HOST (JENNIFER) (00:02):

Hello, welcome to this podcast called finding inspiration. It's a 20 or so minute weekly podcast where we interview someone with an amazing story. After the show, I know you're going to feel energized, invigorated, and inspired. I'm Jennifer Weissman. Welcome to finding inspiration. I'm very happy to be sitting here with Nina green. Nina is a 30 something married woman, mother of one daughter and Ruthie. And her unique story is really that she spent all of her life morbidly obese she's by four, she was tipping 300 pounds. It was a, a very, very long period of time where she didn't actually realize that she was so overweight and maybe she wasn't happy about it. It really took her husband who was also morbidly obese to decide to do a sleeve gastrectomy. It's a surgery where essentially they cut half the stomach out you're full sooner. So, okay. Nina, take us back and tell us what it was like to be 300 pounds and five, for sure.

GUEST (NINA) (01:22):

Thank you for having me. It's an interesting journey. Looking back at life, I was a pretty happy kid. Friends. I, you know, was on every sports team. I was captain of my swim team, president of Rutgers Hillel. I wasn't totally aware of the fact that there was a weight issue. Dare. I even say the word fat, because that's like the F word.

HOST (JENNIFER) (01:56):

Did you think of yourself as fat?  When you looked in the mirror and you saw yourself, what did you say?

GUEST (NINA) (02:00):

I saw the features that I was proud of. I saw my face, which I thought was beautiful. I saw my chest, my boobs, I got great boobs. I was super happy with that.  I really owned whatever I had. So instead of looking at the flaws, I looked at what I loved about me and that's what I chose to love.

HOST (JENNIFER) (02:19):

Your weight did not really bother you?  I mean, there has to be no 15, 14, 13-year-old girl who wants to be morbidly obese. Junior high is just hard enough, but to be morbidly obese in junior high, I have to wonder that that really must have been difficult.

GUEST (NINA) (02:39):

So one would think, but I think I was one of those people. That's maybe the exception to the rule where I really was friends with everybody. And I made my experience, my experience. And, you know, there was only one situation in all of the high school where a kid made fun of me in my class. And my English teacher basically slapped him upside the head and send them straight to the principal's office and yelled at him. People had my back and I felt it. And I, again, I didn't let it define me. I think if anything, I sort of pushed through and said, I am who I am. This is how God created me. This is my body. And I'll accept it. And I didn't know any better. I didn't know that there was another opportunity or that there's another way I could look because this is who I was. This is what I was, this is what I looked like and I accepted it.

HOST (JENNIFER) (03:24):

So is there some part of you that thinks it was sort of like a moral high ground? Hey, I can be morbidly obese and still be captain of the cheerleading squad. I can be morbidly obese and be a contender on the swim team. I can be morbidly obese and I can have any boy.

GUEST (NINA) (03:41):

Absolutely. I think you're as strong as your mental capacity allows it. And I was raised in a family where the sky's the limit. I could do whatever I wanted to do. I never felt that there were limitations and I think some choose to say that weight is a limitation for themselves. And I looked at it as an opportunity, an opportunity to showcase. Yeah, you can still be the captain of the swim team and be twice the size of any of the other girls on the team. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (04:10):

Was there a time in your life where you thought --  I'm really fat?

GUEST (NINA) (04:14):

That's a good question. Well, I would have never dared to use the F word, but I may say I'm really thick.

Or I would say I’m curvy.  I think I really just accepted who I was. I will say that's actually not true. I will say that coming to Israel, pretty eye-opening for me, I think maybe in New York, there's this unspoken word that you know, you are, you, are you do you and that's that and people leave you alone, Israel for better or for worse. Uh, everyone's businesses. Everyone's business.  When I was 18 and I came to spend a year in Israel within the first week of me being here, I heard a little kid in Hebrew saying how fat I was. I had never actually heard anyone say that to my face. That was a very weird experience. And I was mortified.

HOST (JENNIFER) (05:11):

Yeah. So that was the first time you were 18 years old. And that's the first time somebody you felt shame?

