A Fatty Girl Speaks

Today is my anniversary.


It was one year ago today that I had lap band surgery.


As I remember it, by this point of the day, I was in recovery.


Now I'm no stranger to surgeries, but for whatever reason, I was scared to death going in for this one. I've had my gallbladder removed, tubes tied, another female surgery, biopsies, vascular surgery for dialysis and I've had a catheter in my jugular vein, so I'm thinking that my anxiety was with the fact that after trying all my adult life, I was finally doing something to rid myself of the fat that I thought I was destined to carry.

I was never really fat growing up, the extra skinny girls just made me think I was. I was always fat cow, fat bitch, fatty, whatever. Looking back at high school pictures, I was BUILT. Which would explain the attention I'd get from older guys.

I'd already bought into the persona that I was a fat girl, so soon, I was a fat girl.


Actually first I was a chunky girl. I could still buy clothes at any store. Then after college, I was a fat girl. Exchanging clothes with my other size 20-22 friends, so it wasn't a big deal. I just looked like some of my peers, right?

Then I came home and got a job and lived.

Three years later, I had a baby, grew another dress size. Five years later, had another baby and grew another dress size.

Six months later, his father died and I stopped eating. I went down 2 dress sizes in almost a month.

A couple of years after that, I entered into what would be the most abusive relationship of my life. Without too many details, it was mostly emotional, but it did get to a point where it got physical.

At any rate, this is where the downward spiral of eating for comfort began. We'd argue, make up and eat. We'd get up in the middle of the night to play dominoes and fix hamburgers and fries and then go back to sleep. Or eggs and bacon. I started putting weight on at an alarming rate and when I finally got to a point that I knew I had to do something, I was weighing 353. More than any NBA player I'd seen and most of the NFL players.

As it happened, my boss decided that we, as an office, could use a little weight loss motivation and proposed that we have our own Biggest Loser. It ran from late October to Christmas and we weighed in each week.

I was working out regularly. I was doing Weight Watchers and if I cheated and went to McDonald's, I'd only order off the kid's menu.

I ended up winning, with a total loss of 23 lbs.

After the contest, I hit a plateau. After awhile, I stopped trying. I did manage to maintain that weight though.

I'd begun preparing to start dialysis, I was depressed, I was scared and I ate.

Fast forward to last year, my son graduated from an alternative military school and I don't know who had the camera, but I always felt safe behind the camera because I knew I wouldn't have to see any pics of myself if I didn't want them (says the camera whore) the majority of my pictures though are head shots.

Well someone caught me off guard and when I got the pictures developed and saw the pic below, I knew I had to do something. FAST. I was disgusted by what I saw and still am.

Don't get me wrong, I was still a commodity because I have a cute face *eyeroll*, but I was NOT healthy in the least.

Half my ass fit on the chair. HALF.

This was in June. In July I had my first consultation. The surgeon was excited because I was her first kidney patient and this surgery for me, would mean that I could not only get to a healthy weight in general, but get down to the accepted weight for the transplant surgery. Because I have to have a certain amount of protein for dialysis, we opted for the lapband, not the gastric bypass. Had I had gastric, I'd have probably lost about 140 lbs by now, but healthwise, I'd be in pretty bad shape because there just would'nt be enough room for my food and meds.

A couple of months prior to surgery, I decided to go natural with my hair and stop using relaxers. I figured if there were going to be major changes, I would do it 100%. My beautiful hair, something that took away from the attention of the weight, I got chopped.

It was SO liberating!

Anyway fast forward to today. I weigh in at 260 and I'm not shamed to say it because I feel good! I'm not where I want to be (between 170 and 190), but thank God, I'm not where I was!!

I had someone take some pictures of me last night, wearing the same shirt I wore to the graduation party. It still fits, but I've got LOTS of room.

These days I wear either an XL or 1X top (if I want some wiggle room) from 3x-4x back then. And my jeans back then were 34 womens, today I'm in 26 womens. I wore 24w just before I had my last child, so this is monumental for me.