Name: Amy Mosher
Age: 38
Occupation: Payroll Clerk
Hometown: Cohoes, New York

Start Weight: 375 pounds
End Weight: 180 pounds
Time Running: 8 years

My entire life I had been overweight. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, with some healthier food thrown in for good measure. I hit my peak weight of 375 pounds in 2011, and while I was a happy person at that weight, I knew I should try to improve my health.

Obsessing over a number on the scale wasn’t something I wanted to do. In early 2012, a friend suggest I join Freihofer’s Run For Women 10-week, couch-to-5K training program. With the help of coaches and mentors, I got down to about 320 pounds on race day in June 2012. I continued racing for a bit, and even got my weight down to 310 pounds. But when I took on a more stressful job, I fell off the running wagon for a while.

When I left that job in 2015, I restarted my weight loss journey. At 337 pounds, I had some work to do. I started by going to the doctor for the first time in a while, and there I received the bad news: I had type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and I needed to go on medications.

I was in disbelief. Sure, I was bigger than all my friends, but I was more active than they were, so why was this happening to me? I feared for my future, and I didn’t want to be dealing with medications and doctors appointments every three to six months for the rest of my life.

After doing some research, I started thinking about gastric bypass surgery. Weight loss surgery, which would change my physiology, is definitely not the “easy way out” that some people think it is. As much as I thought that I could do lose the weight on my own, this was the tool I needed for my success in both weight loss and health. Plus, being “big enough” to qualify for the surgery forced me to come face to face with just how much I weighed. It’s not easy to admit numbers to ourselves, let alone the world—even if it’s just our own little world.

Luckily, I wasn’t alone. My older sister and her husband had the surgery two years before I did, and with their help, I went from 356 pounds at the beginning of 2019 to 315 by the time of the surgery in April. When it was over, I was 299—the first time I had been under 300 in my adult life.

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I followed my new guidelines to a T. I went through the bariatric clinic at Albany Medical Center and they told me exactly what to eat, when, and how much. To be successful, I had to follow their instructions and food restrictions, especially at the start. I am learning to recognize the difference being true hunger and just wanting to eat.

After the surgery, I can’t eat as much as I once could. My pouch is little, so it can only hold a little at a time. Even when all food restrictions came off, I decided to treat some foods as they were still a restriction—for example, I don’t eat bread, because I recognize that it is a weakness for me. There are other foods that I haven’t had because I don’t want to know if my stomach can tolerate them.

My doctors also encouraged movement, so as soon as I was cleared, I started walking and then running again. Sometimes it’s hard to force myself to go out; in my head, I still think running is going to feel challenging like it did before my surgery. At my previous weight, I was embarrassed that I couldn’t run for a minute.

But my desire to work towards running faster and longer distances is helping me persevere. Running is so freeing for me, and I love the sense of accomplishment I feel when I’m done.

A year post-operation is coming up in April, and I’ve since gotten my weight down to 180 pounds. I still have a ways to go, and I still think I’m slow when I compare myself to others, but when I compare myself to my old self, I see that I have come so far.

To be honest, it has been a much harder process mentally than physically. Accepting the new me when I liked the old me has taken time to get used to. The biggest thing is I have to remember that I like what the new me can do now, and I can’t wait to see how much more she can do.

I am healthier than I have ever been. I run easier and (a bit) faster than I ever did. I can do things without looking up the weight limits ahead of time, and I can shop in the normal-sized clothing stores.

I am never going to be an elite runner, and if I never get a PR, that’s fine, as long as I keep persevering. My journey is far from over and there is going to be more twists and turns that I won’t be able to anticipate. I just want to be able to make sure every single person knows what I know: That they are capable of more than they think they are capable of and that no one, not one person, is in this life alone. Seek out and find your community.

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