Six months ago I made an awe­some deci­sion — it ranks pretty high up there — along with mar­ry­ing my husband.

For those of you new to my blog — I don’t talk about it too much these days — six months ago I had gas­tric bypass surgery. A lot has changed in the last year, I’m hap­pier, health­ier, and I feel like me-not me trapped in a much larger ver­sion. After years of strug­gling with my weight, loos­ing, gain­ing, loosing-I’d got­ten to the point where I felt that I needed to do some­thing dras­tic. I’ve seen the women in my fam­ily strug­gle with the same issues and in 2007 my mother had under­gone the pro­ce­dure and had amaz­ing suc­cess. This month marked my mother’s 2 year point — she’s hap­pier and health­ier than she was two years ago — I’m happy that I can say the same thing six months out.

See­ing her suc­cess, as well as that of a few of my friends I knew that this could be a plau­si­ble option. In Octo­ber of last year I went to an infor­ma­tion ses­sion, and came out think­ing it was a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­ity. I how­ever wanted to give it one more try-so I enrolled in Weight Watch­ers for what I think was the ninth time in my life and gave it my best. I lost 10 pounds. Which isn’t a bad thing. I con­tin­ued on-but began the steps towards see­ing if I even qual­i­fied for the surgery. I knew that my weight and BMI of 43 qual­i­fied me– but I hon­estly didn’t think I would have any other health issues that would be related to my obe­sity. In Jan­u­ary of this year I got a big shock when I learned that I had sleep apnea. After learn­ing that I did indeed have this sleep dis­or­der — thought to both cause and be a symp­tom of obe­sity I felt –that although I didn’t have any other health issues like high cho­les­terol, dia­betes etc that per­haps that this was begin­ning. I decided right then and there that I was going to have the surgery. In Feb­ru­ary I met with my sur­geon and felt more strongly that this was the best option for me. On March 16^th I went to sleep on an oper­at­ing room table and woke up in recov­ery changed.

The deci­sion to have this surgery wasn’t so much that I was tired of being fat — I was tired of the strug­gle. Tired of feel­ing trapped in my own skin, tired of not being able to play catch with my boys with out feel­ing tired, go down slides, or even…run up a flight of stairs with­out becom­ing winded. I’ve lost 82 pounds so far, and I feel great. When I look in the mirror-I feel like I’m look­ing at me-and not a per­son I couldn’t recognize.

Some peo­ple may think that I took the easy way out. It isn’t, it sim­ply was the best way for me.

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