Limor Haim Matityahoo (Limitz)

Limor Haim Matityahoo is an entrepreneur who has been sharing her interests and experience regarding creativity, motherhood, design, and marketing with her readers since 2007. Limor, who is known by her network nickname "Limitz", is the CEO and owner of "Limitz – the Online Center of Marketing for Designers" at www.limitz.com. The author works as a high-tech professional in the finance industry and as a marketing consultant and lecturer for designers who want to sell online. She is divorced and the mother of Libi and Matan.

Since her childhood Limor has gone through an endless number of diet programs of all sorts, including those focusing on weight loss through sports. In each of these sessions she lost from 10-25 kilograms, regaining them soon after. Her first record weight gain was during her army service in the Israeli Defence Force, in which she received officer rank on her shoulders and an additional 30 kgs around her waist. The second record gain was twenty years later, after her pregnancies, which added another 30 kgs to her body.

After seven years of marriage, she divorced and began a business of her own to provide guidance and counseling for designers and creative artists interested in selling their items locally and internationally at the ETSY.com website.

On February 19, 2013, at the age of 41, Limor weighed 130 kilos, distributed over 167 centimeters of height. On that very day she entered the operating room and had the bariatric surgery known as "laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG)" or simply "the sleeve." As a result of the operation, she lost 57 kilos in a process that took a year-and-a-half.

The physical weight loss was the easier part of the process. Coping emotionally with the physical change was an inseparable part of it – an emotional confrontation that combined Limor's feelings towards her body, the reaction of those around her, and the endless interactions between them. This struggle accompanies Limor to this very day, years after the operation.

As a woman highly aware of beauty and esthetics, Limor was quite surprised by the intensity of reactions to her weight loss. She chose to embrace them wholeheartedly and examine the comments with curiosity and love. Being a counselor and mentor for women, she has had many opportunities to take an active part in discussions about female empowerment, weight and body image, and the general feelings about them.

Limor is an influential figure amongst women in Israel. She is exposed to new trends and styles in fashion and apparel, wears mainly Israeli fashion and accessories, and displays them with pride and joy. Her experiences as a well-known individual amongst artists and designers, as well as her strong presence in circles of offline and online mothers, have influenced Limor to write New Stomach Old Brain.

The purpose of this book is to enable those considering bariatric (sleeve) surgery and their family and friends to take a glimpse at a hidden world, a kind of parallel inner world that does not necessarily resemble what we see from the outside.

Please visit Limor’s website: www.limitz.co.il