Page 126 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2018

HEALTHY LIVING gastric sleeve LOSING 260
Pounds
Biloxi couple lose weight together with help from South Mississippi Surgical Weight Loss
story by Kelsey Sunderman-Foster Mphotos courtesy of Michael and Melinda Parnell
ichael and methods to tackle the challenge Melinda Parnell together. “Michael and I both put are a loving a lot of effort in, contrary to what
couple from I’m sure many people believe, Biloxi who have but we were never able to find
been married six years. Marriage as success. I had become extremely an institution is meant to withstand anti-social and was very unhappy
the highs and the lows, and the Parnells have truly stuck to their vows to one another.
“Anyone who has known either
of us for any length of time knows that we’ve both struggled with
our weight as far back as we can remember,” Melinda said. “I can vividly remember turning down Hershey’s Kisses offered to me by
a teacher in 7th grade, when I was just 12 years old, because I was on
a diet. I have never been fit, small, skinny, confident, or any of the other adjectives that are commonly used to describe people in a positive way.”
In the first few years of their relationship and marriage, Michael and Melinda each struggled with their weight and tried multiple
with myself,” recalls Melinda. “Being unhappy like that spills over into every other aspect of life too, whether or not we want to admit it.”
Reaching a point in their struggles where they both realized they weren’t enjoying life to the fullest, the Parnells decided to look into surgical weight loss.
“We had surgery in December,
not because we were too lazy
to try diet and exercise or
because we wanted an easy way out, but because we came to the realization that if we didn’t make some big changes we would not live to see each other get old,” Michael said. “We had been married 6 years and wanted to see that number
be more like 56. That wasn’t a possibility with the way things
THE PARNELLS lost a collective 260 pounds.
126 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • October 2018
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