The Story of Us (me and my fat) Part Four

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I had considered weight loss surgery before I actually REALLY considered weight loss surgery. In part I rejected the idea because I personally didn’t feel comfortable with the lap-band or with the gastric bypass/ RNY options. I didn’t know about the sleeve surgery when I first started researching and once I did, I started giving it more thought. I also originally rejected VSG (vertical sleeve gastrectomy) because, frankly, I didn’t want to give up all my favorite foods. I wanted to eat what I wanted when I wanted, as much as I wanted. But my weight was creeping back up scarily toward 300 and eventually I had just had enough. My feet and ankles hurt, my clothes were too tight and I was physically uncomfortable much of the time.

I had maintained a relatively healthy lifestyle for several years; I ate mostly Paleo, I tried to exercise regularly and I did at least one cleanse a year. Yes, I drank wine and ate carbs and didn’t move as much as I wanted to due to both my size and my heel spurts. But I couldn’t lose weight. When I made the decision in August 2013 to get the surgery, I went in full steam ahead. I had all my appointments within a few weeks, my date was set in late October and I was ready to start my new life.

To prepare myself, I spent hours and hours and hours on Facebook WLS (weight loss surgery) groups, talking to other WLS patients at different spots throughout their journey and watching YouTube videos. There is a whole community for weight loss surgery patients and I gained a wealth of knowledge from them. Although you cannot fully know what to expect until you go through it yourself, I had at least gathered enough experiences to know if something I was going through was semi-normal or not. And that made a difference for me.

I should note here that my main motivation for wanting weight loss surgery was not all that complicated. I did not hate myself at 300 pounds. In fact, I loved myself, valued myself, did the work (see part 3) I needed to do to feel confident and sexy and worthy at any size. So it wasn’t really about vanity or confidence or looks. I was on blood pressure medication but was otherwise healthy. I didn’t have diabetes and my blood sugar and cholesterol were in check so my motivator wasn’t even really health. It was movement. I wanted to have enough weight off my body so that maybe my feet would get better (they did) and so I could hike and not huff and puff. My heart was healthy enough to get me up a hill, but I was carrying 150 extra pounds and it was HARD! I wanted to just be a “normal” sized person and to be normally out of breath at the top of a hill. I wanted to move my body outside more without the limitations I had as someone between 270-295 pounds.

On December 5th, 2013, I had about 75% of my stomach removed and a hiatal hernia repaired. I got there at 6:00 in the morning for my 8:30am surgery and up until I was wheeled into the operating room, I was wondering when I was going to call my bluff. I walked into that hospital fully sure that I’d walk out saying “Just kidding! Not gunna, no way!” I was terrified. This was for real and this was forever.

Surgery Date: 12/5/13

Day of Surgery 12/5/13

And although my recovery was atypically long and painful, once I was through it, the weight just melted off. I lost 70 pounds in the first 4 ½ months and once I started exercising, things screeched down to a moderate 5 pounds a month. But those 5 pounds have been coming off consistently and I’m stronger and faster and in better shape than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

This is where you find me now. 10 months post op from VSG, down over 100 pounds, working out 4-6 days a week (more on that later, I’m sure). It has been a wild, wild ride, let me tell you. And I think all the things I’ve learned along the way may be better said in another blog, as I have so so so much to say on that, but I will say this. I am so thankful to have received the gift of the sleeve and grateful to have lost the weight I have lost: while I don’t feel I have changed very much inside, I do feel as though I have become more fully myself. I walk and hike FOR FUN, I take any opportunity to get up and get moving, I’ve found work out classes and routines I am absolutely in love with. Life is so very very good.

Here are my 10 month progress photos. Picture on the left is 301.2 on 11/22/13, picture on the right is 200.0 on 10/5/14.

Thank you for tuning in and walking through this journey with me. If you are just catching up, here are links to Part One, Part Two and Part Three.  You can watch my WLS from beginning to end you YouTube as well.

Until next time, friends… make it a wonderful day!

10.5.14 - ten months Side

10 month progress pics

10.5.14 - ten months front

10 month progress pics

The Story of Us (me and my fat) Part Three

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My 26th year started with me at 320 pounds, (see here for Part Two) totally miserable, chronically single and stuck in a destructive diet/binge mentality. And then the movie “Supersize Me” happened. And it literally changed my life. As I mentioned in Part Two, I was eating McDonald’s almost every day. Once I saw “Supersize Me,” that changed immediately and I quit cold turkey. Within 2 months, I had dropped about 20 pounds and I had not even tried; all from cutting out my almost nightly McDonald’s binges.

