Community Corner

You're Seeing Less and Less of Tom McNally These Days (with Video)

The Montville man has lost more than 136 pounds since his gastric bypass surgery in April

You’ve seen it happening on the pages of the Montville Patch, though you might not have noticed.

You’ve seen it happening in Town Hall, though you might not have noticed.

You’ve seen at the WPCA, at meetings of the Montville School board, at events and goings on all over town – and you might not have noticed.

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But one of these days, you’re going to take a look at Tom McNally, and then you’re going to take another look at him, and then you’re going to say, “Hey, haven’t you lost a lot of weight?”

The answer is “yes.”

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At his heaviest, this spring, McNally hit 420 pounds. When I interviewed him early this month, his weight had dropped to 284.

Chances are, he weighs less today.

 

MCNALLY NEVER HAD IT EASY, as far as weight was concerned. He was a big baby, gaining weight from the time he was born to the time his mom brought him home. In kindergarten, he was tall and big. Today, at 35, he is 6 foot 3.

And it’s that “at 35” that got him.

McNally has been heavy for his entire life. He has tried a series of diets, and a variety of weight-loss  efforts.

“My entire life, I’ve done stuff,” he says. “I’d go on diets. I just wouldn’t lose.”

One time, he says, he did lose some weight, eating nothing but rice cakes and exercising for hours every day. Over time, he lost 30 pounds. When he started eating regular food, the weight came back on.

At 35, he decided it was time to do something.

His father, who was slim, died of a heart attack at the age of 45. All four grandparents died of heart attacks or strokes, he says, and diabetes runs in his family.

McNally was 35, he was overweight, and he was ready.

 

HE HAD TAKEN HIS MOM to the doctor’s, and in the office, saw information about gastric bypass surgery. He says he thought it was a drastic procedure, but he’d tried everything – and maybe it was time for a drastic procedure.

“Luckily,” he says, Lawrence & Memorial Hospital has a team that does gastric bypass procedures. “In order to even start to think about this, you have to attend one of their free information sessions,” he says.

At the session, he learned that there are different types of gastric bypass procedures. They include what is generally called “restrictive operation,” such as stomach stapling or gastric-band surgery, and gastric bypass surgery, which is what McNally had.

Restrictive operations, according to WebMD, involve stomach-stapling, in which an incisions is made and surgical staples and plastic bands are used to create a pouch in the top of the stomach, making it much smaller. To see a drawing of the stomach stapling procedure, click here.

Gastric banding is a similar procedure, where a band is placed near the top of the stomach to make a pouch, or, basically, a smaller stomach. To see a drawing of this procedure, click here.

The surgery that McNally had is called “Roux-en-Y gastric bypass” and according to WebMD, is the most common surgery choice for weight loss.

Usually, food passes through the stomach and into the small intestine. Here, most of the nutrients and calories are absorbed. Then the food passes into the large intestine, where it is excreted.

In the Roux-en-Y surgery, staples or a plastic band are used to make a pouch at the top of the stomach. This smaller stomach is then connected directly to the middle of the small intestine.

The rest of the stomach and the start of the small intestine are bypassed. To see a drawing of the procedure, click here.

McNally chose the latter operation mainly because, for some unknown reason, he says, it eliminates and apparently prevents diabetes in almost all cases. Even if a person has had diabetes since childhood, McNally says, once he has this operation, the diabetes vanishes. Doctors don’t know why, but that didn’t worry McNally.

 

IN APRIL, AFTER A REQUIRED TRIP to his family doctor, who approved the procedure enthusiastically, and a required trip a psychologist, who would vouch for McNally’s balanced outlook and lack of depression, the operation was scheduled.

It took about three hours, he says, and he was up and walking within hours of waking.

He had the surgery on a Wednesday, and was back home on Friday. He was up and out in about a week, he says. It takes about six weeks to return to everything, including lifting and exercising.

The weight loss began immediately. In the first two weeks, McNally had clear liquids only. He lost staggering amounts of weight right off the bat, 25 or 30 pounds a week for the first few weeks, he says. After that, it was 10 pounds a week for a time. Now, he’s losing 2 to 3 pounds a week.

He’s gone from a 52 waist to a 40 waist.

“My shoulders are getting bony,” he says.

While McNally says he has thought of a goal of about 250, his doctor says he believes McNally will end up somewhere between 192 and 200 pounds. The surgery is very effective, the doctor says, and believes that McNally’s system will simply keep losing until he reaches the right weight for his body.

 

THESE DAYS, PORTION CONTROL is McNally’s guide and watchword. His meals are about 5-7 ounces each, total. For breakfast, he’ll have a 3-ounce yogurt. For lunch, a half a can of tuna. For dinner, a piece of chicken and a small baked potato.

“Meat is still hard to digest,” he says. “The big thing is to get protein.”

He eats less because he wants less, and, he says, “you can feel yourself getting full.”

That thing that keeps people eating after they are full, that thing that puts the weight on, that thing is gone, he says. “You start feeling full, you stop eating.”

Honestly, he says, if you eat too much, eat too quickly or eat the wrong things, you’ll throw up.

In this country, he says, “portions are way out of control.” The average meal at, say, Outback Steakhouse is 50 ounces. McNally says that in the past, he’d have thought nothing about sitting down to a piece of prime rib that covered a plate, a baked potato the size of two fists, veggies, bread and dessert. He estimates that meal at 2,500 calories.

Now, he says, “You’re never ever hungry. You just don’t want it. You don’t have the craving.”

 

MCNALLY IS DETERMINED not only to lose weight, but to be healthier. He takes a multivitamin every day. He is starting an exercise program.

“I wasn’t unhappy being big,” he says, adding that he had no blood pressure issues, no diabetes issues.

“Even now, I don’t feel all that much different,” he says.

But he does notice differences.

He needs clothes to see him through his weight loss, and there’s no need to get good ones now, because in a month, they’ll be too big. Now, he says, he can go to the Goodwill store and find clothes his size.

Big-men clothes are more expensive, so even when he’s buying new, he’s saving money.

Those plastic chairs people have around at cookouts? He can fit in them now, with room on both sides.

 

“YOU HAVE UP TO A YEAR to lose all your weight,” he says. Then, if you overeat, your stomach will start to stretch again.

McNally is determined to get the weight off and keep it off. All this must not be for naught.

And he is learning how to do it, how to eat healthy, how to manage his food, how to live lean.

One thing he has learned, he says, is that if you don’t eat it, you don’t have to lose it. To lose the calories you take in from one donut, for instance, takes days of dieting or hours of exercise.

Another is something that his boss and friend Mike Didato said to him one day.

“He told me, ‘Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.’”


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