An Epic Battle

As everyone who knows me can attest, I have always had a problem with my weight.  And, of course, that problem has magnified itself as I've grown older.

When I graduated from high school, I weighed 187 pounds (Its funny that I can remember something like that!).  For my height, that was considered overweight.  I stayed around that weight during my college days and when I first got married.

Marriage does a lot of strange things to you, including making you gain weight.  After a year and a half of marriage and a good "desk" job, I weighed 225 pounds.  In October, 1971, while Louise and I were living in Detroit, I went on a diet.  I lost 50 pounds in 90 days and, by the time we got back to Oklahoma for Christmas, weighed 175 pounds!  This was the lightest I had been in years.

Eventually, though, the weight all came back, plus a whole lot more!  At one point in the late 1980's, I got on the shipping scales at work and they topped 300 pounds.  Once again, I lost some weight but didn't really change my lifestyle like we are told we have to do.

In fact, over the years, I figure I have gained and lost over 400 pounds going on diets and then gaining the weight back.

Last year, we had a couple of friends who really enjoyed some weight loss with bariatric surgery and Louise decided that she wanted to do that.  Her doctor gave her a reference to a bariatric clinic in Owasso and, on September 21, we attended a seminar there.

That seminar acted as a motivator for us and we decided to change our eating habits and get more exercise.  In the meantime, Louise started seeing the doctors there and preparing for her surgery.  I even talked to the doctors about the surgery for myself but decided that I might be able to lose enough weight on my own.

It was decided that she would have her surgery after we returned from south Texas this spring.  Over the winter, we were very diligent about our diet and exercise and got a big surprise when we returned home.  Louise had lost so much weight that our insurance would no longer cover the surgery!  The doctors at the bariatric hospital did tell us that they would be happy to go ahead and do it for cash.  It would only cost $17,000!  By now, we had decided that we could do it on our own.

As of today, I've lost 73 pounds and weigh 203.  My goal is in the 160-170 pound range so I still have a ways to go.  I'll let you know when I've reached my goal.

One of the nice things about losing weight, other than the health aspect, is having people notice and comment.  In fact, one friend saw me the other day and raved about my weight loss.  She wanted to know how I had done it.  I told her that I had discovered the real secret to weight loss and she really pressured me to tell her what it was.  When I told her that it was diet and exercise, she was really let down.

Louise and I are now beginning to think about maintenance.  We are going to be at our goals in a few months and don't want to ever have to go through the weight loss deal again so maintenance will be very important to us.  This is something we've never done before so it should prove challenging.  Wish us luck!