When I started blogging about my weight loss journey, I had wanted to do it by section. Here is pre-op and then post op. Here’s a shot at the first three months, then moving into solids, and finally real food. But time and life had their way, and that never happened.
So, standing at almost a year and a half later, I want to reflect on the first year of my new lease on life and the changes that it has brought, both good and bad.
The first three months were some of the hardest of my life. I’d lost some weight while getting ready for the surgery, but nothing would prepare me for the way weight would start to fall off or the way that would make me feel. It’s hard to track weight loss visually when it’s yours. You see yourself every day. But the changes I felt were huge.
The biggest thing for me was the water.
I have a 72oz Bubba Keg that I carry around with me everywhere. It is always filled with ice water and nothing else. It’s always with me, and I am always drinking water. I am a very well-hydrated person. But after this surgery, I couldn’t drink water like I used to.
Hell I couldn’t eat like I had used to, (a good thing of course.), or do anything damn thing like I used to. But anything I drank, I did so sparingly. It was a hard adjustment on my body.
Not as hard as the AGRESIVE SHEDDING I didn’t learn about until after I had the surgery.
What’s aggressive shedding, you ask?
Well I’ll tell you.
It's where you lose nearly half your hair volume due to the sudden weight loss and hormones in my body going absolutely haywire in my body. Now, if you’ve seen photos of me, you know my hair is long. Close to four feet long. I want to be Stevie Nicks with my hair or Crystal Gail.
I am Jo from Little Women, my hair is my only beauty.
The loss of over half of its volume was an unknown and devastating side effect that I should have realized was there. Every shower, watching strand after strand come falling out was like a gut punch. I wanted to cry and to bang my head against a wall. But for no amount of hair loss would I have gone back on that surgery.
This was my chance to have a life, not get my life back; I’ve never had that. This was me taking my health in my hands and carving from the fat of my body the life that I have always dreamed of.
After the liquid only phase comes the soft food phase. I won’t sit here and lie to you, I did not make it all the way to the three week mark without having a little bit of solid food.
What did I have, you ask?
What deliciously delectably decadent food tempted me from my promise to not eat solid food for three weeks?
A Babybel cheese.
I know.
So lame.
But in my defense, it had been almost a month since I had consumed solid food; I was dying. I had an addiction to food, that’s why I ended up at the weight I was at. I loved food. I had a problem with food.
One night after work, I had been working a very busy 12 hour shift, answering 911 calls and dispatching Fire and EMS units all over central Alaska. (Did I mention that the area we cover is roughly the size of the state of Maine?), and I’m sitting in my car. I pull out my lunch box and realize there is this little beautiful wheel of red wax covered cheese in the top part of my box.
Looking around to see if anyone was about (like a criminal, which is hilarious because I was in the back parking lot of a police station), I unwrapped that delicious little cheese and took the tiniest bite.
Then I waited.
When nothing happened, I took another tiny bite.
And another.
And then another until I had devoured that tiny cheese. It was sinful it was so good. I sat in the car and delighted in how wonderful it felt to have something solid in my stomach again. Even if it was small.
Once I hit my big check up and moved into soft foods, I was amazed to see how little I could eat. And it took a long time to realize how much food would make me feel full and how much would make me puke. A lesson I am still learning.
After six weeks, I was able to start working out, slowly at first, and with a serious limit to how much I could lift, but every day I got stronger, and slowly, so slowly at first, I watched the weight start to melt off of me. Then, it became like a snowball.
The more weight I lost, the less junk I wanted to eat, the better I tracked my food, and the more I went to the gym. And the more I did all of that, the more weight I lost. It just kept going and going until I finally hit one of my huge milestones: I was under 200 lbs for the first time since high school.
Then I was on fire.
I was at the gym all the time, buying second-hand clothes that would fit me where I was then, since I knew I would keep losing weight. Before long I hit the big goal.
100lbs lost!
In February of 2023, I went to the Alaska ComicCon in Fairbanks dressed as Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It wasn’t a great costume, but I made my shield, and it came out pretty cool. I was very proud of it, and it was not something I would have ever done before. The shirt I was using as a tunic was short, and the white thermals I had on were skintight.
I would never have dreamed of wearing something like that before.
Later that month, I got on a plane to fly to Utah to celebrate my Gramcrackers 90th birthday, not knowing that the biggest change I would ever go through was already underway.
I was so comfortable on the plane. I didn’t well out of my seat, I didn’t have to stretch the seatbelt all the way out to get to buckle, and I didn’t feel like I was welling over my seat into the one next to me.
It was freaking amazing.
My family were all super excited to see me, telling me how great I looked and how proud they were of the weight I had lost. I know as an adult I shouldn’t put so much heft on the opinion of my extended family, but I did.
I was glowing under their praise and felt like I had a brand-new lease on life. I wanted to go out and work out with my niece, who is a machine, by the way. She plays hockey and works out so much that she has some seriously ripped abs. I aspire to that girls level of badassery.
I came home and went back to work and back to working out, posting online when I was in the gym because having the people on my Facebook cheer me on helped. People that I loved and who loved me were cheering me on. I had friends who wanted to work out with me and were regularly asking me about my workouts.
Gods, I felt amazing.
Things with Tim were great! He could pick me up, I could hop up on the counters and my knees!
My knees, which have been cracking every time I go up the stairs since the time I was 18, no longer creaked. I was healthy and getting healthier by the day. Tim started working out more too. We were drinking protein shakes and eating healthier food, and the boys were working out with us. It was amazing to watch the way the whole family changed.
In the end, the gastric sleeve procedure I had was the single hardest thing I had ever done in my life up to that point. The pain from surgery, the agony of having to completely relearn my relationship with food, and then watching my strength and hair wean away as my body turned in on itself and destroyed the fat I had layered there was both remarkable and exhausting. It changed me in so many profound and uncountable ways. But the biggest change was yet to come.
A change that should not have been possible, and one that brought my weight loss journey to a screeching halt and had me packing on the pounds again. A change that once again completely overturned the relationship I had with food and came with changes so profound I will be dealing with them for the rest of my life.
Was it hard?
Excruciatingly so.
Was it the only option?
For me? Yes.
Was it expensive?
Even with my insurance, this still set me back several thousand dollars.
Was it worth it?
Hell yes.
Would I do it again?
Without hesitation.
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