[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm very, very proud of myself for the weight I lost.
And I would love to say that I love my body
and I'm happy with who I am, but I'm not.
There's nothing pretty about this.
The skin, it's like a melted candle.
It just, it hangs off of you.
It drapes off of you.
If I can keep it covered up people see a pretty blonde girl
and they think I've had life easy
and haven't had any struggles.
But it's hard for me to keep myself hidden from the world.
And it's so emotionally draining because no matter
how well I cover up the skin, I can feel it.
And because of that I still feel like I'm fat.
Life at my highest weight, at 420 pounds, it was horrible.
But I wasn't always fat.
I grew up on a farm in Redmond, Washington.
And I'd always been an overweight kid,
but something happened when I was 14 that
changed the course of my life.
A neighbor of ours dumped banned pesticides that ended
up seeping onto our property.
I was hospitalized from exposure to these harmful chemicals.
And then I suffered through many years of sickness
and constant fatigue.
And not being able to have the activity that I normally did
my weight just doubled.
And, you know, kept going and going.
And I was sick up until I was 21.
And ended up about 420 pounds.
With major dieting and major exercise
I dropped 100 pounds on my own.
And then with the aid of the lap band surgery
I end up losing 250 pounds.
I felt great about myself and liked the way I looked.
So I decided to try something new.
I started doing modeling.
It was exciting.
I liked being in the spotlight.
People noticing you and telling you how good you look
and you get complimented.
It's probably, one of the best feelings in the world.
But I was hiding a painful secret.
And that was starting to overwhelm me.
I still had pounds and pounds of extra skin.
It made me feel like I was living
a lie so I stopped modeling.
Now my day-to-day existence is dominated by the weight
of all the extra skin.
I can't stand looking at it because my skin
looks like a person who's in their 90s.
It hurts sometimes.
It chafes.
I've gotten rashes from it rubbing up against other skin.
It's something that's always on my mind.
I need the skin removed and I'm terrified of surgery.
But there's no other option.
It's holding me back too much and I won't go another year
having this extra skin.
I've waited too long.
It's been about two months since my last surgery.
The surgeries ended up being a lot more painful than I
thought they'd end up being.
And a lot longer recovery time.
It's been emotional.
I'm still trying to, like, come down from the pain.
I've been stuck in the house with this recovery for a while.
So I'm so excited to go have dinner with my friends.
And a lot of people haven't seen me since these surgeries.
So I'm excited because I feel like everyone's
going to be pretty impressed with the new me.
She looks awesome.
She looks incredible.
You look great.
I'm starting to see a normal body.
The body that I worked so hard for it.
I'm definitely happy with how I look.
Now that my stomach skin no longer hangs down
I can finally wear jeans that are tighter
and shirts that don't have to cover that area.
And my arms I have to keep bandage because they're
not fully healed, yet.
But when I saw my legs I was happy with them.
That surgery turned out perfect.
I feel comfortable and actually confident now.
I've been heavy ever since I was a child.
At nine years old I weighed 245.
By a time I graduated high school I was over 500 pounds.
I could not control my eating.
And at the age of 26, weighing over 650 pounds,
I knew that diet and exercise would
not be enough to lose weight.
I made the decision to get gastric stapling.
The weight started coming off right away.
And when I met my husband, Mike, a year later I was in the 400s.
After losing 300 plus pounds my husband and I
had two beautiful girls, but my weight was creeping back up.
It crept back up to over 400 pounds, again.
Gastric bypass was the new miracle for weight loss.
And I said, let me try that.
It definitely saved my life.
Right now, I weigh 220 pounds.
And I am so happy to be at this weight.
But after all the work that I've done to maintain
mu weight loss, it is so disheartening to see
what I've been left with.
The skin is extremely heavy.
And it's painful.
My legs are so wrinkled it looks like I'm 100 years old.
Because of my excess skin my day is not
as typical as everybody else's.
Most people do not have to blow dry
their skin so that it doesn't stink,
get sores, or get infected.
It's embarrassing, the lengths that I have to go
through to deal with this skin.
