I will start off by saying that was very skeptical about making this post. As proud as I am of myself, my skepticism comes from a place of shame, embarrassment, and fear. This world is so full of people quick to say something negative and shame other people for their choices. We need to lift each other up and be happy for those who are successful, trying to be successful, or those making little changes for the better – regardless of the circumstances that got those individuals there or of our OWN circumstances that may be holding us back.

EVERYONE’S STORY IS DIFFERENT! HERE IS MINE!

The year was 2006 and I remember feeling so excited that I now had access to a Torrid and Lane Bryant store. It was like I could FINALLY dress cute! They had the cute little crop jackets that all my friends wore, bedazzled jeans that I was always jealous of, tall boots that actually fit my massive calves (I still struggle with this to date actually!), cute bras and underwear that didn’t make me feel like a grandma. A girl just loves a cute pair of underwear, it’s not like anyone ever really sees it, but we know they’re there! 🙂 It was the little things in life that I could now enjoy! Prior to this monumental event, my wardrobe consisted of jeans, 54 men’s white muscle tanks because they were long enough to cover my stomach (the extra-long-women’s-cami-thing didn’t become trendy until much later, unfortunately), and LOTS of 2X-3X Hanes T-shirts, which I still have many of to this day – I love those dang things! Sidenote: did anyone else get SUPER excited when you’d be out shopping with your friends, at say Abercrombie or Aeropostale, and you found an extra-stretchy XL tank top (maybe even a shirt!) that you THOUGHT you might be able to squeeze into? It probably was a shirt that would never see the light of day, because you’d wear something over it anyways. However, you were super cool because you had a piece of clothing with a logo embroidered on the bottom corner like all of your cool friends. Yea, I thought it was super cool too. This event was exciting for me, because it was like I was shopping at the same store as my friends. We didn’t have to make a pointless trip into the plus size section of a store or into a store where EVERYTHING was way too big for them…we could actually shop together!

At my heaviest, I weighed 303 pounds, standing at 5′ 5″. I honestly never remember a time when I was less than 180 pounds. To me, that was normal. This was just me. My mother and grandmother both struggled with their weight. It was in my genes. AGAIN, THIS WAS NORMAL FOR ME. I literally put myself in a different group than other girls my age who were skinny. I didn’t necessarily find that wrong. I just thought that I would never be able to wear what they wore. EVER. That’s just how it was. I spent the majority of my life, so far, being overweight. I managed and readjusted, as needed. You didn’t find me in the dumps hating my life and my appearance. For that, I give a lot of credit to God and my family. My faith taught me to love myself despite my “flaws” and short-comings. God loves me for me and I didn’t HAVE to be a size zero to be desirable. He brought people into my life that assured me of that. I could go on and on with Bible verses that solidify this, but here’s just a few:

• Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
• I Peter 3:4 says, “[Your beauty] should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”
• I Samuel 16:7 says, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

These verses constantly rang in my head throughout my teenage years. Yes, I would have enjoyed being a smaller pant size. Certain aspects of life would have been SO MUCH EASIER if I was a little smaller. Here, I’ll list a few of those off the top of my head:

• Riding roller coasters (yes, I have had to leave all of my friends on a ride, because the bar wouldn’t lock down on my seat. THAT was one of the hardest moments of my life  – silly, I know. I made sure I was super-duper happy when everyone got off the ride, so that they didn’t know how horrible that felt – not only to be humiliated in front of my friends, but hundreds of random people, after waiting in line for an hour.)
• Finding formal dresses that didn’t make you look like a hot air balloon
• Finding shoes to go with those formal dresses that didn’t look like they were from your grandma’s closet
• Getting in and out of the backseat of SUVs and vans – yes, it’s more difficult than it looks
• Going through those little rotating-bar-gate-things (hopefully, you know what I’m talking about!) that have you have to go through when you enter an amusement park – or your local Menard’s store. Menard’s is like a Home Depot or Lowe’s, if you aren’t familiar.
• Walking up steps
• Walking through departments of stores with closely packed items – and not knocking stuff over OR trying to let everyone else by first, because you know you’re going to take up the entire space and don’t want things to get AWKWARD
• Finding chairs that you do not exceed the weight level on
• Being in those situations where someone is supposed to literally pick you up and you know that they LITERALLY CAN NOT PICK YOU UP (that always happened in PE class or during a game at a youth event, “game”…yea, that was REALLY fun, guys. ugh – the worst)
• SWIMMING IN PUBLIC – no matter what anyone says – THAT CRAP SUCKS
• *Insert any health risk that obesity causes*

