It Starts Today – How obesity surgery helps people reclaim their lives
Every day, people throughout America are discovering a tool that enables them to take back their lives What do they want out of life? Do they want to live the way they’re living? Or do they want to make some changes?
Every day, people throughout America are discovering a tool that enables them to take back their lives What do they want out of life? Do they want to live the way they’re living? Or do they want to make some changes?

Discover how a navy veteran, a Stanford nurse, and a former NFL player used weight loss surgery to overcome their struggle with obesity These are their stories This is only beginning now We started a journey You’ve got to start doing something I’m a nurse at Stanford Hospital I just had a desire to be around sick people, it just felt like I could make a difference with them. When I hit 40 and tried to have a child late in life, I started taking infertility drugs, and I was successful on having a child. But at the same time, I had gotten my weight out of control, and I just didn’t know how to get it back down to where it was I didn’t want to admit that I was that heavy, and that out of control and not going to be able to get through it on my own I was on the path to getting diabetes, to getting high blood pressure As part of my work up, I had an echocardiogram that showed I had left ventricular hypertrophy I knew that was a setup for getting congestive heart failure I risked not being able to see my son grow up, and to me, I just couldn’t do that I was a Surface Warfare Officer I served five years in the fleet on three different ships When I left the Navy, I became what we refer to as fat dumb and happy And I allowed myself to let go I sank into depression, stopped working out stopped taking care of myself At 300 pounds, I was literally twice the man I should have been I suffer from sleep apnea I was diabetic full-on diabetic When I left the Navy, I was 180 pounds. And within five years, I was 300 I looked at the picture and I didn’t recognize myself And I certainly don’t want to die young We, as athletes, trained seven hours a day And as part of that training that includes consuming three/four thousand calories per meal And in retirement, the biggest challenge then became that real life kind of sets in, because now of a sudden the body is now training trying to get one hour a day in, but I’m still consuming at the same levels Couple that also with the shock to the system, which was “Oh gee, Bernard Dafney just died” Guy that was younger than me, bigger than me You know, “Oh man..” Reggie White just died Absolutely I thought I was going to die I had the reality hitting me in the face The guys I was right in the locker next to are dead Eighty, one hundred, one hundred fifty pounds overweight and died There was no doubt in my mind cuz what would make me special, more special than them?
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