My Story - How I lost almost 320 Lbs and saved my life.

The Beginning.
Born in 1964, I was the first born, first grandchild, and first great-grandchild in an Italian-American family. Food was the center of every event Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Coffee and Cake. Most people know these as meals and deserts, in my family they were the center of everything we did. Surprisingly enough, no one in my family was ever real overweight, until me. If you ever get a chance to see the movie Fatso, with Dom Deluise, this will make you understand my life allot better. Food was the prize, surprise and trophy for everything I did that was good. It was made to make me happy. If I would cry as a baby, a bottle was stuck in my mouth. If I cried as a kid candy or cake was the thing that would make me feel better, as so I was programed for fatness that went into auto-pilot. At age 10 I weighed 196 Lbs, I remember that specifically because a height and weight card needed to be filled out for school, I was to embarrassed so I never filled it out. My teacher had an answer for that, a scale in her draw. She asked me to get in front of 53 kids in my class and weighed me, then said, "Tom, you cow, 196 pounds. You oughta be ashamed of yourself". If you ever heard that kids can be cruel, believe it. My mom joined me in every weight loss program there was, Weight Watchers, Weigh In, Fat to Fab, I knew more about how to diet than anyone around. I lost weight, gained weight , and lost weight then gained it again. The bottom line was that eating food made me fell good. I was always happiest when I was eating. Up to age 39 I must have lost over 1,000 pounds throughout my lifetime. Every time I went to the doctors, they would tell me how bad my weight problem was and that I would probably die because of it, but I thought it was all talk, until 2003. I went to the doctors for a routine visit and he gave me the same schpeel, the only difference was that he said,"Your 39 and won't make it to your 40th birthday and I can prove it" I took him up on that, he sent me for a bunch of tests that shown that over 40% of every organ in my body was infiltrated with fat. Basically the fat was growing inward. He then told me I would probably die in my sleep on congestive heart failure. This made me think of the many times I would wake up gasping for air, as I had sleep apnea as well. He scared the hell out of me. Then he gave me my option one of which was Gastric Bypass Surgery. He told me the dangers of it and I choose not to do it. After thinking about loosing my Dad to Leukemia one year prior, and knowing that I had him for 38 years, made me feel real selfish. I am the Father of Triplets, two girls and a boy. At that time they were about 9 and the thought of them not having a Dad around devastated me. I decided to go for the surgery and looked for the right doctor to do it. After interviewing 6 Doctors I made my choose and on July 31st 2003 I had the surgery done. This is what was now to be the first day of my life all over again.