So, that was more than a few, but you get the point. All of those just suck, but they didn’t RUIN my life! Life’s tough sometimes. You learn to cope and adjust. I put my game face on and never let ANY of those get me down! My weight was just a hurdle I had to jump over a few times a day, sometimes every hour. Every person has hurdles they jump over every day – some are just easier to see than others! That being said, any of my close friends from high school and early college would second my saying that I was happy most of the time! I loved life!

It was partially…because I always felt loved. Yes, that was a factor! My mother and father made it a point that I knew how much God loved me and to ALWAYS tell me how beautiful I was – and I mean, ALWAYS. Not to put importance on the outward appearance, but spoken kind words are important! Being beautiful isn’t being a size two, having perfect hair, or the prettiest clothes. They CAN be beautiful, but they do not define beauty. Beauty comes in every shape imaginable. To this day, my dad always notices when I do a little extra to my hair or makeup, and never misses an opportunity to tell me how pretty he thinks I am. He knows that I enjoy doing my hair or putting that bright colored lipstick on and he likes to compliment me! I don’t tell him enough how much I appreciate that, but I do. (LOVE YOU, DAD!) I know many women who were never shown this kind of love, and my heart breaks for them. There is just something so special about kind words from your dad that I can’t put into words. It helped shape me into the woman that I am today. I just love that man. He knows how to make this girl feel good. I don’t thank God often enough for giving me the dad that he did. He knew what He was doing! 😉 Men, compliment your lady, we love it – even if we tell you to shut up or say that you’re lying (I know, we’re crazy!)

Alright, moving on. I could seriously write 10 blog posts on this subject and never be done.

If you’re still here, I’m going to keep going! Clearly, I tried to diet and exercise. Who wouldn’t? Even if just a little bit! That’s just something you do (or should) when you’re obese. My grandma was always bringing me the new exercise tape that she ordered off some info-mercial or the new diet pill that was supposed to make you lose 12 pounds in a week! HORRIBLE. It was actually a joke in our family. This same grandma would bring all of that to our house one week, and then bring a 20-lb bag of pancake mix and a gallon of maple syrup out the very next. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. haha! You better believe we ate that pancake mix and maple syrup too! 😉

Nothing ever seemed to work. I’d lose 10-20 pounds and then stop seeing any change. The pancakes probably didn’t help! Food was definitely a problem for me. I overate all of the time. I was an emotional eater. To this day, I STILL LOVE FOOD, but our relationship has changed – for the better!

I tried SO MANY DIETS. You name it, I did it. Along with the diets, I was always active in sports, too. I played volleyball all through high school AND lived on a farm. I lifted more hay bails than I can count, and carried plenty of 5-gallon buckets full of water or food across our property to feed our livestock. We dug our own post holes, push-mowed whatever acreage the animals weren’t on, and chopped wood for our wood burning stove in the house. We didn’t always have the luxury of a moving vehicle to help cart stuff around either. My brothers and I thought our lives were SO HARD! They weren’t easy, that’s for sure. Now, we couldn’t appreciate our “hard” upbringing more in these times! Kids do not understand the meaning of hard work! Thanks, Mom & Dad! Sorry, went off on a tangent there!

All of this is to say, I was active and exercised at least a couple times a week outside of all of my normal, day to day activity. I WAS NOT A LAZY PERSON. It didn’t make sense to me how I could constantly put more weight on every year, but I still did. I’d be 180 at the start of the school year, and over 200 at the start of the next. Before I knew it, I was praying that I wouldn’t exceed 250 pounds. That’s when you start getting to the “I’m going to sit on this and break it” stage. Just another hurdle that you have to figure out how to jump over!

However, I never tried to change my lifestyle. I was just trying to lose the weight and change my pant size. I needed help changing my mindset. I even tried hypnosis! Yes, you read that right. THAT DID NOT WORK. It actually ruined my sleeping pattern and was a horrible period of time! I don’t suggest that!

