Preloading

One Woman's Life-or-Death Decision to Lose Weight

Season 1 Episode 102
Aired on 02/15/2015 | CC tv-14
Jen says she has battled obesity her whole life. "I was afraid to be looked at. I was afraid to talk to people," she says. "There's this constant fear and anxiety. I never knew where it came from, but I just knew that I was always afraid."

Jen says that when she weighed in the "low 200s," she was tired of feeling frustrated about her weight. "I just kind of said, 'Screw this. I'm so tired of spending my entire life worrying about my body,'" she says. "I just kind of started eating."

However, when Jen's weight reached 300 pounds, she was desperate for a way out, she says. She found an aggressive weight loss surgery that had the highest risk but the promise of the best results. "I looked at all the before and after photos, and they're smiling so huge in those after photos," she says. "In the before pictures, they're just slumped over, and they have these looks on their faces like they have been defeated and they were miserable and they'd never, ever be happy. And I saw myself in every one of those before photos."

In the video above, Jen reflects on the decision to undergo surgery.

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