TheJulie

After successfully losing 50 pounds on Weight Watchers, the bottom fell out of my personal life and I started gaining again.  Even though I embraced the WW lifestyle, I always knew that I was a few steps away from falling back into my old overeating habits.  For me, the biggest part of the WW lifestyle was managing my appetite, which is easy when you have plenty of emotional energy to think about it and motivate yourself.  My other real fear was what was I going to do when I got older and had to eat even less food than I did now?  I was barely satisfying my appetite as it was, and I still had nearly a hundred pounds to lose!  I knew that my stomach would never really 'shrink'.  I lost my job, and then my mother almost died from a brain stem stroke, and slowly the weight loss turned to maintenance, and the maintenance turned to weight gain.  I became one of her primary care givers and moved home to live with my parents.  The heartbreak of seeing my mother disabled paled in comparison to the importance of rigidly measuring everything I ate every second of every day.  I didn't like how much I had to focus on myself, just to lose weight.  The first few months after her stroke I tried to get back on the wagon and lose, but my appetite always came back to torment me.  It was very discouraging after all I had worked to lose.  The ability to permanently remove my life long weight problem from my plate became more and more appealing.  I looked into insurance paying for my surgery, but it wouldn't cover it.  I decided I was fed up enough that I wanted to spend the proceeds from selling my house and self-pay for my surgery.  I wasn't desperate, just fed up.  I look forward to my surgery and my tiny appetite and the weight loss that comes with it.  The weight loss is great, but not feeling discouraged at every meal will feel even better.