat off your disgusting body[/i]. Or is there really such a thing as “big-boned”?

Could I back track to my youth and blame it on my Italian mother who loved to cook with LOADS of butter, bake cakes, and made pasta every week? Could I blame this on my father who taught me how food could make hurt feelings and owies all better! His favorite sayings at dinner time were “Are you sure you don’t want any more? There’s plenty left?”

Teenage years taught me the importance of being thin and in shape. It was the 80’s and working out to Jane Fonda was the ****! How about dancing to Footlose or Flashdance? As I watched the skinny b*****s hook up with guy after guy in high school, I knew it was time to start dieting.

What I didn’t figure in though is how to diet the healthy way, dieting to me meant cutting calories down to less than 1000 per day and doing aerobics with Jane from the time school let out till it was time for dinner. I was obsessed with dropping weight and lived on the scale – logging every pound gained or lost. It suffices to say that I lost weight big time and the more I lost – the less I ate. I was noticed in school and by the guys….I had guys coming out of the woodwork wanting to hook up. Pretty soon though I stopped menstruating and starting getting dizzy spells. My whole body started growing peach fuzz but I still thought I was fat and wanted to lose more. I was hospitalized and labeled as anorexic – hah that didn’t last long though. As soon as I started eating again – the weight piled on while my parents kept reinforcing their love and verified it with food.

By the time senior year rolled around – I again was on a kick to lose weight and this time made a pact to hide it better from my parents. Looking back at pictures from that time frame…f**k, I looked good! I looked great walking down that aisle at graduation and I kicked ass during senior week – hooking up with my boyfriend’s best friend.

So by this time…(not figuring it out back then) you can relate how my brain is working…..

Get thin….gain attention
Get fat ---- lose popularity

I stayed thin until I got to college. Yeah…those 15 freshman pounds turned into the freshman 50 – I think by this time I was weighing in at 180 lbs. It didn’t stop the attention though – I substituted the thin body with sex. I was promiscuous; sleeping my way through our brother fraternity. Those aren’t days I am proud of and can’t even remember their names – it was a free for all.

I ended up dropping out of college after my first year because of my mother’s cancer returning. I was needed to help with her treatments and care. So I never went back – well that is until I took a trip up there the next year during Homecoming to show off my hot new bod that I spent months starving myself again.

So this is my life – getting heavy – starving myself – getting heavy – starving myself.

When I met my ex-husband it was another time in my life that I was at my prime weight – my mother was dying since they couldn’t fight the cancer anymore. Stress trigger – this time to starve myself. Only after knowing Tony for 5 months we ended up walking down the little wedding boutique aisle and tying the knot. This was only 2/12 months after my mother passed. He was 20 years old and I was 19 – we thought we knew it all. What fun it was to play grown ups and get pregnant immediately! We were married in September and by Christmas I was having morning sickness. I started out my pregnancy at 140 lbs and by the time TJ was born, my weight had skyrocketed to 240 lbs. I was at the hospital every other day having stress tests done and my blood pressure was off the roof. After TJ was born it only took about a few months of starving myself to get back down to my normal weight but by this time I was pregnant again with Timmy and boop…once again weighing in at 240 lbs I gave birth to him 22 months after TJ. This time the weight was a bit harder to get off…

Story to be continued as my days progress toward surgery and after!