In public, Carlynda Cofield looked like a new person. Weight Watchers and then weight loss surgery had helped her shed more than 325 pounds, from a high of over 500, and her friends congratulated her on her new look.
But when she got home, she would peel off her body suit — her compression garments — and look at her loose skin in the mirror. Her new look in public was just a façade.
“You could roll my stomach up like a burrito,” she recalled. “It looked like I had paper bags hanging on my legs. I went from one extreme to another. … I looked like a hideous monster.”