Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Morbid Obesity

For any of you who do not know what this is:
According to Wikipedia "Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems.[1][2] People are considered obese when their body mass index(BMI), a measurement obtained by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of the person's height in metres, exceeds 30 kg/m2."

My current BMI is 57.5, which is morbidly obese.

The first time I saw this word, it was on my physician's notepad. It was written down and it was referring to me. Yes...to me. Even though I saw this on her sheet, I never identified with that term, even though it really is true. I could not believe that that could ever describe anything about me. This was back around 2002 or so. Whenever I saw myself in a mirror, even though I inadvertently was dodging them, I was mostly disgusted and other times satisfied.

Over time, I allowed myself to be blind to the things I was doing to myself and I heard the people around me say that they were worried and I still did nothing most of the time. Yes, I tried various diets and most of them didn't work, other times they would work but only for a short time mostly because I believed that I physically could not do it. I'll repeat myself, I actually believed that no matter what I did, I could not be successful. Where did I pickup this philosophy? I couldn't tell you.

The past few years, my health has been declining rapidly. I experienced pain almost non-stop daily for quite a few months. I believe that more than anything is what caused my subsequent depression. I never thought I would ever have experienced depression. The best way I can describe this depression is: it was a deep dark hole with no doors, no light and no one could find me because I isolated myself from almost everyone.

I was literally eating myself to death. I would sit in front of the TV for hours, home from work I would immediately sit on the couch, eat crap and stay there till bedtime.

Then, my friend's sister, mentioned a 12-step program called Overeaters Anonymous. I still wasn't ready but I had started to talk to people about what I was experiencing and then another person mentioned OA. She was my husbands colleague, she had no clue what I had been going through but that felt like a sign to me. Something was nudging me toward healing, a new sense of self.

It was just before I started OA that I made the decision to pursue Weight Loss Surgery. Yes, i went through all the pros and cons and i saw that the list of pros far outweighed the cons. So, I started the process and now I am getting close to a surgery date and I am hoping to the beginning of a new and healthy life.

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