My Story

Yep...that is me! I do not have many pictures of myself. The heavier I became the less I wanted to be photographed. This picture was taken 7 days before my gastric bypass surgery....3 years ago. The only thing that I regret is that I didn't do it sooner!

My story begins at puberty. I was a long legged skinny kid until about 12 and then I was just a little plump..not really heavy just 10 - 15 pounds overweight. When I was in high school I started running cross country but I never lost that belly weight. It was nuts..I was running 40 plus miles a week and I was plump. It was always interesting because I was a pretty good runner and when we would go to the meets...most of the girls were very lean and then there was me. After high school I started teaching aerobics. I taught 10 classes a week, each was 1 hour long and I had learned how to eat a healthy diet....still 10 - 15 pounds all on my belly. I was really fit but it didn't really matter what I did I could not loose that extra weight.

I was married when I was 23 and I continued to teach aerobic classes. 6 months after marriage I was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer. I had to have the bottom 3rd of my cervices removed. I had some complications from the surgery and I was not allowed to exercise for 6 weeks. Although I continued to eat a good healthy diet I began to gain weight....it was horrible....daily I was watching the scale go up..up..up. You would have thought I was on a 24 hour eating binge for 6 weeks...I gained 37 pounds!!! Seriously!!! As soon as I started working out my weight gain stopped but I could not lose any of the weight I had gained. I continued to work out hard and when I was 26 I became pregnant with our first child. I only gained 27 pounds. After she was born, I started walking immediately and I lost all my baby weight by my 6 weeks check-up. I remember being so excited...maybe I would now be able to get the rest off. NOT!!! It was just the opposite...I started gaining.....5...10...15...20 pounds! To make a really long story shorter..I have 5 children and the same thing happened every time!

I was never a yo-yo dieter. I did try some different plans that I thought were healthy and I might lose a few pounds but I never lost any significant weight. I found myself 39 years old, joint problems, high cholesterol, diabetes and 230 pounds. I am 5'5" so this was 100 pounds more than I needed to weigh. I was at a point in my life that I needed to make some drastic choices about my health. I felt hopeless. I really felt like surgery was the wimpy way out. It was the choice others made who had no self control. Honestly that is what I thought. Remember I taught aerobics for 8 years and ran for 4.....I was not lazy and out of control and it seemed that to have surgery would be like saying that I was lazy and out of control.

One of the ladies at my church who had bypass surgery sat and talked with me one Wednesday night. This is a conversation that I will never forget. It was really the beginning of health for me!