By the time I settled on having gastric bypass surgery two years ago, the risk of death didn't frighten me.
I was dying a slow death anyway. I wasn't living. I was eating myself to death. And I couldn't stop.
A size 24, I weighed 278 pounds in June 2008.
I was pre-diabetic: I had the telltale signs of velvety dark patches on my face and other parts of my body, my doctor told me.
I had sleep apnea: I slept with a CPAP machine every night because my body struggled to function under the pressure of my weight.
I had asthma: It manifested itself the spring before my surgery, and doctors said it was weight-related.
I was tired of dying one meal or binge at a time. I wanted to live.
An early start
My mother put me on my first diet while I was still in elementary school. Each year she became more and more frustrated with me and my eating. I couldn't get enough of food. One Thanksgiving, I ate all the meal's leftovers as my family slept. My stepfather caught me in the act.
When he asked me what I was doing, I replied: “I can't pronounce it.” It became a legendary family joke. But it really wasn't funny. I had a problem.
And until about 18 months ago, I had been on a diet ever since. Every new year, I would make a goal to drop at least 50 pounds. Each year I would gain at least 10.
At 9 years old, I weighed 140 pounds. For a brief period during elementary school, my mother, who is 21 years my senior, and I wore the same size. But I soon moved beyond my mother's misses size 8.
Over the years, I've done anything and everything to lose weight.
There is no diet that I haven't tried, including an overexercising, starvation diet, which led to a 100-pound weight loss just in time for my 30th birthday.
But as soon as I began to eat, that weight crept back on, especially in 2005. That was the year Hurricane Katrina destroyed my dream house and took away everything I'd worked so hard to accumulate for more than 10 years, including my 65-inch widescreen HD television. Pulling that to the curb to join my stainless-steel refrigerator, my sofa and my loveseat was just a bit too much.
I began to eat to cope with living with three cats in a FEMA trailer in the driveway of the home I used to inhabit. When I decided to abandon New Orleans in 2006, I felt guilty about that, too. So I indulged myself some more with food and drink. At one point, I joined a gym and Jenny Craig in Houston, but I just wasn't motivated to make a change. I was depressed and thought eating was the best way to cheer myself up.
By 2007, I weighed nearly 300 pounds: I was out of control and disgusted with myself.
I was miserable. I couldn't breathe. I needed a special machine to breathe at night. According to a sleep study, I would stop breathing 30 times in an hour.
Before I was prescribed a CPAP machine, my snoring could keep an entire household awake at night.
When I was a reporter, I avoided out-of-town assignments because I didn't want my co-workers to know that I snored like a freight train. The few who did find out never forgot it.
I avoided life in general because I was too fat to do anything much.
My life consisted of going to the grocery store and work — all within a 10-mile radius.
Each event tired me to the point of exhaustion.
I worked for three years on the night shift at the Chronicle, and each night after work I would eat for hours into the morning and then pass out in front of the television. I'd wake up just in time to go to work, and then the cycle would begin anew.
Inward struggle
At one point, I thought I would be weak and lazy if I resorted to surgery to resolve my weight-loss issues.
I truly can say that having the surgery in June 2008 was the best decision I have made in my life. And the journey has been far from easy.
I opted for the bypass procedure because with the LapBand procedure, I was told patients could still cheat. The weight loss is also often slower with that surgery. I needed immediate relief. And as a food addict, I knew if I had an opportunity to cheat, I would. Although I was never officially diagnosed as a food addict, I knew I was. In the past, my best friends tended to be alcoholics. We had this unspoken agreement: “I'll let you eat all you want in front of me just as long as you don't make any comments about all the liquor I'm drinking.”
The hardest part of this process was finding a doctor I trusted.
I consulted with two physicians before deciding on Dr. Carlos Ferrari at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center. I went to the suburbs because I hate the hustle and bustle of the Medical Center. I also felt Ferrari's staff had a nice, laid-back and caring approach with patients.
Relearning how to eat
For the first couple of months after the surgery, I was a vomit machine.
Nothing stayed down.
I had to relearn my likes and my dislikes. My body likes neither processed foods nor greasy foods. I have to chew meat slowly, as I do all foods.
Here's my biggest disappointment: I can still eat sweets.
For some gastric bypass patients, sweets will cause you to “dump.” Dumping causes nausea, vomiting or an intense sweating episode. I have an electric fan at my desk now to help me with such episodes.
So, though sugar doesn't make me dump, processed foods will break me out into a pouring sweat. Twinkies are a “no-no.”
One other devastating point: The surgery cost me my hair. Most overweight people have a beautiful head of hair. We take pride in it because it's the one thing that we can control.
After losing my hair, I wore a short natural for a while. Now I'm wearing a weave until my hair grows back.
A new year indeed
As the New Year begins, I can happily say that I am healthy.
I can walk up a flight of stairs. I can sit on a plane and slide from side to side in the seat. I don't have to buy my clothes at plus-size stores.
And I no longer snore, so I'm not ashamed to sleep away from home. And I travel more than ever now, mostly to malls in and around the greater Houston area.
Yeah, I've become a clotheshorse. There was a time when I ran from mirrors. Now I can't stay away from them.
Though surgery deals with physical aspects, it forces you to deal with psychological issues as well.
Today, I weigh 170 pounds, and I am a size 12 — the smallest and healthiest I've been in my adult life. But sometimes I still see myself as being nearly 300 pounds.
Others don't see me that way, but I do.
So for the first time in my life, my New Year's resolution will not be about weight in 2010.
It will be about having the courage to come to terms with the new me, accepting myself as I am now — all while walking boldly into a new, exciting and unknown future.
Tara Young is a former assistant business editor at the Houston Chronicle.
