I knew moving to Santa Fe was an integral part in my physical, mental and spiritual journey. I just had a much different path in mind than the one I ended up on. After gaining back all of the 65 lbs (and then some) I'd lost before moving to Santa Fe, I found myself weighing almost 400 lbs and feeling "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" (again). I had stopped juicing and exercise was a thing of the past. What little sleep I got was in a recliner because I couldn't breathe or get comfortable sleeping in a bed. Then came the diagnoses.
In 2016, I was diagnosed with severe Sleep Apnea, Intracranial Hypertension (too much spinal fluid in my brain), high blood pressure and was pre-diabetic. All of these were directly linked to my morbid obesity, they're even called, co-morbidities, and felt like I was hearing my own death knell. So, I started doing research and found my way back to seriously considering Weight Loss Surgery. I had been down this path in my 30s but it wasn't the right choice for me then. Two years ago it became the light at the end of a long and painful tunnel.
One of the reasons I decided to write about this part of my journey is because I want to share what I learned about a hormone called, ghrelin, also know as the Hunger Hormone. After reading several studies, I started to understand why, no matter how much I ate, I always felt hungry. I now understand that my stomach was most likely always producing ghrelin, which meant that my brain was always being told to eat. I started to feel hopeful because the research I found concluded that many patients who had Gastric Sleeve Surgery stopped producing ghrelin for a time after surgery because the part of the stomach that produces it is removed from the body.
ghrel·in
noun
- a peptide hormone, produced predominantly in the stomach, that stimulates the secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland and increases appetite.
In January of 2017, I met with a surgeon in Albuquerque and spent the next few months working on accepting that I needed such extreme help. I've always been pretty extreme in my weight loss efforts though (65 day juice fast, 21 day water fast, 5 years of not eating sugar, flour or wheat, etc.), so it's really not surprising that I ended up on a surgeon's table. I still had to process a plethora of pre-surgery feelings though, including: feeling like a failure, fear of the surgery itself, anger at needing the help of western medicine, which I felt had contributed to my obesity, and mostly it just felt like I was cheating. Cheating because my whole life everyone said that if I just ate less and exercised more, weight wouldn't be a problem. Turns out everyone was partially right, it just took having 75% of my stomach (a.k.a. my little ghrelin maker) removed so that my brain would actually be capable of functioning in a way that allowed me to eat less and exercise more.
On May 2, 2017, I faced all of my fears and had the surgery. Today I am 150lbs lighter and just got up early a few days ago to do my second 5k on Thanksgiving morning. I still have 80lbs or so to release, but the life I have today is better than I could have imagined. I am still a food addict and I still have to be vigilant about not using food to soothe my emotions. But now, not only do I have a smaller stomach, I also seem to have a "normal" brain as far as hunger is concerned and I no longer spend all of my time overriding constant "food thoughts." Thoughts that I now know were often produced by the excess ghrelin in my system. I am not advocating weight loss surgery for anyone. I simply know that this particular surgery was the right choice for me and I that it helped me save my own life. I hope that by sharing my story, it will help someone who is struggling with obesity find the hope and encouragement they need to save their own life.
Two years ago I couldn't walk 25 feet to my mailbox without getting worn out. In March of this year I started walking on the trails again in my beloved high desert. With the help and encouragement of my "outdoorsy" friends and an unofficial barefoot running coach, I find myself on a lot of new trails. I don't know where the rest of this path will lead me, but I know it will be on a trail somewhere and I'll probably be barefoot.