20 Years of Challenges and Successes Post Gastric Bypass

Amazingly, 20 years have passed since I had gastric bypass surgery. It changed my life. But, was it the right choice. I think it was. Would I have made a different decision had I had more information? Possibly.

I needed information about the reality of what my new body would really look like. I would have liked the truth about what my insurance would actually cover. I could have used information about how the surgery would affect my life and my health, 10, 15, or 20 years in the future.

Unfortunately, 20 years ago there was minimal information available on some of these topics. There had been no studies showing how people were doing more than 5 years out. The procedure was too new. Information was sketchy at best.

In this post, I will share my journey. How I came to decide gastric bypass was right for me. How I did after surgery, and how I’m doing today. I will share what I have I’ve learned. The many ways I messed up and the things I actually got right. Hopefully, you will find my personal account helpful.

But first a brief history of Susan. Just to let you know how I got to the point when surgery became my best option. If you don’t care, I won’t be offended, just jump to the nitty-gritty and skip down to the heading Deciding on Surgery.

Pre-Gastric Bypass

The Early Years

I spent my early childhood and teen years at a relatively normal weight. I was actually skinny in elementary school. When I was 12 years old, in middle school, it was the first time I even thought about my weight. A boy on the school bus told me I wouldn’t be half bad if I lost a few pounds. That was a complete shock to me. I didn’t need to lose weight, I was skinny, wasn’t I? I needed to find out. So I did the worst thing I could have, I asked my older brother (3 years older) if I was fat. He barely glanced at me and said “a, yeah”.

That was how it began. I still remember seeing the nurse in 7th grade for a health screening. I was 5′ tall and 132 pounds. That was fat? I didn’t think so. I did however have a small amount of doubt about it. Being a kid though, I kinda let it go for a while. My best friend was very overweight, she came from a family of very big people and she weighed over 200 pounds (I don’t remember the exact amount), I used her as my comparison. I was nowhere near her weight so I was fine.

There were other incidences here and there, that affected my development. Typical teenage girl stuff, but nothing that I remember as distinctly as those 2 events.

Fortunately, I didn’t develop any eating disorders, but what I did develop were fatphobia and low self-esteem. I compared myself to every popular girl and I was always lacking. They were always skinner than me, not to mention prettier. They could cut their hair any way they wanted and look good.

As my teen years progressed, so did my self-esteem issues. Boys became a huge issue. I was fat and unattractive so I needed to do more to get and keep a boyfriend. I’m sure you see where this is going. I was pregnant at 17.

It’s funny that there are times in my life when of all the things to remember about a situation, for me, what stands out, was what I weighed. That tells a lot about how much my weight issues factored into my life. At my first weigh-in for my prenatal care, I was 5’2″ ( which is my height today) and 106 pounds. And yes, I thought I was overweight.

I had my son prematurely, at only 28 weeks. He survived but was in the hospital for 2 months. Even with all that was going on with him, I remember my weight at my first postpartum doctor visit. I was 140 pounds. I thought that was just an outrageous amount of weight to have gained.

The 20’s and early 30″s

To move this along I’m going to just jump to the milestones. I never lost that baby weight. I spent the next four years ranging between 130 and 140. I got pregnant with my second child at 22 and weighed in at my first doctor’s appointment at 136 pounds. I also had this baby prematurely at 32 weeks. She did very well and came home after just a week in the hospital. My postpartum weight was 185 pounds. Again, I never lost that baby weight.

I spent the next 10 years doing all the yo-yo dieting. You name it I tried it. I tried fad diets, like the cabbage soup diet. I tried a bit of aerobics and home exercise machines, I tried starvation. I never stuck with anything for long. Looking back I know I didn’t make a great effort to lose weight. I always looked for the easy way. I complained about my weight, but I enjoyed eating and kept on eating whatever I wanted when I wasn’t dieting. Why not, I’m fat and dieting doesn’t help. My self-esteem was very low and food made me happy.

What I never did was make any attempt to truly educate myself about nutrition or exercise. I accepted my being overweight as just part of who I was.

Deciding on Surgery

I was not a happy person. When I walked by a mirror or plate glass window, it would take me a moment to realize that the reflection I saw was mine. Even though I had been overweight for years, I still somehow expected to see a thin person reflected back at me. I was now someone unable to play with and run after my four-year-old daughter, someone that couldn’t stand or walk for more than a few minutes without needing to sit. Someone that dressed in the baggiest clothing I could hide in. My weight was definitely what I saw as the major issue affecting how I interacted with my family and how I saw myself as an individual.

