First Blog!

Hello and welcome to my first blog post EVER! Let me introduce myself. My name is Alyssa. I am 21 years old. I started this blog to document my journey as I have gastric bypass and finally shed this excess weight. So let’s get into why I have turned to weight loss surgery. I am 5’3” and weigh about 280 pounds. This puts my BMI at 49, in the morbidly obese category. I have been overweight since middle school. I put the blame completely on myself, but a few things contributed to my rapid weight gain since middle school. When my family moved up to Pennsylvania, the timing just wasn’t right, and I missed the cut-offs for the sports that I always participated in as a kid. I didn’t really do anything in seventh grade, and I cheered in eighth grade, but by then was already “chunky” and didn’t have the confidence to try out for the high school squad. Then high school came around, and I got involved in Student Council and other academic clubs, instead of sports, so I just wasn’t exercising the way I should have. Next thing I know, I’m in college, obese, and have no energy to run or do anything. And that’s how I got to be where I am today.

So, now I want to talk about what I expect to get out of this blog. I have a few things I would like to get out of this site. For one, I am hoping that this blog can help others in similar situations like me. Being so young and seemingly healthy, I get remarks a lot about how I should be able to just drop the weight, and yada yada. Well, when there is 160 pounds of weight to be lost, it is a little much to just say it. And while I’m willing to do the work, I didn’t get fat overnight, and I certainly don’t expect to get skinny overnight either. The other thing I would love for this blog to accomplish to education. I would love to keep my friends and family (as well as random others who find themselves here) informed as to what is going on with me in this journey. Feel free to leave me encouraging comments or any suggestions you may have, but I will not tolerate negativity. If there is a valid concern, that is a little different. But if you are going to only have negative things to say, feel free to press that little red X in the top right corner of the page. You don’t have to be here.

Just a warning for all of you who have made it to this point in the post: I will be completely transparent and will use this blog as an avenue for describing everything, no matter how embarrassing for myself, or how gross or what not. This is a warning that some things may seem gross to you, but if I were a perspective weight loss surgery (WLS) patient, I would want to know EVERYTHING. So that is exactly what I am hoping to give to my readers.

So, let’s get down to why I’m here. I already explained my weight gain. Now, I want to discuss my plan of attack. I had struggled between choosing between the three main types of WLS: band, bypass, or sleeve. At first I was deadset on the band. I thought I didn’t want my insides rearranged or a part of my stomach removed, so I would settle with a foreign object being placed inside me. And then I started researching the sleeve more, and really fell in love with that surgery because seemed like a happy-medium between the band and the bypass. When looking into the matter with my insurance company and the surgeon’s office however, we determined that the surgery is typically considered “experimental” by the insurance company and is denied. That’s when I really started looking at the bypass and getting past the fact that my insides would be rearranged. A cousin of mine, who is not too much older than I, had the bypass three years ago and lost 163 pounds in ten months. She lost the same amount that I am hoping to lose, and she really honestly didn’t have too much extra skin. I was really surprised by that because I went into the whole process okay with the fact that I will probably end up needed plastic surgery in the end.

So anyway...I talked with that cousin (I’ll call her Sam here for the purposes of this blog) and she asked me which surgery I was having. I told her the band. She asked me why I chose the band and I honestly didn’t have a very good answer for her. I told her I liked that I could lose weight slower and not have so much extra skin. That’s when Sam showed me her little bit of extra skin she had. Then, she asked if I was prepared to not feel restriction right away. I thought about it, and I said yes. However, upon later talking with my mom, we decided that I’m really not that patient of a person, and would most likely get frustrated with the slower loss from the band. So, I researched the bypass for HOURS....and I decided I wanted to switch to the bypass.

My surgeon (Dr. Harrison of Lehigh Bariatric Surgeons) does the Roux-en-Y (RNY) type of bypass. So, I researched some more and I am absolutely convinced that I want to get the bypass. The next step was to confirm this with Dr. Harrison’s office, and my surgery was switched from band to bypass. YAY J

So, my surgery date is August 16. I don’t have any kind of special pre-op diet, like most people have to do a liquid diet for a week. My diet for the week before surgery will be a modified Atkins diet, just low fat, low carbs, and high protein.

I am very excited for my surgery and for the life I will gain afterwards. I know that it is going to be rough at times and that I will have obstacles to go through (hell, I already am...), but I know in the end, this is the best thing I can do for myself.

Thank you for listening to me rant and rave, and for hopefully pushing that ‘get updates through e-mail’ button so that you can stay in the loop with what’s going on in my life. It is my goal to post at least once a week. During the remainder of the summer before my surgery, that may be a little more difficult since there shouldn’t be too much to report out on, but definitely post-op I will be blogging like crazy for everyone to hear about my experiences.