GUEST (NINA) (05:19):

Yeah. And not only that, everybody I was with had no idea what the kid had said. I understood it. And to me it was like, whoa, can't believe that this little kid said that. And then I started to question, well, what are his parents teaching him? Uh, fast forward, many years later, it's a cultural difference. I think living in New York, I saw a lot of women and men who look like me. It was very easy to get plus-sized clothing. And I cared about what I wore. I didn't just wear, you know, because I wore nice designer, clothing, Calvin Klein, you name it. They all came and were plus-size and I took pride in how I looked. I got my nails done, my hair done, makeup, you name it. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (05:45):

Nothing stopped. Do you know? I mean, you, you, you didn't feel overweight and you felt like every other pretty girl in high school, you know, you, you took care of yourself. You were quaffed, you were whatever, but the weight didn't bother you. And that's kind of fascinating to me that a young girl could be so heavy and yet not see that. And I wonder how you pulled that off.

GUEST (NINA) (06:19):

So if I'm being very honest with myself, I think fast forward many years later, I think that I was probably lying to myself, a good part of my childhood. I had convinced myself that I'm just like everyone else. I'm healthy. Just like everybody else. And yes, the scale and the number on the scale say something very different, but I didn't have medication for all. I worked out, I ate whatever I wanted to and I was happy. But I think looking back, I understand now that I wasn't healthy, but I was trying to convince myself that I was. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (06:51):

You met your husband, Dan, and he was also very, very heavy and, and it was at his urging that you and he together have the surgeries so that you could support each other.

GUEST (NINA) (07:03):

So what had happened was we had gotten married in 2016. We did a huge honeymoon where we did Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, which was an amazing trip. And when we came back from the trip, my husband finally told me that he had actually been experiencing chest pains the entire time we were abroad. And I sort of nicely let him know, Hey, we're married. This is something you're supposed to tell your partner.  At that point, I told him he needs to go to my doctor, who I loved. So he switched over to my doctor and immediately made an appointment. And it turned out that his blood pressure was through the roof. Basically, he was having all the signs of a heart attack. He at the time was 32. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (07:57):

And how overweight was Dan?

GUEST (NINA) (07:57):

Extremely overweight. . I think his heaviest was about 150 kilos. So that's like 352.2 pounds.

GUEST (NINA)  (08:09):

Quite large, the doctor put him on all those types of medication, which they don't really give to someone who's under 60 and he's taking all of that. And our doctor really urged my husband at the time to say, listen, in order to fix these problems, I'm really going to recommend doing the sleeve gastrectomy the sleeve surgery because it's known that yes, it'll help you lose weight, but it'll also address the medical issues that you're facing, which were all weight-related correct. Sleep apnea. The snoring. I did not love snoring, especially in the beginning of our marriage. Yeah, sure.  And then our doctor said the only way it's really going to work is if you convince your wife to do it with you and you do this journey together. And the minute that Dan approached me and said, this is what happened, and this is the story I said, I'm on board. I didn't even question it.  

HOST (JENNIFER) (08:59):

So he went first or you went first with the surgery?

GUEST (NINA)  (09:02):

So strategically he went first. He is a little bit nervous when it comes to needles, things related to the hospital and I'm a control freak. So I wanted to be able to see everything and anything that was going to be happening. And he doesn't want to see any of that. So that was actually a good setup. So he did it two weeks before me. And then I did it two weeks later. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (09:21):

What was the recovery like?

GUEST (NINA) (09:22):

Well, for him, it was a much longer process. I could also say that's maybe man flu. Do you know what I mean? Like it takes them a little bit longer to get back on their feet for me within a few hours, I was up and dancing.  And within two days’ time, I was totally fine. I was uncomfortable yes, but I was fine. I think Dan and I were very lucky. We didn't have any adverse reactions. We were great.

HOST (JENNIFER) (09:50):

And then how long did it take before you started losing lots of weight?

GUEST (NINA) (09:53):

So that is an interesting question. Men. I don't know if you know this, but men tend to lose weight in like a blink of an eye, so annoying. They just breathe diet and then boom, boom. The weight is gone. So that was very annoying because Dan was like losing weight left-right. And I had been losing weight, but everybody was complimenting him. And meanwhile, I've lost about 30 kilos and no one had said anything at the time. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (10:23):

So that is 66 pounds. And no one said a thing?   

