Lisa
“I was a five-year skeptic after I first heard about weight-loss surgery,” says Milford, Conn., resident Lisa. A New England transplant from a small farm town in Washington State, she’d heard about two women back home who had gone to Mexico for operations that did not have good outcomes.
“I thought, no thanks, I’ll stick with losing on my own. I was a yo-yo dieter — 20 or 30 lbs off, then right back on again.” She laughs and adds, “I once did a cabbage diet for two weeks and could barely get off the couch. But I was also capable of buying a chocolate cake and grazing through the whole thing right away.”
She’d played softball as a kid and had always been pretty active. By the time she was in her mid-thirties she still loved sports like kayaking, especially with her fiancé, Tim. But rapidly worsening knee problems were beginning to keep her from those types of activities. At 265 lbs, her mobility would have been compromised even without the painful twinges that kept sending her to the doctor for cortisone shots.
“I was looking at complete knee replacement, and was very unhappy about that,” Lisa says. As owner of her own concierge business, Fairfield County Taskmasters LLC, she was on the move daily, responding to a wide variety of assignments. Still, she resisted the idea of that type of operation. “Isn’t there something else I could do, instead of that?” She asked her doctor. “Sure,” he told her. “You can lose weight.”
His honest response helped Lisa recognize other compelling reasons why she needed to take off the weight. Not only the pain of walking, but her dreams of dancing at her wedding (a romantic outdoor event is planned, hopefully near the beach), and the fact that there were some hereditary factors that could impact her health in the future — all these made dealing with her obesity now imperative.
“I’d heard about Dr. Ehrlich and made an appointment,” she says. “He and his staff gave me the presentation right there on the spot.” Getting all her questions fully answered was key to putting aside her skeptical view of Lap Band surgery. “Their professionalism and confidence made my decision pretty much a no-brainer,” says Lisa. “Even now, they’re always available if I have questions.”
More than two years post-surgery and now at 155 lbs, which suits her 5’9” frame well, Lisa continues to focus on the program’s ‘whole package’: the right food, regular exercise, taking her vitamins, and remembering that her Lap Band is, as she calls it, “the most valuable tool in my ‘tool shed’ for keeping me on track.” Meditation and mantras are part of her life. “I learned who the real Lisa is,” she says. “That was a big part of the transition that came from this program. It taught me that I control food — food doesn’t control me. That in itself has been incredibly important to me.”
