Woman's Own DROP EVERYTHING READ! I
W
alking down the road Connie Barbour clutches her husband Pieter's hand as their little boy, Collin, eight, runs in front of them laughing. They look like a normal happy family - one Connie never thought she would be part of.
That's because she was once morbidly obese, weighing 46st. But then an operation transformed Connie's life. 'I wasn't livingjust existing,' she tells Woman'S Own. 'I had resigned myself to being miserable and alone forever.' Connie's weight problems stemmed from being abused by a family friend at the age of seven. '] now know] ate to block out bad feelings and the more food I had, the more I wanted,' she says. '] loved fried chicken, macaroni cheese and bread covered in butter.' By the age of 11 she weighed over lIst. While her older sister, Marsha, became a skinny teenager, life for Connie was very different. 'School was torture. ] never had boyfriends and was chosen last for every activity,' she says. In desperation, her mum, Faye, took her to the doctor. '1'd go on a diet and lose a few pounds, but] always put it back on - and more,' says Connie. By the time she left school at 18, Connie was
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over 265t. She started to train as a nurse, but after a year she had to leave. 'My joints buckled and ] just couldn't keep 'up,' she says. So Connie spent day after day alone at home in Nashville, Tennessee. 'Just taking a shower was a mammoth effort. ]t put such a strain on my body, I'd have to sleep for half of the day to recover,' she says. 'I stopped going out - unless it was dark because people stared. ] certainly never imagined I'd ever find love.' Diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes, Connie was desperate to change her ways - but didn't knowhow. Then, in 2001,
aged 35, she was asleep when she started haemorrhaging blood from her womb. '1 rang an ambulance and was rushed to hospital where doctors battled to save me. My weight was the cause,' she says. 'Luckily, ] pulled through. As ] recovered] agreed to be weighed for the first time in eight years. I was so big they had to fetch a special set of scales from the basement. The needle settled on 46st. How could] have let this happen?' Connie decided on a drastic solution - to have part of her stomach removed so she'd never overeat again. 'Only one surgeon agreed to operate on me. "There's only a SO/50 chance of making it through the operation," he told me. "I don't have a choice. I'm dying a slow, miserable death now," I replied. And my mum and sister supported me.' In September 2001, Connie had the life-threatening op. 'AfteCVllards,I woke up in agony. But] coped with it because I knew it would transform my eating habits.
Instead of plates piled high with chicken and pasta, ] had just soup for the first 10 days before moving on to pureed vegetables.' Within six months Connie had lost an incredible 7st and was 39st. '] was still a size 26 but my legs rubbed together less, so it was easier to walk,' she remembers. Even when she went up to 1,500 calories a day, the weight still fell off. 'My mum and Marsha encouraged me all the way, saying how different] looked,' she says. 'And I was so happy when Marsha became a mum to baby Collin, in February 2002.' By 2006 Connie was down to 16st - but she'd been left with rolls of sagging skin. 'Whenever] walked it would wobble violently. ] still saw myself as obese. ] didn't have any confidence at all,' she says. That's when a TV show heard about her story and stepped in to offer her a full body-lift. Doctors
'Iwas dying a slow, miserable death'