GUEST (NINA)  (10:28):

No one said anything and even more so, you know, he just kept losing the weight. And then eventually he flew back to New York and my dad took him to Brooks brothers, may it rest in peace and took him out and bought him a whole new wardrobe. Wow. And I'm sitting in Israel being like this sucks and I'm super competitive as a person in general. And that was really frustrating to see that he was losing all this weight

HOST (JENNIFER) (10:51):

And you guys had done the same surgery and we're eating the same way basically. Yeah. And he was dropping pounds. Yeah. 

GUEST (NINA)  (11:00):

Nothing, but it was really tough. And that was in the beginning. I will say I won the war. So as in those little battles, okay. He made have won those. But in the end, I ended up losing more than him. And it took me a lot longer, meaning it took him about six months, seven months to lose the majority of the weight that he needed to lose. It took me a little over a year and a half to do about the same.

HOST (JENNIFER) (11:20):

Wow. And you've been able to keep the weight off?

GUEST (NINA) (11:22):

I kept the weight off until I got pregnant. And then even at the beginning of my pregnancy, I actually lost weight because I was being so mindful and so careful about what I was putting in my body and just, you know, really trying to be overly mindful and then Corona and six months of pregnancy and all of a sudden I was craving carbs. I hadn't craved carbs in three years. Wow.

HOST (JENNIFER) (11:49):

Can you eat whatever you, we leave gastrectomy, or are you limited to certain kinds of foods?

GUEST (NINA)  (11:57):

Meant to be eating is a lot of proteins and veggies, which is generally healthier for you drinking lots of water, super important. Having said that you can eat everything again. It's in portions and some people could eat more. Some people could eat less. It depends on if you've stretched out your stomach. I thought they cut part of the stomach off. So they do, but it's still an organ. So even if they have cut your stomach, it still can stretch back out.  Kinda, I mean, I would say also that it takes time for it to stretch back out, you know, the portions and what I could eat in the very beginning of the surgery, I would say it's, you know, comparable to an infant. Right. So an infant, when they have a brand new stomach, it doesn't fit much. Right. They can't have that much in there. So they have a bit of liquid right. Breast milk. That's about it. The claustrum, especially in the beginning, and then they can have a bit more mil. And then later on they could have some soft foods, some mushed up veggies. Right. And that's basically what we did. You sort of building it up as your stomach sort of grows and you know, you sort of regain or, or build your stomach again. A lot of it is. Self-control like post-surgery cause you have to be, I would imagine very aware of every single meal, every single day of your life, what you're putting in your stomach.

GUEST (NINA)  (13:15):

So I think that they're just like anything. I think there are different extremes. I think some people can be less obsessive and some could, people can be more obsessive. I think pre-surgery, there were a lot of things that went into it. It's not just doing the surgery and you're done. I think the surgery was probably the easiest part out of everything that we did look back. And especially even during the process, the therapy, that's probably, I think the most important. And I'll talk a lot about that, which I think is probably the most overlooked element. And it's the most important. Everything related to weight loss is a mind game. It's really just getting your mindset. It's not about losing weight and it's not about looking and feeling better. That's, that's the nice thing that comes out of it. But what really is important is you're making a lifestyle change. You are changing your lifestyle for the better. And once you sort of has that mindset, then it helps with the whole process. Because I, I don't know about you, but I've heard many, many people in my life. I'll be happy. As soon as I lose those 10 pounds, you're not going to be happy. Happiness comes from something else. It's not about 10 pounds. You might like how you fit in your dress, but it's not going to make you happy.

HOST (JENNIFER) (14:19):

So going back to the question I asked you earlier, you were feeling very comfortable in your skin, in your large body, you were very comfortable with it. So how does that work? You were comfortable with it. And yet deep down, you also said that you only took headshots. When you look back on the photos that were taken. So maybe if you dig below the surface a little bit, maybe you weren't as comfortable as you remember yourself being.

GUEST (NINA)  (14:43):

Yeah. And I think it's only something that I've understood recently that I think I was really trying to convince myself that I was happy. I think I was trying to convince myself that I can do anything and everything. And I still believe a lot of that is true. And I do believe that majority of my childhood was extremely happy. But when I looked back at some of the pictures that I found, I really noticed that I highlighted what I wanted to see and what I wanted others to see. And I really didn't focus on anything else. So I didn't see any full-body shots of myself. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that, you know, deep down, I probably wasn't as comfortable as I was making myself out to be. And I do remember even when I was a junior in high school and we had a weekend retreat and I remember that there was a huge room and all the kids, my age are all sitting around and the the easiest way to get from point a to point B straight line. Which meant that I had to cut through the entire room, but I didn't want to have all eyes on me. And so I walk the periphery of the room and I just remember that and being like, why did I do that? I was 16.