Then it started affecting my physical health.

I was fortunate, I was never seriously ill because of my weight. No diabetes, hypertension, or asthma. Nothing that I would call a serious physical health issue. However, I was starting to experience joint pain, and sleep problems, on top of the depression I was already dealing with. My cholesterol was extremely high and my energy level was extremely low. The symptoms that concerned me the most, however, were shortness of breath and heart palpitations. My Dad and his brother both died at only 55 from heart disease. I was starting to get very worried about what my future held for me.

Today it embarrasses me to admit how terrible I was at diet and exercise. I never made enough of an effort. I was fat, that was it, end of story. I’m sure I was capable of losing weight and maintaining it. There was nothing physically preventing me from doing so. Nothing but my distorted sense of self.

When I decided to have weight loss surgery I was 35 years old, 5’2″, and 230 pounds. That’s a BMI of 37.1.

For me, surgery was the perfect solution. I didn’t even give it much thought. I jumped right on board. 20 years ago I worked in a large call center, with mostly women. We sat glued to a desk for 35 hours a week. Many of us were overweight and unhappy. Gastric bypass for the mainstream patient was just starting to become popular and my insurance started to cover it. It seemed every month another co-worker would go missing. Turns out it was to get the surgery. One went out in January. One in February. Two in March. By April I was seeing their doctor and beginning the screening process. By June I had my surgery. In just the first year of the gastric bypass being covered by my insurance, 9 of us had the procedure.

The Aftermath

The First Year

My surgery went smoothly, I ran a fever so I stayed in the hospital one extra day, then went home. My biggest complication from the procedure was not even really a complication. I found out the hard way, that I react poorly to morphine. For about a week I was covered, from head to toe in itchy red blotches. It was not fun. But I’ll take it, compared to the issues and complications I could have had, I call that a win. The only other thing I distinctly remember is having the drain removed from my abdomen. I cried, I thought it was so painful. My doctor told me I was overreacting, and being a baby, and it didn’t hurt. I never really liked him.

Once home, I spent about two weeks living on a recliner in my living room, eating minuscule amounts of mushy foods. I was never really hungry. I tried to be very conscious of the amount I ate, I never pushed it. I felt full, I stopped eating. And the weight fell off.

In the first year, I went from 230 pounds to 134 pounds. Every once in a while I threw up because of things I ate. Pork, zucchini, and certain pasta shapes, like spaghetti or angel hair, got me every time. But again, otherwise, I think I did really well.

I did however lose a lot of hair. Back then the protein supplement was an icky, syrupy, capful of disgustingness. I was terrible at taking it. Are you surprised?

I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge the fact that I got very lucky. Even if you do everything right, many people have complications that are beyond their control. Ulcers, hernias, internal bleeding. I could go on and on. None of it happened to me. I have a few issues today, but I’ll tell you about them later.

Things Are Not So Rosey

I can say with certainty, that unlike my terrible attempts at weight loss, the effort I put into doing the right thing after surgery was tremendous. I shocked myself, but I was also proud of myself. I managed to keep my weight down for roughly 15 years.

Was I finally happy? Not totally. I lost the weight, but never really worked on my self-esteem. Now I saw all the new things that were wrong with me. I didn’t have a realistic image of what I would look like after the weight came off. I pictured a flat tummy and toned arms and legs. I did not get those. And no amount of exercise was going to get me them.

When I was deciding on whether or not to have gastric bypass surgery, the doctors talked about the option of skin removal surgery. What they didn’t mention is most insurance doesn’t cover it. Mine didn’t. Therefore it was never really an option for me. So, while I looked great covered in clothing. Naked, I had lots of loose skin on my arms, legs, butt, and belly. I hated wearing a bathing suit more than ever before.

They also never mentioned that when you lose fat, you lose breast tissue. At 36 years old I felt I had the breast of an 80-year-old. When I lay on my back I was completely flat-chested. My nipples were lying on the bed by my side. Not the look I was going for. Did my insurance cover breast augmentation? Nope.

I’m sure you’ve all heard people say, “You have such a pretty face, you just need to lose weight.” Well, it turns out that is not always the case. I had no wrinkles before weight loss. After, I felt like my face aged 10 years. When I was at my lowest weight, I felt I looked old and unhealthy.

