So I’ve lost a small human!!

That’s right; since I started dieting in June I have lost 100lbs. I am eating well, feeling full, working out. For the first time in my life I’m truly enjoying being & quite proud of myself. In June I was 506.9 lbs day of surgery I was 448lbs. Today I am 406.8 lbs. I can not wait for my be future!!

Post op day 4

while I’m fully aware that may be TMI, this was a really big deal it’s been a full week since my last BM and though surgery was only 5 days ago, things have not been moving south the way they should. I have gone to the grocery store now 2 days in a row for walking 20min a pop! So that’s great. I have also been drinking about 50 ounces of water a day. In addition to blended soup and 24oz of “double milk”. Still quite sore but not in pain, if you get what I mean. Truly looking forward to the future me that seems to be lurking around the corner!

Much love,

Mac

Recovery Day 1

Top of the list? Man am I sore! According to my doctor/surgeons I have a “thick muscular abdominal wall” so they had to pull and really work to get the portion of my stomach they removed out. Thus I am in pain but more than anything I am really fricking sore. Surgery went great or so I’m told I’m keeping down water broth and milk so I will be headed home shortly!

So I’m at the hospital

Surgery is today! #Crazy T-minus 60 mins this is crazy I can’t believe how fast it came. So excited to be the best version of myself in the future! Here to 2018 and for the first time in my life a true meaning to “new year new me”. Attached are my preop photos can’t wait to start posting as the weight is dropping!!

This is going to be difficult

So here we are it’s turkey genocide day! 😉 Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. As I sit here preparing for a feast I am torn inside. 1/2 of me wants to go out in true fat kid style for my last thanksgiving pre-op. The other 1/2 wants to stay true to my new lifestyle, the lifestyle that I have 60+ pounds with. I am realizing this is just the beginning. Today, next month Christmas feast and my birthday January 3rd. The last one doesn’t really count since I’ll be on a liquid diet for my bday in preparation of my surgery. Updates on the day soon to come!

Support I didn’t know I needed

It’s interesting, I always thought of myself as a strong person. I was raised to be “the man”! I never saw my father ask for help from anyone. He never specifically told me not to ask for help but his behavior modeled this mindset to me. I never wanted to look weak to my father or the other men in my family. So I put my true passions on the back burner things like music and math. Instead focusing on things like baseball, wrestling and football. Which I turned out to be pretty good at. However these sports while I excelled never brought me the kind of joy learning a new instrument or solving some geometry or algebra problems that none of my classmates could. Instead of being “the man” in the sense of doing what I loved. I did what other expected of me. Now don’t get me wrong I love my experiences of playing sports and the character built from those experiences is irreplaceable. Sometimes I just wish I focused more on the things I loved when I was unger rather than what was expected. In fact looking back now I see this was an ongoing theme in my life. I’ve always put on the manly face and seemed confident about me and my size but in truth I’ve always been a little hurt that my family was the ones, not elementary/middle bullies, to start calling me “Big Mac”. So I took the name and ran with it. I tried to use it as some sort of ice breaker & shield. After all when a large man tells you to call him Big Mac, what could you possibly say that could offend him?…

My love for the ukulele developed somewhere around 23 years old. I saw Israel Kamakawiwoʻole preforming somewhere over the rainbow/what a wonderful world. It was awesome. It made me think wow a big man, confident in carrying this tiny instrument and playing the hell out of it. I want that. So I picked one up while on a date with someone with whom, comparatively, my relationship with the ukulele lasted longer. I learned the basics and instantly it went everywhere I went. I thought preschool and began introducing into my curriculum, the kids loved it, other staff loved it, even my boss loved it! As a grown man I finally learned that pursuit of my passion even if I fail I end up happier in the end. I was blessed with a beautiful wife who supports me in ways I never knew I needed. She has encouraged me to pursue my dreams and even though she was not the most excited for me to have this surgery she has always supported me through the process. She’s my rock & the support I didn’t even know I needed. I am honored to call her wife, friend & lover. Especially the last one 😉 

