AFTER ALL THAT!!!! ...my journey to weight loss surgery

People who know me, know I have battled with weight loss (and Weight Gain!) all my adult life. Most of it at least.

And when I say "battled", I mean I have fought hard. Not just sitting on the couch and saying - "why am I not able to be skinny like the people on TV?"

Not only have I tried dozens of diets and weight loss plans - I have consistently exercised, set goals, counted calories, tracked and measured....and on an on.

Along the way, God only knows how many pounds I have lost and gained back. How many hundreds of miles I've walked, jogged, run (the running is only a memory now), biked and crawled. ...When I sprained my ankle running sprints, I had to crawl to the car one time, so I threw that in for dramatic effect. But truly, I have been committed to the "change" for over 20 years!! Well over!

In fact, in the past 5 years, I have finished five (5) Triathlons and one (1) Du-athlon and swam hundreds of miles in training.

Still, I found myself on the scale at my new Doctors office looking at a digital readout of over four hundred (400) pounds!! To be exact, following are the measurements that were recorded by the Bariatric Surgeon's nurse at my first appointment with him two days ago (4/12/2011):

• Weight: 401.61 lb


• BMI: 57.5


• BMR: 13106 kJ


• Fat %: 37.4% (desirable range 11-22%)


• Fat Mass: 150.21 lb (desirable range 31-71 lb)


• Impedance: 218


• FFM: 251.41 lb


• TBW: 184.01 lb

To be honest, I do not know what some of these abbreviations mean, but I assume I will be learning more about them as time goes on.

The reason for my title being "After All That"... is because over the years numerous people have asked "Why don't you just have the weight loss surgery?" I have always said that I felt it would be an admission that I couldn't do it on my own. And now, after all these years and all this trying and all this failing, you know what? I was right. I can't do it on my own.

So, now that I am entering this journey to weight surgery and hopefully (expectantly) to becoming literally half the man I am now - I thought I would begin a blog about it. Initially, I plan this to be therapeutic for me. Eventually, after we have succeeded - I plan to share it with others who could benefit from my experience.

As of today, I am on my second day of self dieting. My goal is to lose the 40 or 50 pounds that the Surgeon told me I need to lose prior to surgery as quickly as possible.

Yesterday I began eating super low carbohydrate, high protein foods. I kept my calorie count under 1,000 for the day and made sure I drank at least 64 ounces of water. One day down!

Today I actually feel better tan I did yesterday. That isn't saying a lot, since I am usually in lots of pain these days. But better is better! My hands hurt from just typing this though. Probably for arthritis and all the work I did yesterday, but they hurt; so I'll write more later.