It's almost been three months since I've had my skin surgery.
And today is my 50th birthday.
All of my family and friends are going to come
out to help me celebrate.
And tonight will be the first time that they've
seen me since the surgeries.
Everyone knows how much I struggled,
even after losing 450 pounds.
But tonight, I don't want to focus on where I've been.
I want to focus on where I am now.
[CHEERING]
Every time I look in the mirror it's
hard to believe that it's gone.
My favorite part of my new body is when I touch my stomach
I'm touching my stomach.
Not the pounds and the weight and the rolls and the battle
scars and being as heavy as I once was.
I am in awe.
I can't get over it.
My arms have changed since surgery dramatically.
As you can see the scarring is very minimal.
It's on the underside.
So whenever my arm is down it's not visible.
I don't have to worry about the skin folding into the armpit.
Today I can hug my husband.
I can wear jackets that my arms were too big to fit in.
My back, I have a flat back.
I've always had three large rolls on each side
and They're not there.
Every time before I hated looking in the mirror.
But today, I still can't believe it's me.
I have a lengthy overall battle with my skin every day.
It starts with getting dressed.
Constantly moisturize my skin so that way it
doesn't get red and irritated.
Otherwise, it will get smelly and have rashes.
And I have a large variety of compression garments
that I wear.
I feel like a stuffed sausage.
I definitely do not want to be reminded
every day for the rest of my life
that I used to be 300 pounds.
I'm certainly healthier now, but I'm not happier.
I've battled with being overweight my entire life.
I was already 170 pounds at 16 and getting pregnant
just added to that.
By the time I was eight months pregnant with Haley,
I weighed about 240 pounds.
Shortly after Haley was born, I found out I was pregnant again.
And that just led to more weight gain.
Right before my son Steven was born another unexpected event
happened.
My mom was very unhealthy.
She died unexpectedly from diabetes and high cholesterol.
So it's just, the worst time.
The worst time in my life.
I went into a big state of depression.
That was what led me to my highest
weight, which was 350 pounds.
But my breaking point was my sister's wedding.
Seeing pictures of myself in that dress
was a real turning point for me.
I was tired of being embarrassed.
I was also scared about my overall health.
I just didn't want to die at a young age, like my mom.
I didn't want to leave my kids sad and depressed.
And that's when I realized I needed to make some changes.
So I had gastric bypass surgery and the weight just fell off.
I was in the gym exercising.
I was eating what I was supposed to eat.
I lost about 30 pounds every month.
And I've lost 180 pounds so far.
But after losing the first 100 pounds
is when I started realizing that the skin might be an issue.
The weight of the skin, especially on my stomach,
is a huge issue Because it pulls on the front of me so much.
And I have a lot of back pain because of it.
My chest is just deflated and hanging.
I don't feel like a woman with all this excess skin.
I don't want people to see it.
I don't want people to judge me.
I don't tell a lot of people the real feelings
behind all my excess skin.
When I reflect back on this entire journey,
being overweight your entire life is challenging.
Losing it makes you feel so much better.
And then you're left with a constant reminder
about what you were.
So being relieved from it all and just being
able to enjoy and be confident in yourself
is an amazing feeling.
My husband has been away for work
throughout this entire skin removal process.
It's been really difficult not having my husband
here, but surprising him with my new body
is going to be really exciting.
My family is having a get together to welcome
him back to town tonight.
So I decided to dress up and show off my new look.
Losing weight and hiding my skin just made me uncomfortable.
And now that it's gone, it's very exciting.
[CHEERING]
You look good, honey.
You look great.
Angel is an amazing wife.
I'm just excited for her.
It's nice to see her back to her old self.
You look amazing.
I think that overall, I look much better.
I'm glad that my belly is flat and I
no longer have the giant wads of skin hanging off of me.
And getting hot and getting sweaty and getting rashy.
And I'm excited to not have to worry about that anymore.
I have boobs now that I didn't have before.
It's really been a big boost of confidence for me
and it made me feel a lot more womanly.
It is exciting.
I just look like a normal person now.