It’s on like donkey Kong

So here we are on September 23rd, 2017. After the insurance required 3 months(July-September) of nutrition appointments not covered by insurance. The nutritionists at the UofIowa gave me their stamp of approval. After a meeting with the Psychiatrist on the Baratric team gave me her stamp of approval. After Dr. Nau met with me again approving of the new workout regimen and the way I have stuck to the nutrition plan. New blood test were run. I lost 68 or so pounds(my goal is to lose 75-100lbs preop) in this time(since June 12 or so). I decided that I want to have Gastric Sleeve not bypass, not my first choice but happy that I came to my senses. Dr. Nau now gave me the green light to have the surgery. Now the waiting game, as it is all submitted to insurance…

Now it’s October 24th 2017, I get the voicemail telling me that “insurance has approved your surgery” and that they would like to schedule if I could call them back. I could not call them back quick enough. I was given a surgery date of January 9th 2018!! I continue to look forward to this and can’t wait to start seeing the new me! I would love to talk to any of you out there that have had this type of surgery(bypass or sleeve). 

The decision

Within months of my wedding this feeling of the necessity of change still weighing down on me. I went to a months-ago-scheduled doctors appointment and when she said “you have had many types of weight loss attempts without lasting success, maybe now you will begin to think about a more permanent solution.” I quickly agreed. So she scheduled me for a meet and greet informative appointment at the University of Iowa department of digestive disease. Hearing the department name made me want to give up already. Digestive disease mad it sound like I had an issue like a real issue like obesity, oh. Like one that required surgery, oh. Like one that required immediate attention, oh. Okay maybe this is where I should be, I finally relented. I went. With my new wife at my side. She is a constant reminder to me to want more to want better! Not just for myself anymore but for my new wife, for our future children and for our family as a whole, having a healthy father in the picture was not just a necessity but an option now that I am considering this surgery. Let me tell you this doctors appointment was amazing. Truly it was amazing. First thing first when you walk in you are given a bider with everything you need pre&postop. It came with recipes for the liquid only diet, that I am currently dreading the start of, it literally had everything in it. Rather than getting information piece by piece as you needed it you had it all from the start which was comforting to me. The appointment was 4 hours long. I learned about nutrition and was given a nutrition guide or “bubble sheet” as so called by the wonderful nutritionist at the UofIowa. I was given a daily calorie intake of 2800 cal, based on many things including my exercise regimen, my size, my level of activity(not related to work out) it is a high protein low everything else diet. It’s crazy to eat that much protein. It was hard at first but unlike the diets I’d tried before I never once felt like I wasn’t getting enough food. At the appointment I learned that not enough guys care enough or are interested in this surgery in fact Doctor Nau all but begged me to stick this out but his sincerity and pleading while appreciated were wasted on me, I’d already made up my mind; I was doing this! 

Picture this…

You are 17 years old. Some of the biggest and best universities in the United States are offering you scholarships to come and play football. You are 6’6, 275lbs during wrestling season & 315lbs during football/marching band season, that’s right starting varsity football player and huge band geek!! In an instant all of your hopes and dreams are pulled from your future by torn ACL & MCL, 4 broken ribs, and a punctured lung. You wake up in the hospital day after day reading emails and hearing voicemails from football coaches & scholarship boards at major universities whom were recently clamoring at you door to get you there, now saying words like: “high risk for re-injury” & “not worth the risk on our part.” As a 17 year old from the inner city realizing that your only chance of going to college; on a scholarship, is no longer an option, you begin to feel depressed, hopeless worse yet, even worthless. With nothing to look forward to and feeling like there’s nothing to lose. You began to eat. Not like you ever had. You begin to eat everything and everything and often. Fast forward 9 years. Through many moves from state to state and many bouts with different weightloss attempts and no lasting success. It’s your wedding day. Here you are 517lbs realizing for the first time that scales can go that high. You look around at your soon to be wife, you see your morbidly obese brothers the way they are “to big to go sledding with the kids” and you realize though life is about to change in a big way, marriage, something else has to change; that something is you!