So--why did you do this to yourself?

Question Item 1. Why did you allow yourself to gain to the ungodly weight of 448 Pounds?

Answer--wish the hell I knew. But since this is supposed to have some information about me--let's get on with what I know you will find the boring stuff--the stuff you have heard hundreds of time. Let's call it my life's story.So here we go.

I was born and reared in rural middle Tennessee I was born into abject poverty. My Father left when I was six months old--Mom could not afford to keep me. My Grandparents took me in--God Bless them. They were sharecroppers. So we moved from area to area and crop to crop and lived in sharecropper's shacks. Nutrition was not high on the list of important issues--not being hungry and eating what we could get was. That was usually high carbohydrate, high calorie food. We did not eat "high on the Hog" and if we had meat it was poor quality, fat, high calorie and not high in protein. Feel sorry for me yet? Don't! It was how we survived--and I dare say there are many surviving the same way today.

This did create a problem for me though. I gained weight--and I remember in second grade the teacher making a really big deal out of me weighing 165 pounds at the age of seven years. She wasn't nice either. I never liked her, and although she is probably long dead--I never will. I don't want to bore you now with the rest of my life. I had tough times, but I overcame for a long time. I was blessed with a good IQ and graduated 12th in my high school class and was the first in my family to graduate from college magna cum laude. I had good jobs, made good money, married a wonderful woman--things should have been good.But the damnable weight--keep coming and coming--like a plague; and for the life of me I could not stop it. It disabled me. I suffered from clinical depression, Type II diabetes, Hypertension, sleep apnea, Arterial fibrillation, arthritis, bursitis, Heart attack, and so on.

Finally, I could not live anymore. I just existed--day to day. Same thing--sleep, eat, medication, sleep, eat, sleep. No one to talk too, not able to drive, not able to work--just exist. I got so tired of it--I planned the easiest way to end it for me--and my wife.

Question Item 2. Why weight Loss surgery?

Simple--I wanted to live. I had heard about and researched weight Loss surgery (WLS). I did not have the financial means since I could no longer work, but knew the minute that it was possible, I would do it. I knew there were risk--like dying--but I did not care. I was not living anyway. So on 4/28/2009 I had the RNY Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass. I have to date lost 80 pounds and my life has changed dramatically. This blog--like thousands of others will be about my journey. I will post the good and bad. I have had successes and failures. I am not a consummate blogger--as you see, but this will be an honest assessment of what happens to me. I hope people read it, like it, learn from it and enjoy it. If not, to be honest--it's mostly for me anyway. Have a blessed day and I will post more at a later date.