ome people would wonder why I would subject myself to public scrutiny
by putting pictures of myself online and describing my weight loss story to millions of people
that don't even know me.  Although I probably flatter myself to think that perhaps a million
people might look at these pages, but I digress.  I want to help people.  Thats always been
my goal.  From wanting to be a teacher, to volunteer work, to everything I do, I just want to
have purpose and be liked.  Does putting my pictures here open for criticism make me brave?
No, I don't really think so.  Stupid, maybe, but not brave.  How aboutcrazy? Well who knows.
But the real thing is, I want to show the people that dont look like all those skinny people that
us fattys arent alone.  We CAN change.  We don't have to be like this.  Theres a whole lot of
information on weight loss, but through my story, I want to prove to you that its possible.  I
want to befriend you, I want you to support me.  But I also want to let you know that surgery
isnt necessarily the easy answer.  It makes me nuts but a lot of really overweight people
think that surgery is the only answer to weight loss.  For some, maybe it is, but please make a
good decision and do all the homework.  The other thing I'd like to mention is that a lot of
people that get the surgergies done GAIN THE WEIGHT BACK.  Let me say it again...
they go through the pain of surgery, the pain of recovery, and all for nothing?  Bad habits
are bad habits.  There is no such thing as easy, fast weight loss.

did some research.  Actually I did a lot.  I looked into the "RnY" gastric
bypass, the "ring", the diets, everything.  I spent two years looking into everything and
the only thing I determined was the basics that the big shot scientists already knew:
Diet + Excercize = Weight loss.  But wait... theres more!  Theres a lot to really think
about.  The reason the gastric bypass works is because you eat less, therefore you
consume less calories, therefore you lose weight.
 
 

The gasttric bypass works because you are literally starving your body.  All your organs,
your skin, your hair - everything - literally starves.  You have to wait about three months
before you can consume anything but liquids and light broths. After about three months,
you can start on soft foods...: baby food, mashed potatoes, oatmeal... ung.  You get the
idea.  All this time you are recovering from abdominal surgery.  This includes anesthesia
(the tube down your throat into your lungs to let you breathe, a paralytic to keep you from
moving during surgery, another drug to keep you asleep through the procedure, and none
of them really guarentee you won't be one of the .05% that actually wake up mid surgery
and feel the entire procedure).  You will have scars.  Theres no getting around the cuts in
your gut.  And even after all that, you could still die from complications.  Its a .05% chance
of death (which amounts to 1 in 200).  Did I mention that after the procedure, you have
about a 20% chance of going back under the knife because of leaks?  Either way, I'd like
to mention that I dont condemn anybody for choosing this option.  But when you're going
back under anesthesia for the loose skin, the leaks, or whatever else can go wrong, consider
that there are always other options.
 

Have you ever noticed how easy it is in the beginning of a diet to lose weight?  If you're like
me, you lose a lot the first few weeks into the diet.  People always tell you its water weight,
but this isnt necessarily true.  Lets examine the facts.  The first diet I was on that was even
moderately sucessful had me lose 50 lbs in 3 months.  I'm not lying.  There have been folks
calling me a liar, telling me it was all water weight, etc.  Well, 10 pounds of that was water
more than likely (considering how often i was on the pot, id tend to agree with them), but
the rest couldnt be water.  I'm not sure how large i would have to be to have 50lbs of water
in my body.  So how could this be?  Well, I weighed 315lbs when I started on my diet.  If
I lost around 50lbs, that means i lost 15% of my body weight.  That isnt really unreasonable
in 3 months, but if you think about it as losing 50lbs in 3 months, it does. However, if I
weighed 150lbs and I lost 15% of my body weight, that would total around 20lbs, not 50.
Its about the percentage lost, not the actual pounds.  So don't let people push you around
and tell you that its not possible to lose a lot of weight fairly fast when you're really, really
fat.   Don't let the numbers scare you either.  You might be thinking "wow, I'm losing six
pounds a week, thats too fast".  Actually, it might not be.  You need to think about the
percentage of body fat you're losing.
 
 

This is always the hardest part to talk about.  I'm 27, 5'9" and currently 275 lbs.  I wasn't
grossly overweight as a child only because my grandmother was constantly on my case
to stop eating.  This gave me a bit of an eating disorder, but I don't blame her in the
slightest.  She kept putting me on diet after diet and the best I could do was about 30 lbs
overweight growing up and all through highschool.  Once she died, however, I had no
tools of my own to monitor my weight.  I blew up fast.  In the next four years I put on
over 100lbs.  After I tipped the scales over 300lbs, I knew I had to do something.  My
feet hurt, I couldnt hold down a job because of weight complications, I sweat ALL the
time.  I was running up a pretty penny in food bills too!  Finally I went to a doctor
because I was having constant problems with my blood sugar and I was afraid that I
was developing type 2 diabetes.  He had me do a "lipid panel" and he checked my
numbers.  In the test, it checked for cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, VLDL
Cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, Insulin at fasting, and Glucose Plasma.  When the test
results came back, wow was I surprised in some ways.  Honestly, deep down, I wasnt.

Cholesterol: 219, 20 points higher than normal.
Triglycerides: 157, 8 points higher than normal.
HDL Cholesterol: 37, 3 points below normal.
VLDL Cholesterol: 31.  Normal.
LDL Cholesterol:  150, 51 points above normal.
Insulin fasting, 90.  Normal.
Glucose, Plasma 103.  Normal.

It wasnt a death sentence, but I was well on my way.  May I remind us all that I'm only
27 years old???  I'm not even 30 yet and my numbers are bad.  I feel like I'm 70.  I
would have said 60, but my mother can out pace me in walking, and walk miles farther
than I can.  She's twice my age and in better shape.  Uh oh, this is bad stuff.  So I went
on a pseudo weight watchers program.  *NOTE* I am not advocating the use of their
program, I do not work for them, or anybody else for that matter.  I'm just mentioning
what I did.. And I went on their program.  I lost approximately 50 lbs in 3 months.
After that time, Christmas came around, so I quit the diet.  I only gained back 10 lbs in
the two months that I was off the diet.  Something actually worked.  Now its time to go
back.  I lost the fifty initial pounds, well... lets go with 40 since I gained 10 back.. But I
found the best way was to go online and be accountable for it somewhere publicly, as
well as provide some help for some folks... So without further ado? adue? adu?