At this point I felt ready and willing to date… to put myself out there. I had NO idea how to do it, so I signed up for several online dating websites and put myself out in the field. And I started to date! And it was amazing and interesting and heart wrenching and awful and beautiful all at the same time. Because I had not dated since I was 19, I actually FELT like I managed those “relationships” as though I was 19. I had few boyfriends, but several lovers and many, many, MANY dates. In starting my dating in my mid-twenties, I didn’t fully know how to relate to men OR myself WITH men! I got put into a “friends with benefits” category more often than not because I didn’t know how to stand up for what I wanted. Deep down, I felt like I should take what I could get. It took two pivotal affairs that left me feeling absolutely broken, worn and determined to do better that put me into therapy at 28. That therapist was, to this day, one of the most influential people in my life. She encouraged me to attend a handful of Adult Children of Alcoholics 12 step program which then led me to Codependents Anonymous (CODA).

I was in the CODA program and worked the 12 steps for about two years. I put in the time and I did the work. I began to finally feel worthy. I realized so many things throughout that process. In beginning to heal how I related in all relationships, I was able to come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance for the first time in my entire life, that I can remember. I was still obese and I was still always trying to lose weight, but I worked out, I cooked more whole food recipes, ate less processed food and maintained a weight of around 275 for many years.

275

275 pounds

By the time I was 31, I had bought a home, found a legitimate boyfriend who genuinely cared for me (we are still together), and started going to a local boot camp program. And here things accelerate a bit. Boot camp led me to lose 10 pounds (at the time I went from 285 to 275. At 275, not able to fudge the scale further, I started working with an amazing naturopath. With her help, I got down to 265. And again the scale froze. My naturopath wrote me a prescription for injectable HCG (human growth hormone) and I did that for 2 rounds and lost 32 pounds, getting me down to my lowest adult weight at the time of 232. I felt AMAZING!!!

026

235 pounds

And then I went on vacation. My boyfriend and I went to Maui and I ate POUNDS of cheese and drank A LOT of wine. And… when you’ve had 500 calories for 6 weeks and no carbs for 2 weeks following that and already have a deprivation issue… I ate everything in sight. I gained the 32 pounds plus another 30 and was back to 290 within 15 months.

By this time, I couldn’t continue with boot camp as I had developed heel spurs and could barely walk at all, much less work out. I couldn’t shop, hike, go for walks or do anything that involved prolonged standing on my feet due to the intense pain I had from the spurs. I was couch-bound, spending thousands of dollars on treatment and back on the diet rampage. My diets looked different by this time, however, and I was doing juice cleanses and Whole30s and eating Paleo 80% of the time. It was the inactivity and the other 20% of the time that was the problem.

By summer 2013, it occurred to me to consider surgery options. And we’ll go there next! Stay tuned for part four of four of The Story of Us (Me and My Fat).

If you’re just catching up, here are links to Part One and Part Two again!

The Story of Us (me and my fat) Part Two

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Welcome back friends! So we enter phase two of the story of me and my fat. I left off in Part One just as I’m heading to college. Ahhhh…. College…. And I thought high school was torture. The good news is, I made a few friends and was having fun with them. The bad news is that I had followed my boyfriend, M, down to the town the college was in and by the time I moved there, two weeks after he’d made the move, he’d moved another girl into his apartment and had taken his phone off the ringer. It wasn’t a great start to the year and I’m not going to lie… I lost my shit. I listened to sad records. I cried all the time. I participated excessively in drugs and alcohol. I rang his phone constantly (pre cell phone days). I ate and ate and ate and ate and ate. I ate pizzas, I ate ice cream, I ate obscene amounts of candy. I’d eat a meal in the cafeteria just to go back to my room and eat again. I made the Freshman 15 into the Freshman 35 (I was AT LEAST 220 when I left my freshman year of college). I was absolutely miserable.

I made the decision to move home after my freshman year of college, at which time M and I were back together (trust me, I know… hindsight is 20/20) and within a few weeks, he had me over to introduce me to his female roommate and promptly told me he was engaged to her. That was how we broke up for good… he told me he was marrying someone else. That night I was even more destructive than normal (as you can imagine, it’s a shock when your boyfriend of three years tells you he’s engaged) but I woke up the next morning a changed woman. I stopped all extracurricular partying, I stopped dating and I buckled down and focused on school. I took 21 credit hours a quarter, graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in 3.5 years and remained dateless and celibate for the next seven years of my life.

sometime during college

During the time I was working on my undergraduate degree, I lived at home with my parents. My father was in the midst of a serious drug and alcohol problem and life at home was stressful. I continued to eat to cope with my feelings… It might be fair to say I ate to avoid having ANY feelings. I was prescribed an anti-depressant my sophomore year and I would argue that a good chunk of why I stayed so secluded during these years was because I was over prescribed the antidepressant. I spent seven years of my life being academically very productive, but on a personal side becoming increasingly stunted. I had a few friends, but I didn’t go out much. I went to class, I studied hard and I watched TV. I was essentially a hermit. I was also in an obsessive diet/ binge/ diet/ binge cycle.

