OP I don't think you seem particularly overweight given your height yet you say you wear a size 18? I am only 5'2 and my BMI went up to 35 at one point, but I never wore anything bigger than an 18 so that confuses me. Anyway, in answer to your question, and as a message to anyone still living with their obesity, I'll say:
It's honestly an amazing feeling. I've gone from 14 stone at my heaviest to hovering around the 8 stone 7 lb to 8 stone 9 lb mark and I am determined not to go over 9 stone ever again. That's 5 and a half stone lost. I am not what anyone would describe as thin but I am certainly slim. Ideally I'd love to get another half stone off but I am struggling to budge any lower now that my dose has been lowered at the insistence of the the WLI provider. My weight loss has stopped and is occasionally in danger of creeping up again by three or four pounds. I don't eat much in quantity but I continue to eat exactly what I want, rather than making conscious choices to avoid certain foods and prioritise others, so that's probably my own fault.
I feel absolutely transformed, both physically and in terms of my confidence and my energy levels.
Almost every chronic, physical complaint I had has been cured. The difference in how my back, hips and knees feel cannot be understated. My laboured breathing and asthma, my poor energy levels, my poor physical balance, my terrible acid reflux, my plantar fasciitis, the fungal skin infections under my boobs, my bloated puffy face and massive double chin, the fact that I struggled to bend enough (or just couldn't reach down over my own bulk) to do my shoes up, all GONE.
I am really enjoying buying clothes again and have completely embraced styles I would never have dared to wear before. For years my criteria for buying clothes was 1) trying not to draw attention to myself 2) whether an item made me look even fatter or not 3) whether it was comfortable and didn't cut into me around the middle.
Now I want to draw attention to myself because I know I look great. I have a good eye for putting a stylish outfit together, it's just that I never felt I could do my own sense of style justice before, if that makes sense. I mean I know in theory I could have worn anything, but I didn't want people to look at me and think 'she's too fat for that. She looks ridiculous.'
Now I can pick something up off a rail and I don't need to stop to think about whether I can 'get away with it' or not, apart from in respect of my age. I am quite fashion forward but I have no wish to dress like a 25 year old or wear anything too short or too skimpy now. But I've had a lifetime of being too self conscious to wear shorts or anything skimpy and that makes me sad. Even when I was young and wasn't what you'd call obese, I had dumpy, chubby legs that I hated and would never show above the knee. Now I can't show my legs above the knee because I'm too old and they have so much loose skin that they look like an elephant's legs. 😂
I went on WLIs in my mid to late fifties and my only regret is that I didn't get a grip of my weight much sooner. So many wasted years of not dressing how I wanted to and just feeling crap about myself. And now I have loads of crepey, saggy skin to contend with. The younger you are when you lose weight, the easier the skin will snap back into shape. Leave it too long and it never will. I think I am going to need some light facial tweakments a deep plane facelift now, but even so, I wouldn't change a thing. For all my added wrinkles, I still think I look much better in the face than when I was all bloated, with no definition to my face and a big double chin. I looked like a baking potato with puffy cheeks and piggy eyes. Now I look pretty again. I saw a video of myself chatting to someone the other day and I zoomed in on myself and I was like 'Wow, is that really ME? I look so attractive!'
I now find myself looking at very obese people and finding it impossible to understand why they wouldn't prioritise the money for WLIs even if it was a stretch financially. I mean when there is a solution why on earth would you NOT take it? Even if you think you can't afford it, do the maths on what it cost you to get so fat and what it's costing you to stay so fat and keep getting fatter.
Let's be honest, you don't get to be hugely obese for little or cost, do you? The endless takeaways, bottles of wine, syrupy giant coffees, cocktails, bottles of coke, biscuits, big bowls of chocolate mindlessly chomped through in front of the telly every night. None of that comes cheap and probably costs at least as much as the WLIs would.
Just do it.