Introductions...

ih8it4ya

My name is Bryan and I am 42 years old. I had roux en y gastric bypass surgery 19 years ago when the RNY was just becoming available. I was 353 pounds and suffering from heart issues among other things. When I had surgery, there was no nutrition support, no therapy, and little interference from insurance. I went into the surgery thinking it would be a magic cure all. I managed to lose 135 pounds and plateaued at 218 pounds. I then became discouraged and started sabotaging myself by teaching my brain and body to ignore the signals that were telling me to avoid certain foods like sugar. Fast forward 19 years and I had regained back to 306 pounds. My partner of 17 years (husband for the last almost 4 years) had gained a great deal of weight as well. He decided to investigate weight loss surgery and I supported him and went with him to a general educational seminar led by a local surgeon. It was at this meeting that I learned of revision surgery for people exactly like me who had failed the surgery and regained the weight. I called my insurance the next day and confirmed that revision surgery was a covered benefit if I underwent their approval process. I called the surgeon who did my original surgery and asked him if he did revisions and he said YES. I made an appointment for both myself and my husband to talk to the surgeon. Following that visit, we began working with the surgeon's nutritionist toward insurance approval. July 25th was out first nutrition appointment. The surgeon wanted us to lose 30 pounds before surgery and exercise at least thirty minutes, three days a week. The approval process would take four to five months so we learned about healthy eating, exercise, and lifestyle changes and we set to work. We bought Fitbits to track our steps and joined MFP to better track our calories consumed. We started walking slowly at first. We started logging all our food and making better choices in what we ate. My surgery date was 12/3/13 and when I weighed in at the hospital, I was 248 pounds. I had lost 58 pounds in a little over four months just by working hard. We were exercising at least an hour a day, five to six days a week. We began hiking on the weekends and were up to 5-6 mile hikes. The surgeon told me to be at 10,000 steps per day by six weeks after surgery. I hit that by week three. it is now almost 8 weeks post revision surgery and I am down to 210 pounds. We are exercising at least 60 minutes a day, 6 days a week at a local health club. My goal is to begin kayaking as soon as the weather permits.

My vision for this group is to provide a safe and supportive environment for LGBT people who have had weight loss surgery or are thinking about having it. Sometimes it is difficult to speak of your partner in a predominantly straight forum. We should all feel free to be ourselves here - gay, straight, fat, or thin.