 So this is one of my more anticipated videos from you all I have been asked so many times to do a weight loss update for you guys So I thought what better way to do it than to talk about how all of this feels to me Obviously, I'm really liking the way I look. I'm enjoying having a smaller body That is all great benefits, you know, I'm fit into smaller clothes all of those kinds of things are about looks But I really want to Express to you the way I feel in losing 115 pounds. So if you're new to my channel I want to just give you a little bit of my background. I My whole entire life have been a heavy girl, but in about I guess it was about 2008-2009 I had a couple of nervous breakdowns and then a couple years later I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia a couple years later I was diagnosed with another thing called trigeminal neuralgia and then I had a couple more nervous breakdowns Anyway, it kind of snowballed on me where I got really sick and I just was not coping well with stress in my life or Anything out of the norm and believe me. I have a lot of stress in my life Just like all of you do I know but my thing right then was that around that time I was going through a really nasty divorce and I had already had two diabetic sons type 1 diabetic sons and then as I progressed and I got sick or my daughter got diagnosed with type type 1 diabetes and then when I remarried my husband got diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes and then I was getting all these diagnosis and life was just kind of spiraling even though I was more happier with my personal life I was calmer with my kids and my husband and things were going really well there I just my body was completely out of control and I was just really kind of spiraling and I was I am such a sugar addict And I always do this in one of my videos. Hi, my name is Melissa. I'm a sugar addict. I've been clean for Anyway, I just really am a super sugar addict And I would sit down at night to to soothe myself and I eat a box of raspberry filled donuts And a humongous thing of Mike and Ike's or Good and Plenty's and a couple more candy bars And that's what I would eat all evening long until I was sick almost every night and I Had tried diet after diet. I tried keto atkins. I tried intermittent fasting weight watchers I tried neutrosystems in there somewhere. I've done paleo. I did Mediterranean So I've done all the diets out there and I can take off weight. That's not my problem I can take weight off. I can do just fine And then you know, I would take off about 50 pounds and then it would just come back and 10 more And so I found myself at the point to where I was almost 300 pounds If you go back and look at my videos from about eight months ago, you're gonna see a whole different me I look completely different. I don't look healthy. I have a really puffy face from medications and from being so Heavy and you know, my eye shape has changed my face shape has changed Everything has changed so you can go back and look at some of those and I will throw up some pictures of those Of what I was going through then and of course, I'm gonna throw up some before and after pictures here So you can see kind of my process as I go along and where I'm at right now, but I Want to express to you the biggest thing that has happened to me is My pain I was in so much constant pain From the sugar going into my body and sugar is a super inflammation food And it will immediately go into your body and yes, it makes you feel good for that minute But what it's going to do is it's going to cause all your your muscles and your joints and your tissue to just feel achy because it is basically a It's kind of basically a drug you're putting into your body that your body doesn't know what to do with So you're shooting off insulin this whole time to and that's how people end up getting that type 2 I was really close to that is you know, the pancreas can't keep up with all the sugar intake and So, you know, all of those things were just kind of this big huge ball of Unhealthiness that I was putting myself into I was bedridden pretty much every time I'd get up and walk I couldn't walk it hurt so bad I cried every single day with depression not just from the actual issues I had but also from just not feeling well thinking that I had no hope and that kind of thing So a lot of you know already that I finally made the decision in my life at 51 I was when I turned 51. I decided I was going to do weight loss surgery and that's what I did I had gastric bypass and I know everybody says that's that's the easy way out It didn't turn out that way for me you guys it has not been the easy way out Yes, I've dropped a lot of weight in a short amount of time But seven days post-op I did have a complication where I had an obstruction in my bowel And I had to go back in and be operated on again That is a very common complication of weight loss surgery and any sort of Abdominal surgery that is a very common complication because they're rooting around in there and things you know Can just get messed up with your bowels and so that happens quite often And no one that that I dealt with on my second surgery in my first surgery. I went to Mexico That's another thing that if you guys haven't heard of you're gonna be going Oh my goodness if you've joined me and you don't know all of this So I decided to go to Mexico as my last resort because my insurance would not pay for it The surgery was outlandish in the States. It's between 20 to 30,000 depend on depending on where you go And in Mexico, it's a very fraction of that cost And you don't have to jump through all of the hoops that you do in the States You do have a pretty rigorous rigorous screening and I will link the place that I went and had mine done at there It's called medical tourism. It happens all over the world not just Mexico people go to Europe all the time people go to Mexico all the time to Clinics down there that have specialty care for cancer patients that they won't allow in the US So this is happening all the time. It's not something that just happens for bariatric patients They're they're doing plastic surgeries. If you get your dental work done down there. It's a fraction of the cost I know I sound like I'm trying to justify this, but that's not really what I'm doing I'm just kind of you know letting you guys know it is going on all over the place and Being down in Mexico is not the reason that I developed a complication because there are thousands of surgeries done All the time down there probably every day and