This is how I always got back to the place of acceptance. I used to think, “Why should someone spend their life trying to change their appearance and destroy their current quality of life?” It was so much disappointment! I was happy with where I was. I was good at adapting! I was just trying to make areas of my life easier by losing weight. Nothing was in need of a dire change, or so I thought.

Eventually, my thoughts changed on just how dire my situation was. I finally started to see myself in those “My 600-lb Life” shows. Every year, I was gaining 30 pounds consistently. How was I going to continue living after a decade? Me, 500+ pounds? I just couldn’t see that working. At that point in my life, I didn’t let my weight stop me from much, but, at 500 pounds, the weight would definitely hinder me from doing a lot!

It was a conversation from that same pancake-and-diet-pill-packing grandma that sparked something in me. She had seen an advertisement for the Lap-Band procedure in a magazine and wanted me to check it out. Honestly, I was slightly annoyed because she was always trying to “fix” me. I didn’t need to be fixed. However, this time, something in me was curious. I looked up local doctors and made myself a consultation appointment without doing any research, at first! There was this sudden drastic motivation behind my action that I had never seen in my life.

Two weeks later, at my consultation appointment, I was scheduling my surgery for a month later! TALK ABOUT WHIRLWIND. Some of it is still a blur. It all happened so fast, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

A very brief description of the Lap-Band surgery: In a nutshell: it makes you develop major portion control. The amount of food you eat is a small percentage in comparison to your normal eating. It does not remove any part of your stomach from your body. Rather, it puts an adjustable ring around a portion of your stomach, which becomes your “new stomach” and is now the size of a large egg. This is all done laparoscopically with only five tiny incisions, therefore, you’re left with little to no scarring. The ring that is placed around your stomach can be filled with or drained of saline. In the first year, you will get this adjusted about once a month. Afterwards, you usually do not need any further adjustments.

At the time, I did not have much for health insurance. I was never sick and just didn’t need anything fancy. I didn’t have more than the basic insurance that was required of me and bought through my college at the time. Walking into my consultation, I didn’t even have a clue how much it would cost. I thought that I was just getting information.

However, God works in mysterious ways. Five months prior to my consultation in June 2011, my family home burnt to the ground. We were all safe, though! …Expect for two bearded dragons – RIP Draco and… shoot, I forgot the other one’s name. It was probably Aragon or something from some dragon movie. Sorry, Colton. 😛 Due to the fire, we had money from the insurance company to replace a bunch of stuff that we lost in the fire, but didn’t need to replace. (They still give you money for all of those old barbies and dollhouses in the attic! haha!) I remember calling my mom from the doctor’s office and telling her the quote. It was going to be $16,000. They had just dropped the price a few thousand that year, too! This was much cheaper compared to the well-known gastric bypass surgery, which is triple in price, and much more evasive and dangerous!

Long story short (because this post is getting longer and longer…), my parents decided to pay outright for me to have the surgery. Hence, why I was able to schedule it so quickly – no jumping through insurance hoops. I went through a pre-op diet of protein shakes, that I started the same week of my consultation. This diet consisted of 3 protein shakes a day. THAT WAS IT! The reasoning behind this extreme diet was to get my liver in the best possible shape before surgery. I ABOUT DIED, mentally. However, I did lose 27 pounds in the 4 weeks leading up to my surgery date. CRAZY! I think I was afraid to fail and to not be able to have the surgery. My parents were investing so much in me that I HAD to succeed.

I won’t lie, a few days before I went under the knife, I cooked a whole frozen pizza and ate every bit of it myself. I thought, “I’m never going to be able to do this again. I need to do this.” haha! That was my brilliant reasoning. 🙂

The surgery itself was not rough for me, all things considered. I got there at 5:30-6 in the morning and was released before noon. I had no idea how much my life changed in those few hours.

However, this process would change my way of eating, my thoughts about food, and how I treat my body, in general. IT WAS NOT EASY and I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. I had to start over on learning how to eat, what to eat, how to chew, how to live. If I did anything differently than how my doctor said, I would not be successful. I had to put in the work if I wanted to get anything out – just like everything else that is worth something.

Fast forward almost seven years, (wow, SEVEN YEARS!) I am down to my current weight, anywhere between 140-150 pounds, and have kept the weight off for 3-4 years. This is not how it is for everyone who has weight-loss surgery. I have heard horror stories of gaining all of their weight back or just not being as successful. Like I said before, everyone’s story is different, so don’t go shaming them for their lack of weight loss or their method of weight loss. You have no idea what could be going on in someone’s life!

