Hi, I’m Sarah. I had the gastric sleeve surgery and I lost 140 pounds in one year. I chose weight loss surgery because I tried everything out there—I did weight watchers, I did all the crazy fad-diets—and everything ended up just making me gain more weight. After I lost a little bit, I would gain more than what I started with. Nothing was working for me. Losing the weight and keeping it off, after weight loss surgery, is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. And, I lost a lot of weight a lot faster than I thought it was going to be. I thought, maybe, it would take me about two years to get where I am now—and it’s only been a year.
About three months after my surgery, whenever I was able to start doing races, I just started walking. Then, I downloaded this app, zombie run app. Listening to it, you just start running. Whenever I started to run, I had this feeling of being free, that I never had before, and I was so much lighter. With my second race, I had to have a 50 pound sand bag on my shoulders for two miles and I had recently just lost 50 pounds, at that time. So when I had it on me, it was the biggest emotional situation I had ever been in. I threw it on the ground and I couldn’t believe how heavy that weight was and I was carrying that around all the time.
Life before weight loss surgery, I felt trapped. All my pictures you could see my smile. I thought I was happy, but now that I look at them, it looks like a fake smile, like I wasn’t really smiling. I was so unhappy.
After losing that weight and after weight loss surgery I feel a lot better. I’m a lot happier in my pictures, I’m really smiling. I’m not just fake smiling because someone is taking a picture.
I chose Dr. Frenzel because I looked online and I read a lot of reviews for a lot of different doctors. I went on a few different consultations with different doctors. He was the only one that made me feel comfortable and safe and not like I was just another paycheck. He answered all of my questions, he didn’t talk over me. He really listened to what I was trying to ask him.
The doctor staff at Dr. Frenzel’s is amazing. They make me feel like I’m their best friend and I’m their family. Every time I see them, I’m so excited to go to my doctor’s appointments because they’re all so nice and encouraging. It’s nice to know that a lot of them had the same surgery that I did too, so that was another big reason that I came to his office as well. I would do it again and again, every time. I would not change this for the world.