Hi there my name is Joshua, I’m a 24 year-old fiance and father of two boys under two and just at the beginning of 2022 i weighed over 425lbs. My entire life i’ve been overweight but 427lbs was definitely more than just overweight and i had to do something to fix it. i would try every diet you could think of, i would have so many “lifestyle changes” that would last months at a time and i would lose maybe 20/30lbs then i’d gain it all back. Finally i caved in and had the RNY gastric bypass May 4th 2022. since then i’ve lost 272lbs currently weighting 165bs. Trying to grasp reality of losing that much weight so rapidly became very hard for me to achieve, I was consistently catering my appearance to every weightloss milestone, going through so many different phases of who I am in less then a year all while also finding love for the first time in my life and being caught up in new and unseen insecurities prevented me from living I became a father. 6 weeks after the birth of my first son my drs thought I had cancer, a year long worth of scans, tests, biopsy’s and another baby, 6 weeks post partum we conceived our second baby, living, convinced i wasn’t going to live to meet him, nor have a life with the family I just created, all for everything to come back fine. All a fluke, wrong reads on scans and misput information in the system lead to a year long worth panic and being in full fight/flight. Now fast forward a year later my first is 2 and my second is 1, and by far the most amazing parts of my life. That’s just a little of my history, now to today. I’ve seen 3 plastic surgeons in sight to try and find someone who can do the “type of job I’m looking for”, my body is drenched in loose skin, from head to toe. I’ve been quoted roughly $25,000 to reconstruct my body to what it was supposed to be. A full upper and lower body lift. Over the past few years and environmental factors included I have developed and worsened numerous mental health conditions which have made decisions catastrophic when it comes to making normal life to life choices. I’ve been hospitalized 2x due to Suicide Attempts caused in shorter terms by “borderline personality disorder/C-PTSD/ Treatment Resistant Depression/Major depressive disorder/ panic disorder and from the most recent hospitalization BDD/OCD. My mental health derived by my rapid weightloss Has prevented me from keeping and getting jobs, my insecurities outweigh everything for me and all I can do is compare: “I’ll never look like that” “all this weightloss for nothing” “your still covered up” “you’ll never look good with your shirt off” “your body is embarrassing” a few ruminated thoughts just thinking on what to write. It takes me roughly 4-5 hours to get ready for my day, and that’s simply finding the right hair and outfit to match my “look” for the day, which changes minute to minute, that helps cater to part of the reason why I can’t keep a job. Never did i think with finally losing weight did i imagine my insecurities would worsen. Waking up in the constant reminder of what i looked like just 2 years ago has been very detrimental to my self esteem, insecurities, depression and anxiety. it’s caused me to lose jobs and simply avoid leaving home because the effect it has on my social anxiety and the self comparison. not only has it taken a mental toll on me, it’s taken a physical one. My skin breaks out in extremely dry rashes where the skin folds over my skin lives so itchy, that i scratch my skin so much until it bleeds. i have “knots” under my skin where i sweat, and they won’t heal and has truly made life very difficult to try and see the brighter side. I’m actually in a step by step process to receive a form of disability due to my mental health conditions. Now Logically speaking I’ll never be able to come across a number like that, and if I ever had that much self made money sitting in my lap how am I not supposed to spend it on my family and just myself? So I ask the people, people of social media who have kind, great and amazing hearts, I ask you to just atleast take the time to read some of my story and maybe share to where anyone can make a difference, I’ve waited so long to live comfortably in my body and now that I’m at the weight I’ve dreamed of I’m the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been.