Messages By: jennarain

The first time i seen you was in the lobby of the Hotel.  My heart went out to you silently i was hoping you were going to be on the show as well.  I was once where you are not as heavy but in the 300 range.  I watched you for a bit in the lobby, you are incredable, your friends are a gift.  They love you so much, they always wanted to know how you were feeling, and what fun you had the night before.  I could just smile, for you to have such friends and family is a blessing.  I went on the show to put a point across about the downside, but never expected to get what Dr Phil gave me. Because lord knows theres people out there a lot worse off than I am.  But I am incredably gratefull for the gift I am given.  I want to help people who are on the road of weight loss WHY? because ive been there and sometimes it helps to talk to someone whos where you want to be, but also has been where you are.  I know you can do this, its HARD but attainable.  From what i seen of you, you are very driven and determined.  I was hoping we could talk more after the show but it was hectic.  Whats funny is a lot of the show I don't even remember. LOL.  Your mother is a blessing and I want to thank her for what she said to me, its comforting to hear good things from strangers, from someone whos been there.  Give your mom a hug from me, and high five your friends.  You are about to embark on a miracle, and the miracle is you.  My thoughts on it is this.  Weight loss is like Childbirth, not that i expect you to know what thats like but, its up to you to create something beautifull, your the only one that can do it no one else can its completely up to you.  Its hard its painfull you cant just pass the childbirth on to another you have to see it to the end.  but once its born its a miracle, its a new life  and all the hard work and pain is all worth it, and if it doesn't present like you pictured it, and nothing you can do can make it better, Doctors take over,and do what they can to make this new life even better.  You are a beautifull person, I was always told " your so beautifull " But people will always judge you by the way you look, they never get to know you, and place judgement its always within the first 10 seconds of seeing a person that judges whether you want to get to know that person or not.  I viewed myself at 300 lbs like a sweater that was never bought off the rack, it was pretty yes, but not quite measured up to the expectations,  people looked at it judged it but didn't like what they saw, but if one looked a little closer and seen that it was made out of the finest silks, and softest wool that then and only than would it have been purchased.  

If you need an extra team member on your side im here email me anytime.   

Be blessed.... And I'll see you again SOON.............. 

Jennifer ............. totalintrigue@hotmail.com 

My Only goal to be on the show was to make society aware of what all of us go through during the process of weight loss.  There are to many shows out there showing HAPPY people at goal, getting cars money trips.  Wll thats all great but in reality those things eventually rot and go away, its our bodies that we still have to wake up to everyday, and be reminded of what we actually did to our bodies.  Its hard.  I didn't write the show to be on I wrote in to CONTACT DR PHIL ONLY.  I gripped about OH NO not another weight loss show PUUULEEZ.  I was tired of seeing the media advertise how happy everyone is on the shows I challenged Dr Phil in  my letter, I told him if he was going to do another weight loss show to do a REAL one, Be the first to do a Real weight loss show, show all of it right to the end at goal, WHAT does one do with the excess skin and if your broke and insurance leaves you dry. What do you do???? Even I was waiting for an answer, but I got my unbeleivable surprise instead.  I went to numerouse Plastic surgeons.  My brother in law is a PRO body Builder and pesonal trainer.  I did work out like a crazy woman for a long time,  yet he and Drs infrmed me enough is enough, you can't to anymore your body isn't going to change you need surgery.  I knw surgery isn't the whole answer.  I did write and Ask Dr Phil to help me be comfortable with me in my skin, help me accept it.  But he surprised me with the Surgeons on the show.  I never expected it at all.  And even the surgeons said the the only thing that will help is surgery.  I truelly want you to know i know how you feel, I spent a long time hating my results, feeling like its a cruel joke.  I also spent a long time looking into what I can do. And it took me writing an angry letter to the show to get someones attention.  I didn't write asking for anything i just talked about being real for all of us. 

I am eternally gratefull for What Ive been given,  I don't take it for granted at all.  I am going under the knife with the thoughts of all of us, with excess skin.  I want the media to know society to knw its not a joke with the excess skin issue.  Insurance needs to come together for all of us and cover it.    

Email me anytime.......Jennifer  

totalintrigue@hotmail.com 

Hello shawna....... Thanks for the motivation and suport.  I will email with details......   

