9 years down, 6 days to go

I started thinking about weight loss surgery 9 years ago. I attended my first weight loss seminar with my aunt, and I was so inspired by the stories I heard. I knew for sure that gastric bypass was the surgery for me. I was 25 years old, 250 pounds and I was so certain that getting a surgery, losing the weight super fast would be all I needed.

Let me back up a second.....I graduated high school in 1996, I was 5'10", 135 lbs, I wore a size 7 and could not have been more conceded, snobby or sure of myself. I was a total b*tch! I moved out into my apartment with a friend in the days following graduation, having shared a bedroom with my three sisters, privacy was the main goal.

Within 2 years, I was a size 14, and had learned some much needed humility. I was finally the nice person I was probably always meant to be. Getting "fat", over looked by guys I would not have given the time of day to prior to my weight gain, ignored by the good looking men, having to buy larger cloths, going up in shoe size....all of this has a way of bringing a girl back down to earth in a painfully embarrassing and humbling way.

Taco Bell, Pepsi, Mashed Potatoes and the freedom to eat all of that and more without regard to anything was what did me in. No longer did I live under my parents roof and had to share meals with 6 of my 8 siblings, no longer did I attend school with the required physical education classes, no longer was I required to be active at all in fact. I found sleeping in as late as I wanted, working as a waitress at a place where the food was free for me, living across the street from Taco Bell and my general disregard for my health and body, made gaining several pounds and going up 4 sizes in clothing very easy to do.

Fast forward 5 years, I am 25, living with my overweight boyfriend and have gone up to a size 22. I was desperate to be the skinny Kimberly that I knew still existed inside of me, desperate to feel good about myself and desperate to ditch the unhealthy relationship (based mostly on our love of food) for a better wardrobe and some self esteem.

However the bariatric surgery Gods said I required a 6 month supervised diet, and this to me seemed IMPOSSIBLY LONG! Had I known it would be 9 years before I would actually being having a bariatric surgery, I may have been more inclined to do the 6 months!

But I was not yet mature enough to understand that doing those 6 months of supervised diet was what was best for me. Instead though, I spent the next several years on yo yo diets, losing and gaining, losing and gaining more than lost. I tried without success to get the gastric bypass surgery approved through several of my employment insurance companies. I was changing jobs at a rapid rate, but still with no success on the surgery front.

In 2007, at the age of 29, one month away from my 30th birthday, I met the man of my dreams. One year later he proposed, I was at my highest weight ever, 350 pounds, and wearing an size 26/28. I was miserable and terrified of losing me, my life, my fiance. I was working for a company at the time were my surgery would be approved, this time I was going for Lap Band. Now that I was engaged and had stepchildren to think about, my thought process on Gastric Bypass no longer applied. Gastric Bypass in the past had meant super fast weight loss. I didnt consider the risks, now those risks seemed to high.

My insurance would cover the surgery, it required t a 6 month supervised diet and this time, I was fine with that. I started seeing my doctor once a month, keeping the required food log and exercising. I was 4 months through the diet when I was laid off from my job, my cobra insurance would have been $660 a month, I couldnt afford it.

I watched my dream of weight loss surgery die.....this would be the 7th time in 6 years that I tried for insurance approval and just couldnt get it to work.

I ended up getting my stuff together, growing up enough to learn that getting skinny was no longer my ultimate goal, getting healthy was. I lost over 85 pounds, got married in March 2011 and now here I am 8 months later and 30 of those pounds are back.

In fact in the last 8 months (since the wedding) I have gained back 50 of those pounds, losing 30 of it on HCG, then gaining some and losing some.

I am sick of this dieting life, I am sick of CONSTANTLY thinking about what my next diet will be, this YO YO dieting is awful.

So now......now I am having the surgery and I am paying out of pocket, so nothing will get in the way. 

I have a new outlook on weightloss surgery now than I did 9 years ago. Yes there is still a huge part of me that just wants to be thinner and feel good about the way I look, but my dominating factors for wanting the surgery have so much more to do with my health, my husband and my 4 stepkids. 

I want a quality life, one in which diabetes is not knocking, one in which my thighs no longer rub together, leaving awful heat rash. One in which my blood pressure is not high and acid reflux is not an everyday pain. One in which my knees and ankles do not hurt on a daily basis. One in which I can go running in the park with my kids, husband and dogs, no longer sitting on the sidelines.

I cannot wait to meet the new me, and I hope you will come along on this journey with me and see where it leads!