nobody gets a complication So mine just happened to be the special case, which I always know that I am Anyway, so dropping a hundred and fifteen pounds I dropped 30 of that before I went into surgery the month before I went into surgery Because they want your liver to be shrunk when your liver is fatty It lays on top of the stomach and they're dealing with the stomach So they don't want to have to deal with your liver that much So they want you to shrink your liver as much as you possibly can before you go in and then they have an easier time of It yes, you do have to follow a special diet And then you do have to be on a liquid diet a few days before and then you have to be on a liquid diet for quite a long time after there is the clear liquids that you get to go on about two to three days after your surgery and Then you get to be on that for a few a little while like broths and that kind of thing And then you can switch over to a more Soft diet and then after a bit you go on to a more solid diet So it takes a little while to step through all of that But I'm gonna insert right here some pictures of my before and after so you guys can see and as you can see in the before picture I look miserable and it was because I was miserable. I was just not healthy I wasn't feeling good and that picture right there is actually after I had already lost 20 pounds So you can imagine what 20 more pounds on top of that did but in the second picture that was one that my mom just took on the spur of the moment when I came to visit her and that one I was down about 65 pounds and then in the second picture that you're gonna see I was down about 86 pounds and then in the third picture that you're going to see I'm down the 115 pounds and I know that's a drastic change Right, that's just crazy, but surprisingly I do have another 20 to 30 pounds to lose Which I'm just happy about just to get into a normal BMI range So I had a lot of weight to lose I had like a person to lose a whole entire person to lose So I feel so much better though. I really feel like doing this. It really saved my life I feel amazing the biggest thing that I can say to you is that I don't have hardly any pain anymore I do still have my fibro flare ups. I do do still have my trigeminal flare ups I have my trigeminal flare ups more than I have my fibro flare ups, but I noticed that everything is not as pronounced as it was when I was that weight and plus the fact that I was just Exasturbating everything. I was sick and I wasn't feeling good and instead of stopping eating I was actually soothing my feelings with food and my husband is a big foodie and he would Kind of enable me and so we're kind of trying to Navigate that still it's really really still hard I will tell you that having the surgery does not take away your cravings you still have to work really hard at it and you have to try really hard to make good choices and That's what my whole goal is is to going forward make sure that I make really good choices and try really hard to be My body's best advocate because I know that I have to take care of myself I've been given this second chance and I'm not gonna waste it I don't want any of that in my life anymore So the cravings do go down because you can't take in that much. I do have slip-ups I'm human there are times when you know We'll be at the movie theater and I'll smell a popcorn and it smells so good And I'll be like I gotta have a handful of popcorn which doesn't kill you but at the same time You it's better if you stay away from those kinds of situations obviously so and you can't I mean we all get together as families we all have celebrations we do as families and You know different times of the year when we're together and we food is the center of our universe And that is something that is really hard to deal with and the other thing is that you know a lot of times food is everybody's Entertainment it's everybody's Soother it's everybody's I'm bored. I'm gonna eat. I'm sad. I'm gonna eat. I'm happy I'm gonna eat So it really is something that we all cope with every single day and if you're a food addict or a sugar addict Unlike everybody else's addiction like let's say somebody's addicted to smoking or drinking Drugs anything like that a person that has that kind of addiction can go okay I'm gonna put that away They put it away or throw it away or whatever and it's not in front of them every day with a food addict or somebody That's obese. We have to take our addiction out of the cupboard or the fridge every single day Put it in front of us and make a decision as to whether or not we're gonna abuse our Addiction or whether or not we're just gonna use food as fuel and that can become something that really we have to juggle And we have to figure out so I urge you that if you have any questions about my weight loss, please Go ahead and email me DM me on Instagram. I'll put my Instagram handle right here for you guys You can talk to me on Facebook messenger me on Facebook I'm happy to tell you about any of the things that I've gone through. I will have a playlist below on my weight loss There are a lot of weight loss videos in there where I just was like at my wits end I mean, you know, three two three four years ago at my wits end But I just couldn't do you know couldn't get down to where I needed to be or where I wanted to be So that playlist is down there You're gonna see where I did some fasting and I did keto and I did yeah I did it all and so now I'm just trying to Very very just focus fine focus in on being healthy eating healthy eating as clean as I possibly Can and I'm not perfect. I mess up I absolutely do but this tool that I've been given to use Helps me to check myself. Obviously. I can't eat like that anymore and it's been a blessing So I just wanted to update you guys 115 pounds down. Yay And when I get to my goal at at hopefully about 145 pounds down I will make sure that I make another one of these videos for you guys So if you have any questions, please let me know I know that this is such a struggle and believe me just because I'm this size now doesn't mean that I don't see a fat girl when I look in the mirror all the time and I'm always self-conscious about it So I realized that there's a whole mind game that goes on there too. So thank you so much for watching today I hope that you did enjoy the update and the pictures. Please take care of yourselves. Love each and every one of you Thanks. Thank you for all of your support on my channel and in this journey that I've been on Love you so very much. Take care. Bye. Bye You