Hi everyone (:

Firstly, I'll start by introducing myself a little bit... I'm a 22-yo girl from Belgium and in August 2016, I went for my first appointment to get more information about bariatric surgery.

Now, what led me to making this appointment? Well, ever since I can remember I've been struggling with my weight. I started going to a dietician from the age of 10, had a personal trainer for a few months at the age of 12, between the age of 14 and 16 I did Weight Watchers, a Soup diet and also the Dukan-diet that I did for about 6 months. After graduating High School, I went to a life coach and did some kind of special diet, combined with exercising every day. With this diet I lost about 12 kg (26 lbs). I felt really healthy and more confident at this point, I thought I had finally managed to change my lifestyle and habits. However, as all of my past diets, I only very slowly lost the weight and hit a stall. I tried to break the stall by increasing my exercising, but my weight wouldn’t move and my coach would only get annoyed with me telling me I didn’t exercise. As a result, I would get very frustrated and stressed out as I didn’t know what else to do and I started to get quite demotivated, because every week I went, I knew what was waiting for me. So, I made the very, very bad decision of saying ‘F this’ and every week after my consultation I started binging and then for the remaining 6 days I would just followed my plan to the letter and exercise. After a little while, I got fed up and just stopped going in general. Needless to say, that just like all of my previous attempts, I gained every single gram back plus more (of course). After all of this I just gave up on diets in general. I only had one goal and that was to get an internship in London, get out of my comfort zone, change my environment for a few months and be on my own.

Last year in March, I reached this goal. I moved to London on 19 March 2016, words cannot describe how happy I was of being away from everything for a few months. I could finally try to get some structure in my life and be away from a little something I like to call “Village Mentality’. The period I was living in London, I opened up more and I just became more comfortable and happy with myself. I actually started to like and accept myself for who I was. I didn’t feel like I constantly had to live up to a certain standard (appearance wise) anymore. My social anxiety, that had been getting quite sever because of the way I look, was finally diminishing. I was feeling genuinely happy and when my friends came to visit me they saw me blossom too. I don’t know how much, but after these three months I lost a quite a bit of weight without even trying to… I guess a reason for this is because I walked literally everywhere. Then, sadly, 12 June came along and I knew this had to end sometime and I would have to move back home.

I tried my ultimate best to hold on to this feeling of being happy with myself and leaving the house more, but I slowly felt it slipping away. I kept trying to get a hold of it, but as I am writing here, you probably know how this ended… So, I took matters into my own hands and went to my doctor for advice. I told him about all my insecurities and my weight and he referred me to a bariatric surgeon.

Three weeks ago, I had all of my pre-op intakes (psychologist, dietician, physiotherapist, endocrinologist and physician). I am to this day still waiting for a phone call of the multidisciplinary team with their advice/approval for me. The only things they told me that day is that they were very pleased with my bloodwork (no Vitamin deficiencies, no diabetes and no high blood pressure, only thing they did see, was that my thyroid tends to process things a bit slow) and that the psychologist wanted to work with me on my self-image and my cognitive perception about myself (I’ve always been bullied about my weight/appearance even when I wasn’t obese yet and I guess this caused me to have a morphed perception). Prior to these intakes I already underwent a sleep study which indicated that I have obstructive sleep apnoea.

It is starting to dawn upon me of what I’m doing and I am starting to doubt whether I am making the right decision. I feel like I am letting myself down by not being able to do this on my own. So much is going on in my head at the moment as it will affect the rest of my life: Am I making the right decision? Will the outcome be positive or negative? Shouldn’t I try to change my lifestyle one more time before going to this last resort? Shouldn’t I just work on myself and love myself for who I am? What if I go through with this and I fail? Or what if I go through with this and I will still feel the same way I’m feeling now (just without my “protection suit”)? This might sound weird, but somewhere I am also very scared of becoming very vulnerable without my “protection suit”, without being able to hide myself behind my weight… But, I also feel like I am stuck in my own body and I could do and achieve so much more if I could just get out of this… Or then again, is this just wishful thinking? Conclusion, I am completely lost.

I apologise for writing so much, but I guess it might be good to have written all of my thoughts down for once. Did someone else go through this? Am I making the right decision? Every single piece of advice or input will be very much appreciated! <3

Xo Losty

Edited March 14, 20179 yr by xLosty
emojis don't work

2 minutes ago, orionburn said:

Through Memorial Hospital's bariatric program. Their office is technically in Granger, but it's right around the corner from UP mall.

I actually did think of them but never looked further. Did you have to do a liquid diet before and after? My program doesn't require one. They want us patients to eat like we would eat for the sleeve, protein and low carb, no sugar. Even though after the surgery, the doctor said I can eat soft foods, I'm sure I'll be sticking to protein shakes until I get the hang of it. I'm so scared of taking that first drink or bite, and it hurting my stomach. Did it ever hurt to drink or eat initially after surgery?