Stanley_Hollar

This question was posted and deleted. I am a good sport and want to show you my thoughts.

andydotnet via /r/IAmA sent 34 minutes ago

I have a few questions....

Do you count the weight of the amputated leg in the 500lbs?

If so what was the weight of the leg?

Isn't cutting off part of your body considered cheating in the weight loss world?

Obviously these questions are meant in good humor

When I did weighed 678lbs I did not have the leg. When I was 20, I had an accident playing goalie (The only position that I was capable of playing). I move one way my lower leg went the other way. I was too large to fit in an MRI machine. I weighed over 400lbs maybe 500lbs. At that time a scale was a bad word.

I tore all the ligiments in my knee. I severed the artery behind the knee. They put a cast on me unaware of issue with the artery.

2 weeks later, I was in awful pain. I went to the ER in throbbing pain. Didn't know what was going on. They put a dopler stethoscope (like a speaker for a heart beat) on my foot. The left foot was a normal pulse. The right foot there was no pulse.

I was shocked. They had to amputate it. They made me a prosthetic leg for my size. I can fit my entire body in it now. So I am the size of that thigh now.

There was leg to weigh.

But yeah if somebody else claims they lost 500lbs and part of that is amputation that is cheating. But lets be honest someone would have to be pretty desperate to add to their total weight loss by cutting off any part of your body that's necessary.

But that is an idea to consider. I may call my doctor tomorrow and ask him if insurance would cover removing my other leg so I can bump up my totals.

UH...Think not but thanks for playing.

I am not offended Andy. Thanks for the question

I was always a large kid. I was 100lbs in Kindergarten when most kids were 30 or 40 pounds. My size just went up as I grew up. Um.. And Just That's the way it always was...Change is hard..Change is very hard.

I am assuming your talking my heavy weight. There were varying levels of my obesity. When I was young I didn't know it was a bad habit. I never got tested. So I really don't know. After my hospitalization, I was told I had a thyroid problem. I am not sure when that happened.

But yeah you don't get to be that size by eating healthy proportional sized meals. You only get there by eating massive quantities and when you don't move your body thinks I should save that for later.

A moment on the lips forever on the hips and in my case, my thighs, my belly, my arms. There is not where that the body won't find a way to grow rounder.

At some point you stop growing vertically. You can't completely control it. You can stunt your growth but you really can't make much difference in how tall you will be.

You should be able to control your weight and how far your body expands out. Like a balloon once you blow it up then you let the air out it doesn't go shrink back to its original shape. I am disfigured. But alive.

I am still working out the reasons of how this happened. I need to know the reason to why I let my self go to nearly the end of the road so that I never go back there again.

A lot of the weight before surgery was excess fluid. At my highest weight when I was hospitalized and on my back for a month and a half, they gave me heavy diretics and and a cathetor draining a lot of fluid every day. In the first 50 days of hospitalization with no exercise I lost 120lbs. After that I was in hospital for 109 days. I weighed about 500lbs when I left the hospital. They told me to lose weight or die. From that point, I lost 70lbs over next year I had a handbike that I started pumping with. You probably have seen them in physical therapy. Put on three or four country music songs turned the speaker up and just worked the hand bike for as long I could. So yeah, it's hard to believe but I lost 70lbs with a hand bike and not much else.

I get the feeling that you struggle too sometimes. Anybody is capable of doing this...if you really want it. You will find a way to get to where you want to go once you reach that point where its at the your forced to decide. . I think of the Thoreau poem that says two roads met in a woods and I chose the one least traveled upon and it has made all the difference. Because usually the most traveled road is the easiest....It might not get you to where you really want to go.

Whatever your struggling with...I assume it is weight. You can do it. Just like me. You can be strong. Start slow and do only what you can. Each day you can do a little bit more. You need to focus on the here and now and live in the moment. Just worry about what you have to do this minute. This is what I am most proud of.

https://i.imgur.com/AO8B6n6.jpg

And This

https://i.imgur.com/Vu5OKgk.jpg

But I got there one moment at a time. This is not easy. I promise you that if you do it. If you really do it. You will not regret it.

If you are struggling in this area, please feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. I promise that I will respond and always encourage someone in need of encouragement. I hope that one day I am reading your AMA of some thing great you have done. You can do this I promise.