Kelly’s Gastric Sleeve

The Challenge

My journey all began in January 2010. I decided that I would give a good go at trying to lose weight all by myself. Why? Because I know I can do this. I’m not an idiot. Well up and down those scales went. It was painful, but I thought, “No I can do this, I work for an obesity surgeon, I know what the right & wrong things to do are”. Well needless to say the less I ate the more I gained.

Then in September we had family portraits done. I did my best to look great and you know what, I did look “hot!”. Couldn’t wait for the photos to come back. Bugger! The day came and I looked at the shots, planning not to be too critical of one self and I looked like Chrissie from the Circle (a show on channel 10). I’d been told this often before but took no notice because “she’s big”. I think my world came crashing down that day. For the first time I realized I was way bigger than I thought. A bit of a kick in the guts, but I worked out that I had to find something good from this experience.

The Solution

This lead to a long chat with my colleague Shelley (who is a wealth of knowledge) and Ahmad. After lots of researching, I decided I wanted to have the procedure called ‘Laparoscopic Sleeve gastrectomy‘. Sounds scary, but I had faith in my choice and conviction.

December 26th 2010: I was on holidays with my family at Kennett River. Enjoying the sunny days and indulging in beautiful food and wines with the rest of my extended family (all 12 of us) when New Years Day rolled around. This was the day to start Optifast. By day 3, I thought this is a breeze and it didn’t bother me that the rest of the family were enjoying good food, until about day 5 when I found it harder and harder to drink my milkshakes and eat my bars. (Bad luck I thought, this isn’t for ever).

January 10th 2011: My Surgery Day. How exciting! I was dropped at Warringal Private at 7am and I haven’t looked back since.