Weight Loss Tune-Up | ABC30 Fresno | abc30.com

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By ABC30

Monday, July 20, 2009

Fresno, CA Paul Martin has lost 150 pounds.

"The difference is a 52 pants compared to a 40," Martin told Ivanhoe. "The difference is going to any store and buying an x-large shirt instead of a 3x or 4x."

His motivation: his family, especially his little girl and work. As an engineering project manager, he walks two miles a day; but just a few years ago, he couldn't even make it up the stairs.

"I remember walking around one of our 8-story buildings one day, and he accused me of trying to kill him because I was walking him through the stairwells," co-worker Carol Edmiston told Ivanhoe.

Bariatric surgery gave him a new lease on life.

"I had a stomach the size of a football," Martin said. "Now, it's the size of my thumb."

But a few months ago, he gained 40 pounds.

"It was limiting what I could do work-wise," Martin said. "I was considering, will I have to retire?"

"We wanted to see if we could give him a kick start to get some of that weight off," John Morton, M.D., Director of Bariatric Surgery at Stanford Hospital and Clinics in Stanford, Calif., told Ivanhoe.

"I call it a tune up!" Martin said.

Paul got a Stomaphyx.

"Over time, the connection between the little stomach and the intestine gets a little bit bigger, and what we're able to do is cinch up that area," Dr. Morton said. "It's a lot like making pleats in a skirt."

An endoscope is inserted into the stomach, where surgeons suture the opening between the patient's intestine and the small pouch that had been created in the original bariatric surgery, reducing the new stomach pouch from 20 millimeters to 14 millimeters.

"It just kind of tightened things back up," Martin said.

Paul lost 25 pounds in three months. He's down to 263 and is back to enjoying his job, and enjoying his family again, too. Paul's goal, 250 pounds. He has 10 pounds to go. The Stomaphyx device was FDA-approved in 2007.