It's Official!

I am having gastic bypass surgery on October 2, 2009 and I couldn't be more excited! After a life long struggle with my weight, exacerbated by a significant gain while working at McDonald's in my teenage years, I've decided that I need more help than Weight Watchers can give me.

As you can see by the log to the right, I didn't lose weight at a fast enough speed to keep me motivated. To be honest, even though I joined Weight Watchers I was still pursuing the WLS route. I figured if I could lose some weight with WW I'd be ahead of the game when and if I got approved for weight loss surgery. Unfortunately I lost my motivation to continue with WW long before I knew I was approved, so getting approved was fantastic news!

I attended a patient education program at The Weight Management Clinic in Ottawa to learn all about the procedure and what to expect before and after the surgery. I'll be honest - I did a lot of research before deciding to seriously pursue WLS so there was very little information that was new to me but it was nice to receive it all in an organized fashion. One thing that I learned that I didn't now before:

The potential rate of weight loss is astounding!
The average weight loss is as follows:
0-3 months after surgery: Up to 7 lbs per week! (holy crap!!)
3-6 months after surgery: Up to 3 1/2 lbs per week! (still impressive)
6-12 months after surgery: 1/2 to 1 lb per week.

Of course knowing this I'm finding myself looking in my closet at all my clothes and realizing that I'll miss them! I have a lot of clothes and love most of them. This will be a big change and then I remind myself that I'll be able to shop in the skinny stores! Something I haven't done since I was about 17 years old. And I think of how much fun I'll have shopping at the thrift stores to find clothes for the interim while I'm losing weight. Yes, I can take my better clothes to the consignment shop and trade the rest with the other girls going through weight loss as well. There is a great support group in Ottawa and they exchange clothing periodically.

I keep telling everyone that I'll be wearing a bikini this time next year! I'm so, so excited about this! I am prepared to make the changes and suffer the consequences of poor eating post surgery to achieve this goal. I want to take up running too.

And as much as I have had a relatively healthy body image and pretty good self esteem (great clothes and hair help!! lol) I am SO looking forward to not having to refer to myself as a BBW on the dating websites! The day I get to choose "Average" or "A few extra pounds" to describe my body type I think I may cry! And if I get my act in gear, dare I dream about being "Athletic"???

Wow! So much more to come as I embark on this journey!!