As I was going through my photos for this post, I noticed there are not really any photos of me in the first several years after surgery. It surprised me to realize that. I didn’t know I was avoiding the camera.

I did eventually reconcile myself with all these things. It took many years. I needed to spend the time getting to know, understand, and like myself. While I think I will always be a little self-conscious about my loose skin, I now understand that this is my body. It’s the only one I have. I try to treat it with love and care. If you don’t like me for what I look like, that is your problem, not mine.

20 Years Later

Now, let’s jump ahead again.

To be completely honest, while I say I’m comfortable in my body today, the thought of getting naked with a man still sets off all my biggest worries. The me that has spent years working on my self-esteem says too bad, I am who I am, if you don’t like my body that’s your problem, not mine. But that young girl that was never good enough, never pretty enough, and never thin enough still tries to have a voice. I’ve learned not to listen to her. I hear her, I acknowledge her, but I overrule her.

Today I suffer from Anemia and am Iron Deficient. I try to eat as healthy as possible, but I am unable to do anything about them through diet. I go through periods where I feel malnourished. I have to eat all day in order to give my body the fuel it needs. And sometimes it’s still not enough.

For more information about Anemia click here to see what the Mayo Clinic has to say

I, like half of America, gained weight while at home during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. I jumped from my usual weight of 140 pounds to 170 pounds. As I write this today, I’ve gotten myself down to 147 pounds, but boy has it been a struggle. The weight is harder to lose now because of menopause and the fact my body is used to not eating a lot. I have to eat so few calories to lose weight that sustaining a low-calorie diet is just so difficult. I’m really hungry and I’m not used to that feeling anymore.

The whole idea behind this site is to document what has worked for me. I’m still a work in progress but now I’m doing a better job of educating myself. I need new ways of eating, exercising, and living. Just having had a gastric bypass is no longer a guarantee of weight loss. 20 years have passed and now I need to work at it again. I am gathering the tools for success and I’m using them. Do I come up short sometimes? Oh, yes. Do I keep trying? You bet I do!

Side note: I never noticed that selfie mode is reversed. My tats are on the opposite arm.

As you can see, even dropping 23 pounds, nothing is firm. It’s a combo of getting older and having weight loss surgery. I still eat right and I still exercise, even though I’m not thrilled with the look, it’s still better than where I was in January 2021 and hopefully by July 2022 (my goal date) it will be even better. I no longer strive for perfection. I just want to be happy with myself.

So… After a lifetime of weight and self-esteem issues the 2 most important things that have worked for me are:

• Self-help: I am more than just my body. I spent years in and out of mental health counseling, never really telling the honest truth of what I was thinking and feeling. How can you be helped if you’re not honest? I was always more concerned with how others saw me, I tried to lose weight for mostly aesthetic reasons. Having the surgery, for me, took the work out of it. I didn’t have to do much and the weight came off. Then I didn’t have to do much, and the weight stayed off. Fortunately for me, by the time the pandemic hit and I was in the midst of menapause, and the weight was packing on, I knew that I’d been living my life all wrong. I had made mistakes, but I was done with all the garbage I carried for years. I now understand that I am a work in progress and I will be so till the day I die.
• Education: Same story here. You can’t just wing life. How can you make informed decisions if you don’t have the facts? I was in my late 40’s when I finally caught on. I didn’t know how uneducated I was on so many things. Reading two or three magazine articles didn’t make me an expert. But that’s all I ever did. I saw something interesting in an article or on tv, and that was it, I was trying it. Now I know better. I became a certified nutrition coach so I could coach Myself. I keep a diet journal so I know what I’m eating, I track water intake and exercise. I need to know what I’m doing, where I’m succeeding, and where I’m falling short. I’m better educated today about food and nutrition than I’ve ever been. Do I know it all? Nope. Probably never will. Do I always follow my own advice? Nope. I’m human. I fail. But I also succeed. And, as I said before, I’m a work in progress, and I always will be.

FYI Insurance is still making it unclear as to what is covered and what is not. With so many insurance providers out there, there is no way for me to help you know what your provider covers. My best advice is to write a list of questions and call them for the answers. One question I would definitely ask is if skin removal is covered, is there a certain amount the removed skin must weigh? Because even if you have a lot of loose skin, if it doesn’t weigh whatever amount the carrier deems as coverable, they won’t cover it. If I could have my excess skin removed I would do it in a heartbeat.