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Rachel's Story

“Getting back on a horse again was like winning the lottery.”  

Rachel Wood from County Wexford

Ask Rachel Wood whether she’s tried dieting in the past and she laughs out loud.  ‘I’ve done so many diets I could run Weight Watchers,” she says.  “The trouble is, each time I lost the weight it came back - and brought a friend with it!”

Rachel, 38, from Wexford, used to weigh over 27 stone and had a body mass index (BMI) of 60.  She attributes her weight to her ‘horribly appalling’ diet. “My biggest problem was I ate too much and I comfort ate,” she says. “The worse I felt, the more I’d eat.”

In July 2009, after years of battling with her weight, Rachel had a gastric bypass carried out by specialist weight loss surgeon Mr Mayilone Arumugasamy at the Gravitas Bariatric Unit at the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin.  Since then, she says she hasn’t stopped ‘singing and dancing’.

“It was absolutely the best thing I have ever done,” says Rachel, who is married with a 16 year old son. “My weight really got me down. It stopped me doing all the things I loved.

“My life revolves around horses. But four years ago I reached the point where I couldn’t ride any more. If we went shopping, I’d be the one looking for somewhere to sit and sizing up the chairs to see which ones wouldn’t collapse - and then it would be an effort to get up again. 

“If I got in someone’s car I’d surreptitiously slide the seat back so I could fit in and then worry about whether I could do the seatbelt up. When we went out, I’d be casing the joint to see where I could and couldn’t go.  I was like the blimp in the corner – it was ridiculous.”

Rachel’s health was also suffering. “I was shuffling round like an old woman,” she says. “Although I didn’t have diabetes, I had high blood pressure and my knees and ankles hurt.  When I sat down in the evening my ankles would swell.  It was miserable.”

Although Rachel had been referred to the Loughlinstown weight management clinic, she says they kept running out of funding.

“Then a friend of mine who works at The Blackrock Clinic told me Gravitas was opening a bariatric unit there. Well, the excitement! I wanted to have weight loss surgery in Ireland and I certainly didn’t want to go to one of the cosmetic surgery groups. I’d recruited for a few and I didn’t like what I saw.  I wouldn’t have touched them with a barge pole. They just want your money and then send you home with a pat on the head and say ‘get on with it’.  I wanted to be sure that I got proper follow up care.”  
 
Rachel’s surgery by Gravitas at the Blackrock Clinic was paid for by her insurance company. “I had a battle to get them to fund it but I won in the end,” she says.  “I told all my friends and family that I was having it done. The whole world could see I was fat, and the whole world would be able to see that I was losing.  I didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

The surgery itself couldn’t have gone more smoothly, according to Rachel. She has since lost 11 stone and is still losing.  “I went on holiday recently for a fortnight and came home half a stone lighter,” she says. “I’d never have done that in the past. And I still have a pair of jeans that I couldn’t get into before. Now, two of us can get into them. I look at pictures of myself before the surgery and I think ‘oh my god’.

“There’s nothing like that feeling of bagging all the old clothes up and knowing you will never have to wear something so shapeless again.  These days when I walk into Dunnes and Penneys I don’t feel abnormal, or that everyone is looking at me.  I go and try clothes on just because I can.”

What was the worst thing about being heavy?  “Being different,” says Rachel. “Feeling as though you‘d be easily spotted in a crowd - and being twice as big as everyone else.

“It’s lovely now when people do a double take because they’re not sure if it’s me or not. When neighbours of my mum’s walk past me I say ‘don’t you say hello anymore?’  They just don’t recognise me.  And not being able to ride was awful.  I got back on a horse in February and it was like winning the lottery.”  

Rachel says she eats healthily now. “I have porridge and wholemeal toast for breakfast, soup and crackers for lunch.  I might have a side plate of lasagne or shepherd’s pie in the evening – I just help myself to a portion size I know I will finish.  My dogs are disappointed – there are not half as many scraps going in their direction.

“And my shopping bill has come down now that I don’t buy biscuits, crisps and chocolates.  I have no inclination any more. There’s a Cadbury’s cream egg in the fridge and it’s been there for a year – it wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds before.  I think I must have damaged Cadbury’s profit margin when I had my surgery done.”

Rachel says her only regret is that she didn’t have the surgery done ten years sooner. “It’s so liberating to walk into shops and pick up underwear without having to spend 60 euros now. Even my feet were fat.  In the past, I’d have sat at the back of the room and mumbled.  Now I’m at the front. It’s the best thing I have ever done in my life.

“If I could bottle how I feel I would say to everyone ‘drink this’! For me it has just been phenomenal.”

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