Sorry in advance for the long post!
I'm not really where to start with this so I'm just going to jump right in there. I'm 21 years old and I weigh roughly 95kgs, which is about 210lbs or 15 stone. I have a BMI of roughly 34-35.
I've been struggling with my weight for many years and just watching in go up and up and up in the last 5 years and no matter what I did, nothing would stop it increasing or push it back down. I was a really thin child though, before puberty. Although, my whole family is overweight, even the majority of my extended family is quite overweight.
Recently I have been doing research about weight loss and what could be hindering it, and I found a lot of information about how sleep and being overweight are related. Around the time my weight started to increase a lot, my sleep was also getting dramatically worse, I was having lots of trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep. I complained to my parents and doctors but no one really took me seriously, so I just learned to live with it. But in the last few years it has just become too much and I find myself so exhausted all the time I don't want to do anything, I try to exercise as much as I can, usually about 40 minutes 5 days a week, but it just doesn't seem to be enough to make the weight come off and stay off. The lack of sleep also gives me insane cravings for sugary foods or carbs around 4-5 o'clock in the afternoon because my body needs the energy and I just feel hungry all the time because my hormones are all out of whack and nothing I do makes the hunger go away.
I've been to see a sleep doctor who told me to have a sleep study done. It came back negative for sleep apnoea, which is awesome, but it said that I have a really high arousal index, which I found out through my own research can be caused through high blood sugar and a lower threshold for excitement in certain neurons in the brain, which can be caused from being overweight. So it's as if the two issues are just feeding each other. And to make things worse it's also causing unbearable headaches and irritability and general weakness which just make everyday life so hard. The doctor did give me medication to take to fix my sleep but it doesn't work. He also didn't have many other options to try that I haven't already tried before.
I guess I'm just at a point where I have tried so hard to fix this for so many years but the weight just kept piling on, I don't know what else to do, I just want to break the cycle!! So I have been considering having something surgically done to make weight loss easier for me. I know that surgery isn't a quick fix, and isn't going to make the weight just fall off without effort. I've done a lot of research about the potential risks and complications with the different surgeries and how much work it will take to re-educate my brain about portion size and what to eat, and I am prepared to put in the work. I just want it to be a tool to help break this vicious cycle that is making my life impossible!
I'm sort of scared to ask my doctor about the surgery though in case he says that I haven't tried hard enough to lose the weight by myself or that I'm not fat enough!
Has any one else had any issues with doctors and telling them surgery isn't a good option? Or had issues with sleep and weight before? Please help