HughZ

Alex Hughes · @HughZ

1st Oct 2017 from TwitLonger

Very Personal Life Update


Hi guys, something big has been going on in my life this last week so I wanted to share that with you now and let you in on this next part of my journey. This is an area I haven't ever really talked about before and I've always been scared about showing this side of myself to people but here goes.

For most of my life, basically since puberty, I have struggled with being overweight. Me and my family found out in 2011 that I have a condition called Insulin Resistance (You can read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance). The TLDR of that is that it is really easy for me to put on weight and super super hard to lose any because my body hates me. Me and my family have tried a number of ways to combat this: low GI diets, personal training, weight watchers, protein only diets, jenny craig etc etc you name it we tried it. None of these worked (obviously) and then best I ever achieved was keeping my weight stable but mostly it just increased.

Obviously this is not ideal and it has affected my life in many ways, physically, mentally and emotionally. I won't go into detail about all that but let's just say there's been many a dark day. However, hopefully this will all be changing.

One of the benefits of having a doctor for a dad is he meets and talks with lots of other doctors and recently he met with this wonderful Gastric surgeon who told him about this new procedure called Gastric Sleeving. Most of you are probably familiar with Gastric Banding (read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeve_gastrectomy I know this could be confusing but bear with me) but this is not that. This was a less extreme version, where instead of cutting off part of my stomach they simply sowed it shut. This meant it was a lot cheaper, quicker, and less painful than the other method, but without about the same level of results (hopefully) as I simply will not be able to ingest as much food, plus I'm on some strict diets to help me heal for the next few weeks. You might note the past tense there and that is because last Wednesday (the 27th of September) I had this procedure done. Some of you might have heard about me being in hospital and just getting out and stuff and that's what this is all about.

This procedure they say usually results in about 20% weight loss but I'm hoping to go even beyond that til I can get to a very healthy me. It's still gonna take a lot of effort on my part, and the pain of the last few days has not been pleasant. For the next 2 weeks I am on a liquids only diet and then 2 weeks after that its puree diet (think baby food texture). I'm on a fair amount of painkillers, anti-nausea medication and anti-refulx meds, so that's also making life pleasant haha.

What does this mean for me going forward? Well post the aforementioned strict dietary periods I am pretty much back to normal diet, albeit much much less food (apparently I also had an abnormally large stomach as well so that didn't help the whole situation). I'll still be attending PAX and (hopefully) SWC (looking at you Hi-Rez) so nothing in that area should change to much but I will be triggered looking at all your delicious food posts for the next few weeks :P Mainly the biggest change will hopefully come in my appearance and health. I was a bit apprehensive about posting this, not knowing what people will think but i think I want you all on this next stage in my journey with me.

I hope you could get through all that easy enough, and I guess I'll see you all when I see you!

Peace! :)

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