My Current Shape = BIG

I have been big for as long as I can remember. I look back at baby pictures and my rolls have rolls. My rolls still have rolls but it is so much cuter on a baby. A lot of people call that baby fat and believe me there is nothing cuter than a roly poly baby. I want to just cuddle snuggle with them. Most people also grow out of their baby fat. I didn't. Well, maybe I did but it came right back.

Roly Poly Sammi - I was sooo cute!!!

Anyways, I was always the biggest kid in class. I always got picked on. When I played softball they didn't make pants big enough for me so my mom added inserts to the thighs so I could wear the same pants as all the other girls. I have been on more diets than I care to count. You name it... I've probably tried it, at least once. My primary care physician, Dr. A, has been trying to get me approved for Gastric Bypass since I was 18 years old. Whatever insurance I happened to be on never approved it and we could never afford to pay cash.

The smallest I ever remember being was 201 and it was my senior year in high school. I had been on phen-phen for a while and it was working great for me. Then the fit hit the shan. Phen-phen was pulled off the market for being unsafe. I was devastated. Around that same time I was graduating high school and losing friends that had been my rock for years. The summer after high school I really started putting on weight. Before I knew it I was sitting in my room crying because I couldn't go out with Mom and B because I didn't have any pants that would fit. That same night they went shopping and came home with new blue jeans but I was still getting fatter.

Life continues on and I meet EE during my first Spring semester at TJC. EE makes everything wonderful (or so I thought at the time). He was my whole world. I didn't realize until much later that he took advantage of my lack of self-confidence to take things from me that I will never get back. EE and I were together for 3 years. We were engaged and we made some mistakes in our life. We broke up right after my 21st birthday (that's a whole nother story). I fall into a horrible deep depression. I graduate from TJC in May of 2000. All this time I am eating and getting bigger. On January 1, 2001 Mom fell and broke her hip (again a story for another time). At this point our relationship is kind of rocky because of everything that happened with EE (you guessed it, another story). Still more eating. In the Fall of 2001 I moved into my first apartment with Mush in Commerce, TX. We were both going to Texas A&M-Commerce for Printing. Like most college students we ate crap. I ate Totino's Pizza Rolls with French Onion Dip for dinner more times than I care to count. Here I am, still getting fatter. When you see yourself every day you don't really realize how bad it is getting until your none of your clothes fit. Elastic waist band pants and oversized shirts became my wardrobe. Anyways, Mush and I started fighting... EVERYDAY. She moved out and I was alone. Except for Absolut and food. I ate. I ate absolutely anything I wanted. I got bigger. Fast forward to June 2003. Graduation. Time to move back home. Then started the closet eating. That's not really true. I had always been a closet eater but when I moved back home is when it got the worst. I kept eating. Getting bigger and bigger by the day.

I finally land a job as a graphic designer. My dreams are coming true! Then I realized that I was the biggest person in the office and the only one not on a diet. I tried this that and the other thing and I lost here and there. At least at this point I wasn't gaining weight. In the fall of 2004, Dr. A says "Sam, you need to do something or you are going to die by the time you are 30. Don't try to start something now, wait until after the holidays then get busy and stay serious about it." January 2005, I started seeing a nutritionist names Arlyne. I loved her. When I first started seeing her I was around 375. We aren't sure because her scale stopped at 350. She would write down everything I was supposed to eat and I would only eat what she had written on the paper. That same January I met Pie, who would later become my husband. We met the end of January and were engaged by the end of February.

I got down around 300 and completely stopped losing weight. I was tired of being told what to eat so I quit going to see Arlyne. I wasn't really learning anything anyways. So what happened, I started gaining weight again.

Sometime in 2006 I was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency and it was one of the reasons I had trouble losing weight. I was put on hormone injections and they really helped. They weren't a miracle cure but they did help. The shots were expensive and if Pie and I wanted to move out after the wedding them something had to be cut. Shots was the first thing to go. Pie and I got married on October 13, 2007. Hard to believe that was almost five years ago. I lost quite a bit of weight before the wedding and I think I was in the 280 range. I put back on everything I had lost and then some. For a while I hovered around 330 and now the average is more like 350. The last time I weighed in I was at 342. I had gained a pound. So here I sit... second day of liquid diet in preparation for surgery on the 2nd. The sad part is, I don't even know if my surgery has been approved or not. I know - shocking. But I am moving forward on blind faith...