It is 2:20 a.m. amd I should be on my way to bed. I would be on my way to bed except I am a confirmed night owl and occasionally an insomniac besides. Reports abound claiming that too little sleep leads to too much bodily padding- I reckon I could be a posterchild for that theory.

I view myself as a lifelong fatty until I look at pictures taken of me in childhood, much of adolescence, and even part of adulthood. If anything, I was a thin child, but my mother's cry of "hold in your stomach!" translated in my ears as "fat." Later on, she used the f word a lot in conjuction with me. If I reached for a cookie after school, she chanted "fat, fat, fat!" Once when she took me to the doctor for an emergency visit due to an inexplicable swelling of my mouth, he told me, "Tall girls are pretty. Fat girls aren't." I was approximately 5'6" tall and weighed about 145 pounds- a real ugly fat girl, for sure. To this day I wonder what it was about the late 1960s and the 1970s that made people believe anyone over a hundred and twenty pounds was fat?

Well, it's a cop out to blame it all on good old mom- heaven knows she had help from television and fashion magazines. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had embraced the horrible truth of my largeness, my hugeness, my all encompassing fatness. I was 5'1" and weighed 103 pounds back then. Occasionally I wonder what my life would've been like had I not developed physically two or three years earlier than my peers. Oh, well, what the heck. That was a long time ago and now is now.

I have always been able to lose weight, though as I passed forty it got harder to recover from the yoyo syndrome. Alas, I couldn't maintain the weight loss for more than a couple of years and sometimes far less than that. I ate too much, I ate the wrong things, I ate because food comforted me through depression, anxiety, anger, sorrow, and any other negative emotion that crossed my path. It's hard to argue with success and food was a very successful comforter. Alas again- the side effects eventually became unmanageable and to make a long story a little shorter, it one day became apparent to me that desperate measures were called for.

I knew if I lost weight, all those pounds would eventually come back and bring friends to stay as well. People may think that is a defeatist attitude, but doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of a different outcome is insane, and I had been repeating this scenario since junior high school. I decided to try to reconcile myself to living the rest of my life buried in more too, too solid flesh than my knees needed to be carrying around. It couldn't be any worse than losing seventy pounds and gaining back eighty over and over again.

I never considered bariatric surgery though I knew several people who had done very well with it and one who had regained the weight lost. Then back in August of 2009, I went to the doctor for my annual check up and asked casually what she thought of bariatric surgery. She promptly replied, "I think you are an excellent candidate for it and I will write any letters and sign any papers you need in order to have it."

Oooo-kay. So I started to consider it seriously. Okay, so I decided I wanted it done ASAP and PDQ as well. But there were interviews to be done, tests to be run, the dietician to see, the psychiatric evaluation to be done. That last totally cracked me up. The world is filled with all sorts of anti-social and/or violent people running loose on the streets and my insurance company spent $600 to make sure I was sane enough to have weight loss surgery. Actually, it was one of the more interesting parts of the preliminaries. A reasonably intelligent person with half a brain and a desperate need to have that surgery no matter what could dissemble with a clear conscience on those tests. Most people are not as oblivious as the Highly Educated Care Providers like to believe. When I did the oral part of the exam, on more than one question I told the doctor, "I know this is the answer you are looking for, but this is what I really think." When I went to see her to review the results, I cheerfully asked if I was psychotic. She answered, "No, but you are unconventional." That was good news, though not completely unexpected, and she passed me for surgery, which was even better news.

I didn't lose as much weight prior to the pre-surgery diet as the Powers That Be would've liked, but the surgery went forward. And I didn't lose as much during the post-surgical period as I would've liked, but a two week trip out of town put my first fill back and post surgery, I could eat whatever I pleased, though I tried to keep it under control. The first fill helped, the second fill was better, and I skipped a third fill for the time being.

My banding was done March 3, 2010 and as of last Monday, I had lost thirty pounds despite not managing to change all my bad habits. I don;t lose every week and that gets me down at times, but thirty pounds is thirty pounds and I'm not going to waste time whining because it isn't forty or fifty pounds.

I've spent a lot of time out of town eating meals that aren't healthy or wise, and I still struggle with sweets, specifically ice cream, which goes down beautifully and doesn't require chewing to mush. Sometimes I get sidetracked while I'm eating and take too big a bite and/or don't chew it properly. Ouch. Carbonated beverages have crept back into my life, though I limit them. I don't know why I drink them, especially if I've had something to eat. It hurts. I never thought of myself as a masochist, but sooner or later I get sloppy and... ouch. Drinking while eating is another struggle, though I don't seem to get hungry any faster when I drink water or tea with meals than when I drink nothing. I can't wait two hours after meals as suggested by the dietician, but maybe I can manage the thirty minutes expounded by some doctors.

Anyway, it's time to make the next solid effort to change a bad habit. If I ever actually manage to get to bed tonight, I have to weigh when I wake up and on Tuesday I go back to see Dr. Beckstedt. I know he's not the enemy who will sit in judgement on me if I haven't lost enough weight, but it does make me a tad nervous, the lingering fear of doctors who told me if I didn't lose at least two pounds a week they'd wash their hands of me and leave me to welter in my disgusting fat alone. I really have to wonder what those guys were thinking: tough love or reluctance to have anything less than outstanding success on their watch. I suspect the latter, but forty-five years of weight watching may have made me cynical.

And so, dear reader, should I actually have one, we arrive at the present where Llyra is 55 years old, weighs 210.5 pounds as of last Monday, and is ready to see what she can do about going down another ten by Labor Day.

Blessings on us all and may we triumph over biology, training, and our desire for chocolate ice cream cones with diet Pepsi chasers.

Llyra