Weight change & associated health problems

And then see, you know, you weigh yourself or you feel better, or you don’t feel so full or, you know, your clothes fit a bit better or something. And the strange thing is although I’ve lost quite a bit of weight I’m still wearing the same dress, still wearing the same size clothes. They’re fitting me looser, but I’m still wearing the same size clothes. I can get into a smaller size now, but I’ve got used to enjoying having all that extra. I’m so pleased to put on a dress and find there’s all this extra space that I don’t want to go down to a smaller size. It sort of, it, it gives me a great boost to see my clothes loose, you know, [laughs] not fitting properly.

That’s very interesting.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, rather than go down to a smaller size, I’m, which is maybe just fits right and maybe makes me feel a bit, you know, ‘Oh and perhaps I should lose a bit of weight,’ I’ve put on my big clothes that I’ve worn and they’re big and then I can see, oh gosh you look so much, you feel so much better and you feel better when you lose weight. You can move better. I walk faster. If feel, I don’t feel so, you know, it’s such an effort. You realise after you’ve lost weight, God it was such an effort with all that weight, walking from a to b. You don’t realise what an effort it is when you’ve got extra weight on you. It’s only when you lose it that you realise how you can walk more freely. You can feel your hips moving when you walk. Not just your knees wobbling along, you know. It, it’s the whole feeling of, and that feeling, I enjoy that feeling. I find that very rewarding, just that feeling of being upright and pulling, you know, having a stomach that doesn’t stick out and I always used to look, and my stomach always stuck out further than my bust and now when I stand up it doesn’t. My bust sticks out more and its little things like that that are rewarding for me I mean from the vanity point of view it’s rewarding but from the mere physical freedom point of view of being, of being able to move more easily. Feel my hips move as I walk, instead of just wobbling along on my knees. It’s just that freedom that I enjoy so much.

So there is a kind of emotional boost?

Yes.
 

Less tired. Yeah, I don’t, I have more energy, you know what I mean, and losing the weight I can actually, you know sit down, like I can do my laces and I feel like I can run to get the train, you know, I feel, you know, much more energetic, you know, like that.

And this has been just within the last six months?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How were you feeling before?

Yes, yes definitely. I mean, you know, when you’re climbing the stairs, you know, I feel, ‘Oh I’m tired and, you know, my belly is all up here.’ You know I do have a belly here, the baby weight and I don’t know how I’m going to go back. Yeah I feel frustrated and, and heavy, [sighs] you know, like slow not able to walk, you know, fast. Maybe not being able to get my train on time, you know what I mean, I used to run and say, “Oh no.” But now I can probably leave my daughter and then maybe run, you know, probably not all the way to the train but I can run fast and manage to get my train.

So how do you feel again emotionally to, to have been able to achieve this?

Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean I feel very proud and, and, and happy. You know, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m on the right track, you know what I mean. I can, I can do more, and it will be great for me, you know, if I would be able to run faster having the, you know, the strength to do more things. I think like great about it.
 

I decided that at the age of forty-nine that I had to something about this, not to make me look any different just to, you know, as a health precaution, I knew that I needed to do something. I’d got to that stage where this is just ridiculous. So, we decided that I would go and have this gastric band fitted which I did. I hadn’t even heard of this operation at that stage. A friend of mine visited from Australia and apparently it quite common over there so we did that.

When I came to from the operation, the doctor came to me and he said to me, “It’s a good job you’ve had this operation done today,” and I said, “Why’s that?” He said, “because you’ve got cirrhosis of the liver,” which really shocked me to the core and I first reaction was, “Well, I don’t drink.” Because I thought you just got that with drinking and he said, “No,” he said, “the cause of this, the biggest cause of this is the weight.”

So, I asked him, I said, “Will that ever repair itself?” Well luckily the liver is the only organ in the body that does repair itself. So after two years I went back for a liver test and it’s absolutely perfect. So that were that. But he also said to me, “Had I not had it done that day I would be dead before I were fifty-five.”

And how does it make you feel to have lost all this weight?

I’m pleased with myself. I’m pleased with myself in the fact I said I was going to do it and I did it. I’m disappointed in myself because I should have done it earlier and I shouldn’t have let it get that far really. I should have been more concerned as the weight was going on but I feel much better for it. I feel much better physically. I know that I was wheezing when I was walking because of the extra weight. That doesn’t happen anymore.

It’s, I mean, we moved to this house because it’s, it’s easier to manage but also the stairs when you’ve lost a lot of weight, you realise how difficult the stairs were. But now that doesn’t bother me. It does with, with me knee, but that’s not something you can’t manage but when you look back at the way sort of I was and the things I couldn’t do. Getting in and out the bath was difficult because of coming up from so low and having knee damage anyway, it was difficult. But we had a walk-in shower put in, so okay, that’s great in the long term but it shouldn’t be the answer in the short term. Yeah.