HOST (JENNIFER) (15:47):

So that memory stuck with you a long time that you didn't want to call attention to yourself. Yeah. You had the surgery, dance had the surgery. You lead a very active life. You have an 11-month old daughter. If you had it to do all over again, would you get the surgery? Would you get the surgery in your thirties or would you have done it when you were 16?

GUEST (NINA)  (16:12):

Definitely, I would do the surgery. I'm super happy about it.  It made everything easier in my life. I thought that it was normal that every single day when I came home, that my feet hurt, I thought that was normal because I would always be until I lost the weight. I all of a sudden realized, oh, that wasn't actually normal.

HOST (JENNIFER) (16:29):

There were probably a lot of things you assumed everybody was feeling.

GUEST (NINA)  (16:34):

Yeah. And I think I also didn't necessarily realize how much brainpower and energy I was using while I was thinking about weight. It was there. It was on my mind. I just wasn't really aware because it sort of became second nature. Like that was the only thing I knew. I would sit on a bus and I would think, oh, this person's not going to sit next to me because I'm spilling over into the other seat. But the way that I flipped it was, I've got two seats to myself.  

HOST (JENNIFER) (16:57):

The coping style seems sort of the glasses half full, but again, I think if we dig down a little bit deeper, we probably see that you are a, maybe a sad young girl, feeling bad about your size. And maybe what people were saying about you. And yet you chose to define yourself as a limitless person, that the weight has no bearing on your abilities.  

GUEST (NINA)  (17:19):

That's to do with the fact that I didn't want other people to define me. I wanted to define myself. And I think that having other people say, oh, your back or you're obese, or you're not pretty. I thought I was pretty, I thought I was confident and people were confused by it. People didn't understand what to do with me because they didn't fit in a box. And even now I think post-surgery when I went to group therapy sessions I realized that I was very different than everyone else. I was hearing all these stories about how they haven't gone to the beach in 15 years because they didn't feel comfortable. And I was a lifeguard. I chose the one career that you had to be in a bathing suit. 

HOST (JENNIFER) (17:54):

On the one hand, you seem to have this unbelievable bulletproof confidence. And on the other hand, deep down, you probably didn't feel that inside. But that's the armor that you wanted to show the world.  I'm making this stuff up. I have no idea, but what 300-pound young lady is a lifeguard. That's a very unusual choice of a summer job.

GUEST (NINA) (18:16):

Yeah, definitely. I really think that it made me have pretty thick skin. Again, I was happy to define who I wanted myself to be. No one else could tell me who I was. What? You can't be a leader. You can't date. You can't be pretty. You can't get your hair done. You can't wear nice clothing. It's all BS. I think happiness comes from within. And as I said before, and I stand by my words, happiness, isn't coming from weight loss, right? Happiness is coming from within and who you are and therapy was amazing. And I would tell anyone who's ever considering doing weight loss surgery, do the work first. It's really helpful to think about why you do the things you do, right? It's all habits. It's all things that you've picked up over life. And I would say even more so that you don't become a healthy person, just because you did the surgery after being morbidly obese. I'm still the same person. And actually what's interesting is when I did therapy, I realized that I actually had, what's called unhelpful thinking thought called CBT.  

HOST (JENNIFER) (19:13):

Tell me more. 

GUEST (NINA)  (19:14):

It's when you kind of play those, what if the game and your brain, or you sort of telling yourself, like the disaster scenario before anything actually even happened and it's just, it's not helping any situation. So it's just sort of like these thoughts that enter your brain. And you're like, how is this helpful? Right. It's not helping you. It's not if anything, it's just hurting you and there's, it's just unhelpful.

HOST (JENNIFER) (19:35):

You did the therapy, you had the surgery and you look amazing. I'm inspired and impressed. Thank you. And we hope you stay healthy on the inside, healthy on the outside for many years to come. Thank you. Thank you for joining us this week on finding inspiration. Hey, I would appreciate it. If you would click on that subscribe button and share this podcast with a friend, see you next week. I'm Jennifer Weissmann.