I've been obese for most of my life. I'm 58 years old and at one point (over 30 years ago) my weight was probably over 450 pounds. My mother and I were talking about how much weight I lost up to that point. It's just a guesstimate.

I've been hovering around 300 or so since then, but when Mom died unexpectedly in '99 I didn't care about my weight and it started to go up again. I keep going up and down, up and down. After emergency hernia surgery in '09 and 2011 it went over 400 because of the fluid I gained during post-op recovery.

Now it's going back down but I'm having problems. When I was last weighed in at my doctor's in early July, I was 346, fully dressed. My talking scale (capacity of 550) said I was 349, with just some very light-weight night clothes on.

Over the past couple of days this scale has been giving me wildly fluctuating readings. For example, yesterday morning I weighed 334, which seemed way under what I expected it to be. A couple of hours later I was 338.4. About an hour and a half after that, I was 321.8. About 1 1/2 hours after that I was 314. When I turned in late last night I was 331.2.

When I got on the scale today I was 324.6. At 11am I was 318.6. This just isn't possible. But what really gets me is what happened yesterday. How can I weigh just over 338 but several hours later be down to 314 - and that's after I bathed, got fully dressed and had lunch?

Anyway, I ordered a new scale and it should arrive tomorrow, but I am concerned about how fast (or not) I'm losing weight. I have a complicated medical history that includes diabetes (my a1c is 6.8, which is under the target), a borderline ovarian cancer (2004), underactive thyroid, asthma, COPD, arthritis, PTSD, etc etc etc. I'm on my third hernia that makes me look like I weigh well over 400 pounds even though I don't.

I have no insurance, so I have to fight this weight loss battle on my own. I can't afford the Medicaid spend-down and I can't afford the Medicare late signup fee. I don't qualify for help with paying that fee either, and I couldn't get help through the Federal or State of New York marketplaces.

I have financial aid at SUNY, so I can go to the Joslin Diabetes Center and the charge is very small. I spoke with a surgeon before the pandemic about having the hernia repaired but she wants me to lose a lot of weight first.

Does anyone have advice on how to proceed? Have any of you had issues with scales giving such different readings in a short period of time?

Thank you!