Thanks again 

Jennifer  totalintrigue@hotmail.com 

Thank you for the support I know what a great blessing this is and how lucky i am for DrPhil... I know how others are feeling I too was there.  I tried everything under the sun to get answers.  I know surgery is not the answer for some but for me it is.  There are so any things I want to do that I couldn't being over 300 lbs and with the skin it still holds me prisoner....  Thanks to all who understand.  But I really didn't write to be on the show at all, I to just wrote for answers not to give me anything but answers,  I am incredably shocked even today that this happened.  But they aked me to be on the show...  Im actually waiting for the Phone call saying " Jennifer.......... Just Kidding.?"  Thats how unbelievable this is for me.  Yet how incredably fortunate and blessed i am.  I know its not me its Dr Phil and God.  And thats all there is to it.   Sometimes I feel i should post my Actual Letter to Dr Phil ( Yes i saved It) so most can really understand where i was comming from.... I truelly want answers for us all. 

thanks again 

Be Blessed 

Jennifer              totalintrigue@hotmail.com 

Just wanted to keep you posted.  The next day after the show I met with the surgeons, and the director of the team took a look at me with his team around, ( very embarassing)  and said as he was holding my belly flabb... " Hey does anyone need a wallet?"  I was shocked but than laughed as soon as it sunk in to what he was talking about.  They took numerouse pictures and gave me lots of info, stated that i should be started with my first procedure out of 4 near the 1st week of Feb. i was than told to go home prepare for surgery , which is getting a complete physical and a ton of blood work completed.   Finished all of that today.  Now its just the waiting game. 

Ill keep you posted.  Thanks for the support.... 

Noone can get the smile off my face and its definately not due to ????   Well  you know............LOL 

Take care.  Jennifer 

   Just wanted to keep you posted on whats up?  I just came home from L.A. June 28th, having completed my 2nd stages of surgeries.  They removed over 20lbs of excess skin,  WOW even I have a hard time fathoming that number. I didn't think I was that messed up. LOL:)  Everyone with the show and the Drs were all incredibly wonderfull and  with me every step of the way.  Its an incredibly hard process but healing well.  But my weight loss I feel was an even harder process, I battled it for yrs and WON now my healing is just my pain to a better life emotionally for me.  I know surgery is not the answer for everyone, but it IS the answer for me.  My actual LIFE wasn't in danger to have surgery but my emotional life WAS...It was impossible for me to live and be happy when i tried soooooooo hard to lose all this weight and have it be the furthest thing from what I wanted at goal.  When I started to lose I pictured myself at goal as skinny happy and living life shopping anywhere i want and wearing for the first time in my life a Tshirt a skirt maybe shorts, but when i got there I was just GROSS,  I still couldn't cross my legs without incredible pinching pain, when walking my skin still rubbed together and rippled about as I walked, working out was humiliating,  i was the only one in the class who was clapping without using my hands.    

I too wanted concrete advise from Dr Phil for all of us on what do we do when surgery is not an option due to finances?  Im hoping Ill get answers if i get  a chance to see him.  If surgery is something one would never do regardless, and you feel comfortable with all that your left with skin and all.  I tip my hat off to you, you would be one amazing person one I would be proud of and would want to know how you did it.  But I know deep down in all of us if someone offered to you what i was offered you would not say NO thank you?Possibly?  Im hoping the world changes towards all of us with weight issues and realizes that we all want to be better and healthier,  once we do that Insurance needs to step up and realize that this is a medical issue Its not a WANT but a NEED.  

As for my husband and I, well hes going to KOSIVOE in Sept?  Hes serving over seas for one year,  Still suportive but were still roomies  >LOL.  Don't want him to go, scared of all the over seas stuff,  Im an emotional eater so Im hoping Ill have it under control before he goes....  

I want to be here and help,  any questions, or ideas, or just want to vent  Im here....  

I wrote into Dr Phil to get advice.  Not surgery.  I know there are a lot of people out there worse off than I,  I wanted him to help me accept the way I looked over 300 lbs and he way i looked now.  I asked him " If surgery is NOT ever an answer for a person how do you begin to accept what you have.  He chose to give me surgery.  I still didn't have any answers.  I chose to lose weight for me, before I developed any health issues.  Truelly we do chose to lose to LOOK and Feel better...

