I was born in 1964, on St. Patty's Day (March 17th) in Philadelphia, but we moved to Larchmont, NY (suburb of New York City) when I was 3. My dad was a rabbi (I'm reform Jewish) and my mom is an ex-model. I've been suffering from being overweight and then obese since I was 8. My parents divorced when I was 7, so perhaps that had something to do with why I started using food as company and comfort. My father was overweight, but not obese. My mother on the other hand is food neurotic--she loves to eat and talk about food and plan what and when to eat, but starves herself most of the day so she can stay thin. I'm sure her beauty obsession played into my own low self-image, and fed my rebellion and retreat into food. When I was a kid, I hid candy and cookies in my bedroom. My mother never found them, but she noticed that I wasn't always very hungry at dinner because, unbeknownst to her, I'd been eating sweets all afternoon after school. I went on my first major diet to lose 40 pounds when I was 12 in 1976. It was the infamous Scarsdale diet (remember gluten bread?). It was awful, but I lost the weight (and gained it all back and then some). Then weight watchers when I was 16. Lost and gained again. Three years after college, I moved to Los Angeles and being slightly homesick, I got up to 264 pounds and went back to weight watchers and lost 96 pounds. I moved back to New York after 4 years in LA, but then gained most of the weight back, stopping at 245. It's easier to get lost and be invisible in New York City as a fat person than it is in sunny, skinny body-obsessed LA. I went back to weight watchers a third time and got back down to 188, met my future husband in 1995 and got married. After a few years, I got back up to 232. My husband, bless his heart, has loved me at every size, and still does after almost 18 years. He's seen me on Atkins and thin, and on pizza and fat. Thank God love is blind. Four years ago I went on a medically-supervised, calorie-counting diet. Tedious as it was, I lost 101 pounds in a year. BUT: I found out that in order to allow myself to eat any more than 1200 calories a day, I have to work out like a fiend 6 days a week for at least one hour a day. If I don't, I gain weight. If I just eat 1200 calories, and work out 5 days a week, I can maintain my weight. But that's sometimes really [u]hard[/u]. So, in order to not feel hungry all day on 1200 calories in 24 hours, I'm going to get the sleeve surgery. I'm so damn tired of dieting while being hungry all day and counting the minutes til I can have my next meal of a 100-calorie muffin top and maybe a few cherry tomatoes, and [i]still[/i] be hungry afterwards. If I can only eat 1200 calories a day, well, then at least after the surgery I won't be hungry--I'll actually be FULL! I can't even imagine what that'll feel like. I'm so freakin' excited for that! At the age of 48, and knowing that my family has a high risk of reproductive cancers (my mom is a breast cancer survivor, my grandma survived colon cancer and her sister survived ovarian cancer) and knowing that obesity is directly tied to cancer, I'm not taking any more chances. But I'm also a little scared of the future. Not of the surgery itself, just what my life will be like with a smaller stomach. I feel like I'm entering a dark room and I can't find the light switch. I've got some great support around me--my husband, my therapist, my dog--but I hope this website and all you guys on it will give me some much-needed light as well. Thanks for reading. Wish me luck! :)