For me, the initial 50 pounds came off in the first year. I took it slow, because I didn’t want to get too much saggy skin (which believe me, I still got some of that!). After that, the next 50 pounds took work, and the last 50-60 pounds were the hardest part! However, seeing the scale numbers drop motivated me to work my butt off in the gym and eat better. (Speaking of the gym, I finally learned to enjoy myself there!) The surgery helped me control myself better, no doubt. BUT, people can still overeat with the Lap-Band surgery. Personally, I think it’s harder to overeat than to eat enough or a little more than enough. I would get SO SICK if I overate. So much, that it would prevent me from doing it often. In fact, if I had done it often, I could have stretched the small, portioned-off section of my stomach and threw the entire procedure in the garbage. I WAS NOT GOING TO DO THAT. How wasteful! I just couldn’t do that to my parent’s investment in me. I just kept telling myself that I was going to succeed! …and guess what, I DID!

If you’ve read the other posts in my “About Me” section, you know all about my husband’s leaky gut and lactose intolerance. That has totally changed my cooking! I grew up eating REAL, home-grown food. That’s how I ate and that’s how I was taught to cook. We rarely ate processed, take-out food. (Again, THANK YOU, MOM & DAD!) So, personally, I have little to no digestive issues. Most of my generation did not have that luxury though, and is now suffering from it in many different forms. Our diets contribute to so many health issues…even the emotional issues that we face! But, that’s an entire post in itself, so I’ll save my rambles on that for a different day!

The paleo diet has been unbelievable for maintaining my weight loss. Throughout the past 3-4 years, my weight has fluctuated between 130-180 pounds. However, eating paleo for about a year now, I’ve kept off that excess 30 pounds that always seems to find me during the winter months! My husband has even dropped 20 pounds since fully committing to the diet 6 months ago. As we get older, and my husband and I consider starting a family someday, our health has become very important to us. I want to feed our bodies things that help them grow and keep us going strong! That should be a goal for anyone, particularly, those wanting to grow a child inside of them!

With the paleo diet, I always feel satisfied and know that every thing I’m putting into my body is good fuel for it. This is so important because I am not eating as much as I used to! I don’t have as many chances to put good things into as I used to. I need to make sure the times that I do eat, I don’t waste them on CRAP! I want my body to know exactly what to do with the stuff I’m putting into it, because if it doesn’t, it could cause major discomfort or just be stored as fat! NO, THANK YOU! Mind you, we still splurge from time to time. Life is all about balance! I will say, after eating clean for a while, your cravings change. You will find yourself wanting less and less of the unhealthier options out there! It’s cool, and convenient, how that works!

The paleo diet takes you back to real food and you learn just how much your body appreciates good, quality things and amazing you can feel from eating food! I’m not talking about that pseudo-satisfied feeling you get from overeating a huge basket of french fries covered in highly-processed cheese sauce – believe me, I know that feeling. I KNOW IT WELL. Those cheese fries are delicious! (Shoutout to Nikki: girl, you know what I’m talking about, too! We love our cheese fries!) It’s just not the best choice to be eating like that too often. With that being said, you can still have some quality fries covered in a tasty, creamy sauce that your body isn’t regretting! If you don’t believe me, check out my Pepperjack Cheese Sauce! If you like Tostito’s Queso Blanco, you will LOVE this!

That’s my goal, as the Butter Addict Gone Paleo, to provide recipes that are comforting, delicious, and still nutritious! I prefer to enjoy every single bite of my food – JUST ASK MY HUSBAND. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE AMAZING! Is that so bad? 😉

I hope you decide to hang around with me and see what recipes I have to offer. Follow along on Facebook and Instagram too! I’m always posting what we are eating for dinner! You’ll even get to see some pictures of my beagles from time to time!

To anyone wanting more information about what I eat daily, meal planning, how I budget for the paleo diet, the Lap-Band procedure, or anything else, just email me at taylor@butteraddictgonepaleo.com! I would love to offer advice in any way that I can!

To anyone looking to shame me for having weight loss surgery, please leave. Go find something else to do, and quit spending time spreading negativity. The world doesn’t need anymore of that. 🙂