On August 21, 2014 I had gastric sleeve surgery. I wasn't sure that the surgery was going to really work. I had been fat for a very long time. I had been on every diet known to man and then some, so I didn't have a whole lot of faith in this surgery either.
But I began to lose weight almost immediately. I actually lost 25 pounds the first 3 days I was in the hospital. Over the next few weeks following the surgery from August 21st until December 1, 2014 I lost 100 pounds.
The weight came off quite easily for me. However, because I was losing so much weight so quickly, I felt weak & dizzy. I was nauseous & I spent a lot of time in bed.
By January 2015 I began to quit losing weight at such a rapid pace and I begin to feel better. I could not eat enough to really keep up my strength but finally, by January, I was able to eat a little more often and I started feeling a whole lot better. I still wasn't convinced that I had done the right thing.
The doctor told me that I would wonder if I had made the right decision. He also told me that eventually I would be happy with the decision I made. In January 2015 I had not come to a place where I was happy about my decision, even though I had lost so much weight.
Over the next couple of months I lost about another 15 pounds, and as my weight began to level off, I stopped losing weight and I did begin to feel a lot better. Once I began to buy new clothes and I had gone from a size 16W to a size 0, I got quite a bit happier.
I am now 2 years and 4 months out of surgery, my weight has leveled off and I weigh about 130 pounds. At my lowest I had gotten down to 118 pounds, but I did gain some of that back simply because I'm 5'7" and 118 pounds is way too skinny.
I am happy that I had the surgery. Would I do it again? Probably not. The reason being is that I never have that feeling of, you know how when you're really hungry and you eat something like a cheeseburger or you just have some ribs with the grease and sauce running down your arms and dripping off your elbows, and you eat it and you feel so good, and your stomach is like stretchy full, and you're like, oh my gosh, that was the best food ever?
I never have that feeling anymore. I miss that feeling at Thanksgiving, 4th of July, Christmas and Easter where you get to eat a lot of good food and then have to diet for the week following, but it just feels good eating all of that food, and I don't get to do that anymore.
There's a lot of foods I don't get to eat at all. I can't drink pop, and not that I was a big pop drinker, but I do like to have a Coke every now and then, and I can't drink Coke. I have to watch everything I put in my mouth. I have to plan for events. I have to plan for things like eating bread, or having a piece of dessert like pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, and I gain weight back very easily if I'm not very careful with my diet.
So, while I can't say that I regret having the gastric sleeve surgery, because it did make my blood pressure go back to normal & I haven't been on any kind of medication in almost a year, including pain pills, I do wish I had chosen another route, like maybe a fat farm or something instead of the surgery.
If you are thinking of having some type of weight loss surgery, I would suggest that you really speak with your doctor, then speak with others who have had the surgery, and know exactly what you're getting into before you make a life-altering decision that you can't change.
"For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6)."