While I have no actual clue how high my weight creeped up during this time, I’m guessing it was around 280. I lived a dichotomous existence. On one hand I was SO proud of what I was doing academically but I hated myself. I would even go so far as to say detested. I got by but that was all I did. I did NOT live.

I moved to Southern California in the Fall of 2000 where I started a two year graduate degree program. Here is where I started to have hope of a life more than what I was allowing myself. I had my very first apartment, at age 22 and I made very good friends who I simply adored. Within my first six months, I started on Weight Watchers and proceeded to lose fifty pounds. I learned to cook, I went out every now and then and I put a sticky note on my mirror in my bedroom that said “DO NOT BE AFRAID TO LIVE LIFE.” That message sticks with me to this day. There is no room in my life, as it is now, to be afraid to live it. But back then, I just didn’t know any better. I had wants, dreams, desires… but I did not know how to go after them.

319 lbs

I had started putting weight back on by the time I graduated and moved home. Upon re-entry to my folks’ house, I started gaining weight at a rapid rate. My father was still in the throes of addiction, my mother was deeply depressed and my 14 year old brother was hanging on the best he could. I applied to hundreds of jobs during the post 9/11 recession and took the first one offered to me, six months after the move home. It took nearly another year or more after that to get an apartment and make the final move out of the parental home. I worked for a great company with an abusive boss and guess what I did to cope? I ate. And ate, and ate, and ate some more. To give you an idea, I would eat a coffee cake or a bagel and cream cheese and a large mocha each morning for breakfast. I worked near a mall downtown and I’d have mall food most days for lunch, consisting of a deli sandwich, side pasta salad and a cookie (or several) OR the greasy spoon Chinese food… always the orange chicken, chow mein and teriyaki chicken. Dinners were almost always McDonald’s, or another fast food. Massive amounts of fast food. And ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.

I rang in my 26th birthday at my highest recorded weight, 319 pounds.

Things are really heating up here and the best is yet to come! Stay tuned for Part Three in the Story of Us (Me and My Fat).

The Story of Us (me and my fat) Part One

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I did not grow up thinking I was fat. I had a happy early childhood and don’t remember having any younger year issues with my size or how my size related to the world. I did, however, weigh more than other children in my age/height range. I am convinced, to this day, that I just have dense bones.

My mother was overweight and struggled with her weight her whole life. When I was 11, in an effort to make sure I didn’t turn out just like her, she put me on a 600 calorie a day diet. I don’t remember all that I was able to eat, but I remember an abundance of nonfat yogurt, string cheese and deli turkey slices. I remember having to regulate myself, with her help, and track calories. I lost 15-ish pounds and my mom seemed happy so I guess I was happy, too. Right?

Me at about 11 or 12 years old

Wrong. I felt insecure and unsure of who I was and where I fit in with all the others who were more “normal” (aka more slim) than me. Entering the early stages of puberty, I felt like I wasn’t good enough just as I was. I had to slim down to fit in. And I was so so so hungry. In my mother’s attempt to not make me like her, she made me just like her… weight and food obsessed, low self-esteem and a deep sense that being heavy makes one unworthy of the best life has to offer. Bless her heart, she really did (and does) the best she can. Dieting by the age of 11 set up the foundation for a deprivation issue that I struggle with to this very day – when I don’t think there is going to be enough food for me, I panic. Deep, primal, pure panic. And if I get very hungry, I kind of flip out… deprivation mentality at its best.

The overarching message I heard from 11 onward was that when I lost some weight… when I was a smaller size… when I was a more “normal” weight … then I’d get the friends, the boyfriend, the social life I so desired. I was a social kid but didn’t have an abundance of friends (and certainly no boyfriends), and over time, I didn’t think I really deserved them. I took what I could get, putting me in a lot of strange and borderline abusive friendships, and eventually, relationships.

My Senior picture

My junior year of high school I started dating “M”, two years my senior, who went to another high school and I was with him, off and on, for three years. It was a mess. I was a mess. While I’ll go into that relationship more in Part Two, it was my very first relationship (albeit, not my last) that could be classified as “love addiction.” I couldn’t let him go… and I was dieting constantly…. Even eating/drinking nothing more than breath mints to try to drop a few pounds. My self-esteem dropped lower and lower. And then high school was over and it was time for college (Stay tuned for Part Two)!

Lindsay Flye Improving

July 2014, feeling strong

When I look back on my life thus far, I think in terms of “what I weighed when”. When I was 11 I was 135 pounds and got down to 118. I started high school at probably 145 and I took my senior pictures at 175 and I graduated high school at 185. While college and beyond will be covered more in Part Two, I hope that I can think of my life, eventually, in terms of accomplishments, successes, adventures, love stories and beautiful moments. After all, it is all of these things, and more, that define who we are, not a number on a scale or a size on a tag. We are more than our weight; we are AMAZING!

Stay tuned to read The Story of Us (Me and My Fat) – Part Two – The Middle years (19-26)