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Since the birth of her first child 11 years ago, Edie Fremark wanted to have another baby. She wasn't able to get pregnant again, however, due to her size, she said. Edie, now 35, weighed 356 pounds.
The inability to conceive a second child was just one of the health issues Edie said her excess weight brought. She suffered from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea and depression. In fact, until recently, she said she was on 11 different medications for various health conditions.
"My body just wasn't functioning correctly," she said. "I've been heavy my whole life, but it got out of control. I was miserable—I couldn't function emotionally, physically or personally. I had GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease) and I had chronic back and knee pain. I was not a happy person."
This past spring, 130 pounds lighter and still losing, Edie and her husband welcomed a new baby girl into the family. She is off all medications for her previous conditions and feels healthier and happier every day.
In addition, Edie said she is off the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine that was once necessary to control her sleep apnea and is able to work out regularly without experiencing the back and knee pain that used to have her in bed on a regular basis.
"Losing weight changed my emotional well-being, as well as helping my physical health problems," she said. "I'm a different person now, without the pain and the medications. I no longer walk into a room and worry about being the biggest person there."
Edie said her life changed when she had an adjustable gastric banding system, or Laproscopic Gastric Band, surgically placed on her stomach to reduce the amount of food she could consume at one time. Since undergoing the procedure at Swedish Covenant Hospital three years ago, she continues to eat smaller, healthier meals and is working out regularly. She said her physical need for food now supercedes her mental or emotional need.
"I no longer give into the head hunger," Edie said. "I recognize the emotional part of eating and all the ways that extra weight was harming my health. Now, I think about what I put into my body.
"Now, I don't have the pain or the medications to worry about. It's like I'm a completely different, much healthier person."