Just wanted to keep you posted on whats up?  I just came home from L.A. June 28th, having completed my 2nd stages of surgeries.  They removed over 20lbs of excess skin,  WOW even I have a hard time fathoming that number. I didn't think I was that messed up. LOL:)  Everyone with the show and the Drs were all incredibly wonderfull and  with me every step of the way.  Its an incredibly hard process but healing well.  But my weight loss I feel was an even harder process, I battled it for yrs and WON now my healing is just my pain to a better life emotionally for me.  I know surgery is not the answer for everyone, but it IS the answer for me.  My actual LIFE wasn't in danger to have surgery but my emotional life WAS...It was impossible for me to live and be happy when i tried soooooooo hard to lose all this weight and have it be the furthest thing from what I wanted at goal.  When I started to lose I pictured myself at goal as skinny happy and living life shopping anywhere i want and wearing for the first time in my life a Tshirt a skirt maybe shorts, but when i got there I was just GROSS,  I still couldn't cross my legs without incredible pinching pain, when walking my skin still rubbed together and rippled about as I walked, working out was humiliating,  i was the only one in the class who was clapping without using my hands.    

I too wanted concrete advise from Dr Phil for all of us on what do we do when surgery is not an option due to finances?  Im hoping Ill get answers when i get  a chance to see him.  If surgery is something one would never do regardless, and you feel comfortable with all that your left with skin and all.  I tip my hat off to you, you would be one amazing person one I would be proud of and would want to know how you did it.  But I know deep down in all of us if someone offered to you what i was offered you would not say NO thank you?Possibly?  Im hoping the world changes towards all of us with weight issues and realizes that we all want to be better and healthier,  once we do that Insurance needs to step up and realize that this is a medical issue Its not a WANT but a NEED.  

This is Jennifer ( the excess skin girl).....Just came back on the boards after being away for a couple months.  Wow there are a blessed few who truelly care and share and are truelly heartfelt.  than there are a few who just haven't got it yet!!!  I am familiar with a government who would take care of thier people if they had a hang nail, yes you could go into emergency and get full paid for Healthcare for a hang nail.  The government here HAS THE MONEY 100 fold to step up for us but choses to do other things like spend billions for things even they, don't know why or how it even got started....Its not about whinning and crying for the government to help us with our own self disfiguration, or however the other person worded it????  WE ARE THE NUMBER ONE OBESE NATION.... Doesn't that say something,  now we the people are doing something to change that statistic so our nation can be healthier the least the government can do is now help us to do what we no longer can do for ourselves. And thats to complete what THE GOVERNMENT WANTS US TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE.... DIET...BE FIT BE A BEAUTIFULL AMERICA... Now wouldn't that be a comercial picture it.... Beautifull people walking the streets of america, thin everyone thin!!!! Not a single obese person to be seen anywhere, than suddenly someone from afar looks through an XRAY VISION camera and suddenly sees the people for what they truelly look like underneath it all.  Chafed, red swollen saggy skin.  Every person he looked at that once he seen as beautifull was now Grotesque.   Wouldn't than and only than the government now see a NEW National delema...

I spent my entire life FAT, I never ever new what it was like to be thin.  I didn;t just one day  eat my self morbid.  I didn't know any different.  When I was young I actually thought there were FAt people and thin people just like blacks, whites, spanish.  I didn't think I could be a thin person  just like I thought there was no way I could be black when Im white.  Call it nieve but thats how I grew up.  I didn't know I had the option to be a thin person till I was an adult ( this is the gods truth)  and I also wasn't aware of how my body would look once I chose to cross over to the thin border....People are people I didn't realize I had a choice, when my whole life that s all I knew....

If you are happy with weight so be it Im happy for you if you are happy skinny with skin so be it.  Im happy for you.  But I really had no idea that once i lost that I would be faced with this issue.  I was shocked.  Its about education, for everyone that wants to lose.  if I was educated as a child that I had a choice to be thin or be fat Im sure I would have lost my weight along time ago... Just like If I was educated aboout the weight loss journey, and possibly how to refrain from having my body react to weight loss the way it did, and had professionals to guide me to do what would or may have been right,  the right way for me.  than possibly I wouldn't of had to resort to surgery.  Thats why I wanted to do the show so others who may have been like me can see the whole truth of weight loss and make an educated choice on the journey.  I never had that chance but I want to make that chance for someone else, to be well informed because weight loss is definately NOT PRETTY, and neither is the END RESULT.  But Knowledge is POWER. and thats what makes it beautifull....

