My gastric bypass surgery was almost two years ago. It feels much longer than that. I’ve done well. I’ve kept the weight off, for the most part, and was holding pretty steady through this past winter. Which wasn’t where my bariatric surgeon wanted me to be. This has never been about numbers for me; I can’t say the same for him – and he’s kinda the boss in this whole scenario. He wants me to lose at least 100 pounds. I’m sure that meets some sort of metric on his side of the surgery. I’ve plowed along…
I started out at 300 pounds on my first visit to him in late November 2022. That was heavy, but not the heaviest I’d ever been. The heaviest I’d ever been was back in 2012-2013’ish when I weighed 330 pounds. I had to go on insulin and started taking weight loss medication. By the time Papaw Little died in May 2014, I was down to about 220 pounds, the lightest I had been since just after college. Then I grieved for a solid year and gained back almost all the weight I had lost.
I lost some weight again twice after that, lesser amounts of weight, for lesser amounts of time. It never stayed off. As soon as I stopped taking the medication (Contrave – which was extremely expensive), the weight came back. I was having tons of health issues, and that was why I sought out a gastric bypass/bariatric specialist. I had done as much as I could do on my own. I was ready to try surgery. Honestly, I wish I had done it years earlier. But I wasn’t ready yet. When I was ready, I was ready. And everything fell into place the way it was supposed to.
The day of my surgery on June 19, 2023, I weighed 279 pounds. Around the beginning of October, I was down to 240 pounds. By December, I started stalling out around 225 pounds. Like I said, I was fine with that. I could walk without an asthma attack. I could put my tennis shoes on without being out of breath or crying. I could fit in a roller coaster seat. I could sit on an airplane without a seatbelt extender. I didn’t measure my weight loss in numbers.
One year after my surgery, on June 19, 2024, I weighed 215. Did I want to get down to 200? Sure, but my body wasn’t cooperating. And truthfully, I wasn’t doing all I could to help it get there. I wasn’t working out like I should. I still don’t work out like I should. Working out isn’t something I’m ever going to enjoy and will always be a chore that I have to make myself do – there you go – full disclosure. And I was stalled between 215-223 pounds for the rest of the calendar year.
I lost a few pounds in December. Right before I had my first visit with Dr. Janelle, Dr. Gray’s wife, who works as a nutritionist at the Weight Management Center in Kingsport. I had already decided to hate her. She was going to make me eat healthy. She was going to tell me all the things I was doing wrong. Instead, she told me all the things I was doing right and told me what I could do better. She weighed me on a special scale that magically discounts the weight of your clothes and tells you how much each limb weighs, what your torso weighs, how much muscle mass is in each part, what your metabolic age is (mine is 68– no wonder I feel like crap some days, lol). And I weighed 217.6.
That was January 20, 2025. Dr. Janelle put me on a tiny dose of Ozempic weekly because my A1C had started creeping back up – I wasn’t watching what I ate – and was back up to 6.4. I started counting carbs, protein, and calories the next day using the app, Carb Manager. Most days, I do really well staying within my limits and tracking like I’m supposed to. Most days. When I’m on vacation – like the cruise and Vegas – I don’t even try. I just get back to it when I get home. I can’t be a total addict to any app when I’m on vacation (not even Facebook, believe it or not).
The Ozempic is helping me manage my A1C, which, in just 3 months, is back down to 5.6 and I’m no longer taking any other diabetes medications. This morning, when I weighed, I was down to 201.1 pounds. I’m really close to “ONE-derland.” And I’ll get there. Dr. Gray and Dr. Janelle have introduced me to important tools. It’s up to me to utilize them correctly. Hopefully before my 2-year anniversary next month, I’ll be below two hundred pounds. If the past few months are an accurate indicator, the future looks promising. Numbers aside, though, I feel great. I’m going to miss Drs. Gray and Janelle when they move at the end of the year. I have one more appointment with them, in October. It will be interesting to see where I am by then, and to hear more about who is coming into the practice to work in those positions they’ll leave vacant.
Recent Comments