Last June I mentioned in my sourdough post that my health problem hadn’t been resolved yet, but that I had been seeing some promising results as a consequence of an anti-inflammatory treatment I had been prescribed by my orthopedic surgeon.
Well, I asked him to help me determine what the underlying problem was, even requested him to issue a few lab orders if we could pinpoint where the source of it all was… and he humored me – sort of. He did ask me to have a couple of additional tests, but when they came back OK and I was asking him to test me more, he simply calmed me and said “you are not sick… Not in the way we strictly understand the concept of ‘being sick’, but I believe there must be an alternative way to treat your situation. Have you ever considered having bariatric surgery?” And I swear I started crying. Up to that point, perhaps three other doctors had suggested the same option, but I had refused because I used to believe doing that was ‘cheating’. I firmly believed if one could exercise and follow a nutritional regime, the weight could be lost without having to undergo surgery, so that made no sense to me. My orthopedic surgeon told me to go see the bariatric surgeon. “Go see him being as skeptical as you want to be,” he said. “If he can convince you, then good; if he can’t then you won’t have to change your mind and you never have to do anything you are not fully sold on.”
So I went to an appointment to check out what the doctor had to say, and had someone explained so clearly my situation before, perhaps I wouldn’t have spent so much money having tests and visiting a bunch of doctors to discover where my high cortisol levels came from.
Basically, what happened is this:
When I started losing weight, my BMI was around 45.8, which placed me at the third degree of obesity. When I hit my lowest point of this quest, back in December 2020, my BMI was around 36.1, which placed me at the second degree of obesity, and of course, that was amazing and all, but the human body cannot tell a difference between the first and the third+ degrees of obesity – the real change in our metabolism comes after you are below what now is the magical BMI number: 30. Unless you get down there, your body keeps reacting in very similar ways, it doesn’t matter if you weight 100 or 200 kilograms… there are cortisol surges, your body then stores fat even if you are following a 1,100-calories regime, which makes no sense whatsoever! So, according to my bariatric surgeon, what I was doing was not bad at all, but my body had lots of time to get used to what I was doing and to react accordingly, to protect itself against the ‘famine effect’ I was imposing on it, so the solution was to do something to shock my body, force it to lose 60% of my additional weight in a short amount of time to be left below the 30 BMI mark, thus not letting it react and let it gain its weight back.
You know how hard I have worked up to this point and how many different things I have tried, so honestly, this was a wonderful projection given my current situation – and I did it.
I underwent surgery on August 3rd, I won’t lie, it hasn’t been easy – I no longer consider having bariatric surgery is ‘cheating’ and not only because I had it myself, ha ha, but because, to be honest, this has been more hard work for me than most of the things I had to do during the preceding three years. I’ve been eating nothing but liquids and soft foods so far, I always have an underlying feeling of hunger, yet, sometimes after drinking a bowl of plain broth I feel like a pig because there’s no more space in me. It’s surprising and demanding, and I have a newfound respect for people who have been able to undergo this process and keep their weight off. Seriously.
So, I was approved so quickly thanks to the original 8 kilograms I had been able to lose back in April thanks to the anti-inflammatory treatment, that’s why the doctor didn’t ask me to lose any more weight before the surgery, and after the surgery, I have lost 8 more kilograms, which means this year, these past 5 months, I have been able to lose 16 kilograms in total, and the doctor says he would expect me to lose at least 12 more kilos by November if things go well. I, of course, am ecstatic! I am following my regime, exercising, concentrating on the goal and focusing on being healthy.
I know many of you had already heard/read about this situation, and I appreciate your help, your follow up and your concern. Along this process I have been receiving the sweetest and kindest messages and phone calls showing me how lucky I am to have such a supportive network of friends and family members.
I truly hope this does it and this fixes my cortisol problem and obviously, my weight problem as a consequence, and this time next year I can be here, writing an update about this situation, how controlled my levels are, and how I have managed to bring my BMI below the 30-point mark.
Meanwhile, I love seeing how the scale gets lower numbers every day. It feels like I’m winding back the clock, and at this rate I hope in only a couple of weeks I can be right where I was in December 2020, and then a few weeks after that even move back a decade – or two – and take off a lot of the pressure and strain my body has been put through for so many years.
I am happy I am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – or at the end of the gastric sleeve…