Sincerely Jennifer  

I just felt the need to reply. 

My name is Jennifer.  I am the Girl on the show that is set to be aired on Dec 1st.  Dr Phil surprised me with surgery to remove my skin.  Please believe me when I say, that i have experienced everything that you are now facing.  I wrote into Dr Phil in regards to the downside of Weight loss.  My marriage was a joke,  I hated to be unclothed, touched, hugged looked at you name it I had an issue.  Even though I reached close to goal I still covered up, I was disgusting without cloths.  I was  mortified by my body the more I lost the scarier it was for me.  My body continued to look horrible the more I lost.  I always wanted to be skinny, and now that I lost my weight,  my loss became my nightmare.  I looked nothing like I pictured I would look like at goal.  I thought I could wear a T shirt yes something as simple as a T shirt and feel good about me,  But my arms were hanging swinging all the time.  To some this would appear PETTY, but to me being obese clinicly obese my entire life and finally doing something that is good to the outside as to weight loss was nothing close to good.  I resembled a melting candle, I hated my decision to lose.  I was guilt ridden that if i just stayed fat than i wouldn't have left one problem to gain another.  Surgery is extrememly expensive and one thing I knew in this lifetime No matter what,  I couldn't possibly do.  So I reached out to Dr Phil before a pre weight loss show and basically told him if he was going to do another weight losss show DO A REAL ONE OR DON"T DO ONE AT ALL!!!!  No one ever talks about the down side of weight loss that it is not alwys happy, lifes great!!! PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFttttt!!!!!!!!!!!.  I was soooo sick of seeing people at goal on stage showing off and happy with a new wardrobe or car or Trip to show off their new body I wanted to throw up.  All that is mateialistic and rots and goes away But you still have to wake each day to your body, and anything  over a 120lb weight loss is not a pretty sight.  No One ever talked about THE EXCESS SKIN. what the Hll does one do about it ? when after all the struggle,  to finally do what the media blasts in our brain to do,  we accomplish but look worse than when we started???  I lost with the dream in my head that I would look great for the first time in my life.  Hilarious, it was a cruel joke I tried soo hard but in the end the joke was on me....  My life wasn't in danger to rsort to surgery but my mental life was.  So many people don't get that. I had  agross body at 300+lbs and a gross body at goal.  I wanted to gain my weight back because than at least I would be filled out my skin wouldn't hang ripple or slap together, and the public would understand why i was covered up at the beach, ( because I was fat) But I was coverd up thin and people didn't get it.  If I exposed the sight of my flesh, I would have left people with the same reaction as if I was fat.  EWWWWWWWWW gross look at that lady, she needs to cover up.... Thin and fat I hid in big cloths.  Losing weight is not all what the media says it is.  You exchange one battle for another.  I wanted answeres from Dr Phil for all of us, but he surprised me with the Dr's from Dr 90210!!!!!!!  I came to the conclusion that maybe even Dr Phil doesn't have anything concret to help us, its all a series,  a process, but he does state that we must be realists about the whole process good and bad.  My journey I had no Idea, I guess I was dilusional.. LOL... I had noone to educate me on the whole journey I did it all ALONE.  By myself no surgery no dieticians noone me myself and my dream to be better Healthier.  Because I KNOW not everyone can have surgery,  I know alone,,, I couldn't.  The media plugs in us to lose, finally we believe in ourselves enough to DO IT.  But we are faced once again with NOW WHAT???? 

I live by the MOTTO..... Don't live to regret the things you've done.... Live to regret the things you haven't done.... In other words Just do everything.  The worst thing may turn into your biggest blessing...

I wanted to reach out to Angelique on the show and tell her that She CAN be where I am Because i was once where she is.  Just believe........ In YOU.  Believe that in the next minute Your Dream comes true, because thats how fast life can change.  If it takes min by min hour to hour day by day  month by month Trust that in the next min everything can change.

I could lose the weight myself but I couldn't shed the skin myself.  Surgery is not the answer for everyone but it was the answer for me.  Now I make it my mission to help all who are just waiting to walk in my shoes and face thier weight loss journey with pride and the belief that not another day will  you accept.... that you are worth being happy whatever your happiness is to you.

Smile you are 60 seconds from a Dream come true....

Sincerely Jennifer....