Man Loses 300 Kilos With Surgical procedure and This 1 Lifestyle Change

Over the course of his total life, Matthew Castillo has misplaced 3,000 kilos. At one level, he misplaced 165 kilos, then gained it again, misplaced 100, gained it again, after which misplaced one other 80. “Every year, I’d do good, and then I go back up (in weight),” Castillo tells TODAY.com. It was a lifelong cycle he couldn’t escape.

The purpose? His emotions towards meals, he says. “I get so excited when it was, like, feeding time. … It’s just something that was innate in me.” Food, he provides, calmed him, and when he wasn’t consuming, nervousness and adverse emotions ate at him as an alternative.

His routine included consuming quick, late at evening and ending nights out with a 4 a.m. meal at a diner. His solely inclination to place the fork down got here when he felt bodily discomfort. “I never stopped eating when it was enough. I always felt like I needed that full feeling.”

Castillo needed to alter, however his strategies weren’t working, he realized. His attachment to meals was too robust for him to beat on his personal. He was at a standstill till a co-worker introduced him with an thought.

A New Option

While Castillo’s weight repeatedly fluctuated, his life-style was all the time lively. “In 10th grade, I was 250 pounds,” Castillo remembers. “But strong, going to the gym and stuff like that.”

He saved up motion all through his grownup life, taking part in soccer, basketball, softball and handball, however when he reached 598 kilos, he felt himself slowing down. “When you start breathing heavy and, you know, you can’t run,” Castillo struggled with resolving the problem.

A pal from work got here by with an answer for the then-48-year-old. “I always knew about the surgery,” says Castillo, however this pal gave him the referral that he used to attach with a bariatric surgeon who may carry out a single anastomosis duodenal ileostomy — SADI for brief.

“So I actually went to a couple of doctors, and they told me that I’d have to lose 200 or 250 pounds before they would even do the surgery on me, which, at that point, why would I need the surgery if I could lose 200 or 250 pounds on my own? So I was getting a little discouraged,” Castillo remembers. “And then I got referred to Dr. Buchin.” And Dr. David Buchin was completely different.

Buchin nonetheless required Castillo to drop a few pounds as a result of he was practically 600 kilos, and “operating at that BMI, it can be dangerous,” Buchin, director of bariatric surgical procedure at Huntington Hospital, tells TODAY.com. But he didn’t ask Castillo to lose as a lot as the opposite docs. So, Castillo adopted a liquid weight loss program for six weeks earlier than surgical procedure and misplaced 100 kilos.

“A liquid diet helps him to drop more weight, but also shrinks the size of the liver, (making it) a lot easier for us to operate on you,” says Buchin. The liver rests on prime of the abdomen, so throughout surgical procedure, Buchin needed to retract the liver to function on the abdomen. Castillo’s lowering the scale of his liver, typically enlarged with fats in these with weight problems, gave the surgeon extra visibility.

Castillo’s SADI in September 2024 started like all of them do, with a gastrectomy, the partial removing of the abdomen. Next got here the bypass, when Buchin linked Castillo’s now smaller abdomen to the final part of Castillo’s small gut, bypassing a big portion of it. “That allows your intestine to absorb more nutrients,” in accordance with the Cleveland Clinic.

The process went effectively. Castillo spent simply two days within the hospital and didn’t really feel a lot ache.

Lifestyle Changes

After two weeks on one other liquid weight loss program, and a soft-food weight loss program after that in order to not perforate or stretch his smaller abdomen, Castillo has resumed consuming meals he loves, simply a lot much less of them.

His focus, he says, is protein. It’s Buchin’s, too. The surgeon recommends Castillo intention to eat between 80 and 100 grams of protein each day with a mixture of advanced carbs, greens and fruit. Castillo struggles to hit this protein aim at occasions, typically feeling nauseated after a certain quantity of meals, however he’s getting the cling of it, sticking to sure meals. These embrace eggs and cheese within the morning, tuna salad for lunch, and turkey or rooster for dinner. Snacks are normally a rotation of cucumbers, grapes and bananas.

Now, at 273 kilos, Castillo is making progress towards his aim weight of 200 to 220 kilos.

Where he as soon as struggled to climb the steps in his residence and required frequent breaks when he cleaned, he’s now simply fixing up his yard and going to the fitness center three to 4 occasions per week. “I’m just much more active,” he says. The ulcers Castillo developed on his legs as a result of his prior weight are a lot improved, too.

But the surgical procedure wasn’t a magic repair, says Castillo. It’s improved his high quality of life and given him the burden loss he’s all the time needed, however he hopes to proceed to raised his consuming habits and says his legs “still have some issues that I’m dealing with, but hopefully all that stuff gets better.”