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I want to offer
Veronica Strabel special thanks for sharing her success with
us. Here is her story:
On May 6, 2003 my life changed dramatically
and would never be the same again. I was on my way to the operating
room to have gastric bypass surgery performed. The decision to have
the surgery was an easy one for me. I had struggled for years with my
weight and had tried everything under the sun to lose it. I was on
Weight Watchers 3 separate times, joined aerobics classes, took
prescription weight loss pills and even tried the drugs Phen Fen/Redux.
Of course all of these methods worked for a little while, but as soon
as I had to stop them for one reason or another, the weight came back
on and brought more with it.
I was on a family vacation in Hawaii when I
realized that I had to do something dramatic about my weight or I was
just going to get heavier and be miserable the rest of my life. I
went to my family doctor and he agreed with me that I was a candidate
for weight loss surgery and recommended I find a surgeon I felt
comfortable with.
I found Dr. Waldrep at the Sacramento
Advanced Laparoscopic Surgeons Association. He was very helpful and
knowledgeable and I felt very comfortable with him right from the
start. I went to a meeting with him and signed up right then to get
the process started and get me on my way to having surgery. I was
very lucky in my process for surgery; I had to see a nutritionist,
bariatric surgeon and psychologist before I could even be accepted by
my insurance company to have the procedure done. I passed all of the
testing and I got my surgery date. I only had to wait 4 months; I was
the happiest girl on the planet.
For the first month after surgery, I stayed
at my parent’s house so that I had someone to help me, watch over me,
and make sure I followed the rules. I was very strict with myself. I
was determined to do this right and I did not want to mess anything
up. If the doctor told me to eat soft foods for 1 week, I did it for
2 weeks. I started losing pounds the first day. I lost a pound a
day, and I was amazed.
I decided to be out of work for a month so
that I was not around others eating and getting me back into the bad
habits at lunch times and snacking. Snacking was a big huge NO NO.
After the first week, I was able to start exercising so that I could
start losing faster. At first, I only did a few minutes on the
treadmill since I still weighed well over 200 pounds and could not do
too much. After a little while I was able to do more. I started
walking around outside more and kept losing a pound or two a day. I
weighed myself every single day two or three times to see how much I
was losing. It was very exciting to see the scale change.
Once I went back to my house and was living
on my own, I started working out at a place for women called “Curves.”
It has machines in a circle that you use for 30 seconds each and you
go around three times. I noticed right away the changes to my body. I
was losing inches and pounds now.
I was constantly having to buy clothes since
I was losing so rapidly now and none of my clothes fit from one week
to the next. I became a big fan of the thrift stores and Goodwill.
I kept working out for the whole first year.
Since I was only 30 years old, my elasticity was still good enough
that I could tighten up my skin so that hopefully after I was done
losing the weight I wanted to, I wouldn’t need to have plastic
surgery.
My diet changed too. I was no longer able to
eat certain things like ice cream, sugar, chicken, spicy foods or
large portions. Everything I ate had to have more protein then
carbohydrates in it. I ate several times day, small meals of course,
since my new stomach was now the size of my thumb. I am supposed to
have lots of protein a day, 80 ounces of water a day and exercise. It
definitely takes some getting used to, but I am doing it.
The only two issues I had after surgery were
that I had to have my gall bladder removed around my 9th
month post-op. I found out that rapid weight loss causes your
gall bladder to dysfunction. Around the 10th month
post-op, I started losing hair. I was told this would happen if I did
not get enough protein in my body. I lost about half my thickness of
hair on my head. Therefore, I guess that tells you why my hair is so
thin now!
It was a long first year, but when I hit my
1 year anniversary of my surgery, I had lost 100 pounds. I went on to
lose 37 pounds more and have maintained it for 5 years. I lost a
grand total of 137 pounds and recommend this procedure to anyone
thinking about it.
Please know that I love to talk about it all
and will share anything else anyone wants to know. Hopefully this
helped some of you to get to know me better. Thanks for listening.
Veronica Strabel
itsspud@yahoo.com
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Congratulations
Veronica |
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