As Amy Watkins approached the hill, sled in tow, she convinced herself everyone was staring at her, this fat lady about to make a fool of herself.

Then she remembered: She's not fat anymore.

So Watkins and her 7-year-old son, for the first time in their lives, climbed into the same sled and zoomed down the hill, screaming and laughing the whole way.

"We had an absolute blast," she wrote.

Watkins writes often and in detail about her weight following gastric bypass surgery last summer. Her patient blog — the first of its kind for North Shore Medical Center — was introduced last month and provides an honest account of how the procedure can change a life in wonderful and scary ways. Or, as the blog states, she delivers "the good, the great, the bad and the ugly" of what for many is a last-ditch approach to overcome obesity.

The hospital wanted a patient's point of view on its Web site and approached Watkins, a 39-year-old single mother from Danvers. They knew she had written for other sites and were struck by her candid approach. She is not paid for her blog, nor is she edited or censored.

About 600 gastric bypass procedures have been performed at the hospital since 2000. At a recent open house for prospective patients, half of the people there said they had read Watkins' blog.

"She makes it authentic and real," spokeswoman Jean Graham said.

On her blog, Watkins describes a lifetime of struggles with weight, starting with anorexia and bulimia as a teen and extending into adulthood, when at age 38 her weight ballooned to 254 pounds. Not quite 5 feet 2 inches tall, she was classified as morbidly obese. Her neck got so big she struggled to breathe at night.

"I was afraid I would die before I could raise my son," she says.

Before her gastric bypass surgery, Watkins found it helped to put her feelings to paper, or to computer screen. She shared some entries with a hospital staff member, who recognized the potential benefit to others.

Watkins views her blog as a journal that she just happens to make public.

"I try not to think about other people reading it," she says. Otherwise, she says, she might not be so honest.

Few subjects are out of bounds. She chronicles bra shopping at Victoria's Secret, awful online dates, strict diets, hunger pains, nausea and constipation, worries about her son, and the nagging fear that the weight will return someday.

"I have never maintained a weight loss for more than a year ... and it scares the absolute bejeezus out of me that I could potentially fail even with surgical intervention," she wrote in February.

She posts photos — back, side and front — to show her weight loss results. She is down to 132 pounds, a total loss of 122 pounds. Her goal weight is 115.

She uses the blog to share recipes, recommend cookbooks and suggest favorite weight-loss-surgery-friendly foods to help maintain her 1,200-calorie-a-day diet.

Watkins, a software test engineer, says the blog gives her a place to vent, a place to celebrate, a place to think things through. She has no regrets, about the surgery or her decision to make her recovery open to the public.

"I try to trust and believe we're all human beings and we all experience the same stuff whether we want to talk about it or not," she says. "I don't think any of us are all alone as long as we don't choose to be."