Hey there… this is the first posting, and I suppose I should come up with something profound and earth shattering here, but… well, I’m coming up blank.
Basically, I had weight loss surgery (WLS) on April 8, 2009. It’s about five weeks later and I’ve lost a bit over 40 pounds… and that doesn’t include what I lost on the regime I went through pre-op. All in all, I’m down close to 100# in the last year.
I did a LOT of reading online prior to taking the WLS step, and there is a LOT of great information out there, much of it by other WLS patients. The biggest problem though, is the vast majority of WLS patients are women, over 80% by most estimates, though this is slowly changing. So lots of those great sites out there by default end up geared towards women and the things they go through. There’s a few sites by guys, but not many… so as I got further and further in to this, I decided there should be a site that can help focus on stuff us dudes go through… for example, watch out the first time you take a leak after surgery. They really should warn you about what it’s like after they take that catheter out.
One of the general WLS sites I found just before my surgery was bariatrictv.com – their tagline is “The Place for Surgically Altered FREAKS”. That alone told me I’d probably fit in pretty good over there. I discovered a great group of people there… many with senses of humor even more … well… we’ll say similar to my own. And when you deal with something like this, a sense of humor is another tool you just gotta have.
It was there I met Roadblock, another guy who had WLS recently. Because of his sense of humor and just plain openness about what he’s been going through I thought that he was someone who could help make this site a reality. And lucky for me, he agreed to pitch in.
We have no “game plan” for what’s going to happen here. It’s basically going to be a place for us to tell it as it is from a dude’s perspective. And while we’re both works in progress when it comes to being “formerly fat dudes”, we’re gonna get there.
So if you are considering WLS as an option, have already had WLS, or are just curious… feel free to check things out, drop some comments, or fire of suggestions for future postings (you can email us at mail-at-formerfatdudes.com ). And you don’t have to be a dude to hang out either… chicks are more than welcome… but no complaining about the socks still laying on the floor next to the laundry basket.
I love this site. Great job!