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 I started my life as a fairly normal weight. I was never a skinny kid but I was always healthy and just average. I have mixes genes in regards to weight with one half of my family being extremely thin and the other half being more prone to gain weight.
As a child my parents emphasized the importance of being active and eating a balanced diet. I was involved in little athletics, swimming and I just generally never sat still. My mother always fed us a healthy diet with reasonable portion sizes.
When I moved out of home my mothers healthy lifestyle regime was quickly forgotten and I spent most of my 20's either rapidly gaining or loosing weight. However, after I turned 30 my weight increased dramatically and I gave up trying to loose weight once and for all. Some time in 2004 I weighed myself for the first time in ages to discover that I had hit triple figures. My way of dealing with this news was to throw away my scales and convince myself that I was 'big boned' and that I carried my weight well.
In 2007 I weighed myself again to discover that my weight had reached 117 kilos and I was uncomfortable in a size 24 jean. At around the same time my mother confided in me for the first time that she was worried about how my weight was affecting both my physical health and mental wellbeing. I come from a family with a history of diabetes and heart disease and I was playing Russian roulette with my life. It was then that I first started investigating lap band surgery as a solution to my problem. I soon discovered that this was not a quick fix solution and that maybe it wasn't the easy way out I was hoping for.
In early 2008 I made the decision that I wasn't going to spend another year as a fat person. Over the Christmas period I had gained even more weight and I was sick of wearing tents to parties and hiding from cameras over the festive season. So I visited Dr Baxter for the first time in January. He advised me that I would be a good candidate for the surgery, but after all the warnings that he gave me about the surgery I was still not 100% convinced.
In March 2008 I went ahead with the surgery. I simply felt that I had no other options. I felt I simply had too much weight to loose by trying another diet program again and that my history of regaining the weight lost, plus some, was too great to risk again.
I started feeling great only a week after surgery, and that feeling of health and wellbeing hasn't left me yet.
As I recovered from my surgery and got back on with life I went through the stages of the diet set out by my dietitian. When I first heard of the initial three to four weeks of eating stages I was a little scared about how I would handle the preparation of the food as well as the actual diet itself as I was always a bit of a picky eater. But I simply wasn't hungry and I simply wasn't particularly interested in food. I used to eat out of boredom even when I wasn't hungry, but I just didn't have that urge anymore. As time progressed and I moved through the phases of the diet my interest in food and my appetite gradually increased. I also began to exercise for the first time in a long time. I joined a gym and began to gradually build more exercise into my life. I started riding my bike to the shops, taking the stairs in my apartment building and not the lift and before I knew it I was feeling fitter and more energetic than I have in more than ten years. I still don't love to exercise and I never will, but it has slowly dawned on me that I feel better when I am fitter and that exercising doesn't mean I have squeeze into a sweaty leotard and do an aerobics class. I can just walk a little further with the dog, go for a swim when it's hot and before I know it I'm actually getting fit.
Nine months on from my surgery I am down into a comfortable size 12 jeans. It has taken me a while to realize I'm not fat anymore. I still catch my reflection as I walk past shop windows and wonder if that person is me, and people I haven't seen in a while will walk right past me in the street because they simply don't recognise me. I still go to the 'big girls' sections in clothes stores or avoid stores that don't stock bigger sizes. I always try on clothes that are too big for me. But I slowly it's starting to dawn on me that I am actually a normal healthy size now. And that is a just great. In so many ways my life has dramatically changed. I am so much healthier, happier and more confident in myself. I bound through the day with energy rather than drag myself through the day waiting until I can get home and sit on the couch. But in so many other ways my life hasn't changed that much, I still love to have a glass of wine and go out to dinner with friends (I just order an entree as a main course and skip the dessert), and I still like to eat chocolate occasionally. The only difference these days is that I eat a couple of squares and not the whole block. I just don't want to eat that much anymore.
But the biggest difference to me is my outlook on life. My glass isn't half empty anymore, it's half full. I really believe that I can do just about anything I put my mind to. I am looking forward to living the rest of my life as a healthy happy person, not in fear of getting sick and being afraid of becoming more and more morbidly obese. Some of family and friends were afraid that the surgery and big weight lose would change who I am. People don't always deal with change well. But I am exactly the same person I was a year ago, I'm just more confident and smile even more than I did back then, and of course there is a whole lot less of me.
Clare Calver
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