Lisa's Story

“Surgeon Rob Macadam has changed my life so much. I can't thank him enough.”

Lisa post weight loss surgery

Working at children’s soft play centre Wacky Warehouse, fun-loving Lisa is constantly on the go. 

When she’s not dashing in and out of the ball pools, she’s up and down the aerial runs and cargo nets, getting messy in the arts and craft sessions and painting faces.    

Yet there was a time when this bubbly 24 year old rarely ventured beyond her front door.

Lisa before weight loss surgeryBullied at school, Lisa turned to food for comfort. By the time she was 23, she weighed 24st 9lbs. She had no job, hated going out and suffered from depression.  

“I started putting weight on when I was 10 or 11,” says Lisa. “I’d been bullied at school. I was called names, picked on. I turned to food for comfort. I didn’t eat junk food. I just ate for the sake of eating, because I was bored. I picked at food, ate at the wrong times. I didn’t stick to three meals a day.”

At her heaviest, Lisa had a BMI of 60. She tried numerous diets, including Atkins, Weight Watchers and Slimming World.  She had also taken various slimming pills, both prescription and non-prescription, but without success.  

“Sometimes I lost weight, perhaps for a month, then put it back on,” she says.    

“I hated being big. It made me really miserable. I had no social life. I didn’t have a job. I’d sit at home, depressed all the time. I was too embarrassed to go out anywhere or do anything. I didn’t get any exercise.

“My family kept trying to persuade me to do something about my weight but nothing seemed to work.”

Then one day, Lisa says ‘something clicked’.

“It was like a light bulb going on in my head,” she says. “My dad had died of diabetes two years before, and I suddenly thought - the same thing is going to happen to me. I was the biggest in my family. Although I didn’t have any obesity related illnesses thankfully, I could see I was heading that way.”

Lisa asked her GP about weight loss surgery.

“I’d started doing research on the internet,” she says. “I read lots of weight loss stories. It was incredible to see how much weight some people had lost following surgery. I thought, that’s where I want to be.”

Lisa was referred by her doctor to weight loss surgeons Gravitas.

On 4th Nov 2010, she had gastric bypass surgery, funded by the NHS.  Since then, she has lost an astonishing 12½st, half her body weight, and now weighs 12st 4lbs. She has also gone from a size 32 dress size to a size 16/18 and is still losing.

“My family have been incredibly supportive,” says Lisa. “My best friend is so proud of me.  We go out together all the time now – before, I wouldn’t leave the house. If I did go out, I always seemed to be surrounded by skinny people, which made me feel really uncomfortable.  I certainly never went to the gym.”

Since the op, Lisa has had follow up care at the Gravitas weight loss surgery centre which she describes as ‘absolutely brilliant’ and regularly attends a monthly support group run by dietician Catherine Towers. “That’s been really helpful too,” she says.

Today, she eats healthily ‘but less’. “I have three meals a day - just small plates,” she says. “A few mouthfuls and I’m full.”

One simple pleasure that Lisa now loves to indulge in is clothes shopping.

“In my late teens, I had to shop at Evans, which isn’t really a place a girl of 18 wants to be,” she says. “I certainly couldn’t go ‘girlie’ shopping with my friends.”

Lisa loves having an active job, too.  “I definitely couldn’t do what I do now when I was at my heaviest,” adds Lisa.

As for the team at Gravitas, Lisa is full of praise. “They’ve been brilliant, so helpful,” she says.   

“My surgeon Rob Macadam is such a lovely guy, too. He’s absolutely amazing.  He listens to you and does his damned hardest to help.  

“He has changed my life so much. I can’t thank him enough.”

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