8-9-10 and I am down 36 pounds, from a high of 240 to a current 204.

When I first got started with this banding process, it was sobering to realize that I'd have to lose forty pounds just to get down to 200 pounds. Seemed like a long way to go to still be the size of some linebackers on pro football teams.

Even though 36 pounds is a fair amount of weight to lose, I don't feel like it has really begun to show. My clothes are looser and my husband says he can tell a difference, but it is not yet the dramatic change that I yearn for in my heart. I'm still a fat girl, just not as fat as I was. I don't spend a lot of time bemoaning this, but it has crossed my mind as I get nearer to the mental dividing line between 200 and 199.

The next forty pounds will put me at 164, the weight I hovered at all through high school and college; no matter how many times I dropped another twenty pounds, I'd gradually find my weight creeping back up over 160. When I think of the agonies that used to cost me and look of the pictures I thought were so ghastly, I realize that if I had never gone on a diet, never fought my way down below 140 time and time again, I might've stayed right there at 164 for many years. I looked just fine at 164.

What is it that makes me think that one number is better than another, that somehow 143 is far superior to 148 or that 199 is superior to 200? That somehow hitting 175 will magically entitle me to wearing my unitard to teach dance classes instead of hiding out in black pants and a black knit top to teach?

On the other hand, some days I feel so much freer in movement and agility that I actually feel normal sized at 204 until I catch an accidental glimpse of myself in a mirror or picture and realize that to the rest of the world I'm still a lump of too too solid flesh. Once again, I mostly don't dwell on the matter but it is interesting to see how my viewpoint has changed over 45 years of weight-related struggle. At age 27 and 145 pounds, I felt fat and ungainly. At age 55 and 204 pounds, I feel relatively normal and graceful.

From an emotional standpoint, I'm better off now than I was at 27 and I may be better off physically, too. When I think of the strange diets I observed to in order to hold a magical number on the scale, I wonder how I managed to survive my youth without developing some exotic type of malnutrition usually found only in third world countries.

In some ways, my food choices now are as strange as those I made thirty years ago, but now it is due to what I am able to eat and not what I think I should eat. I eat more nuts as a source of protein than I ever did in my life because there is a fair amount of protein in a small amount of food and I can chew them up well enough to keep them down. Every once in a while, but nut intake becomes- well, a bit nutty and I have to remind myself that there is also a fair amount of fat involved here. Sherbert also calls to me louder than it used to, largely because it never bothers my stomach and I can eat it when everything else seems like too big a chore to deal with.

I am a night owl and nights can still be a time when I eat more than I should, partially because that's the way I've always been and partially because it is so hard for me to eat in the morning. The first meal of the day is usually a challenge, as if my stomach has as hard a time waking up as the rest of me does. Forget eggs, forget toast, even oatmeal can be a challenge to choke down and keep down some mornings. Once I'm past that first meal, though, the rest of the day is easier, and if I let myself get carried away, I can eat more than is good for me in short bursts late at night.

Still, it is progress not perfection that matters. I know myself well enough to know if I get into the calorie counting journaling every bite that goes into my mouth routine, sooner or later I will rebel against the regimentation. I am better off nibbling my way through the day than I am with three distinct meals, the earliest of which is usually torture. I've struggled my whole life to learn to eat when I'm hungry and stop when I've had enough, and I've found that eating at 8 am, noon, and 5pm with a small snack at 7:15 pm completely negates any effort on my part to be aware of hunger/satiation.

Know myself should be the title of this day's entry. I am not a poster child for the lapbander's ideal life, but I am gtting where I want to be, slowly but apparently surely. I don't mind when it hurts to eat or when things occasionally foam back up because I have taken too big a bite or haven't chewed well enough. It's all part of an enforced learning process that works much better than any type of willpower I ever employed. Eating is not the pleasure it once was with the exception of a few items, and that helps a great deal. It is hard to eat for emotional comfort when excess results in physical pain. That means I've had to find other ways to deal with emotions, but that's okay, too.

For right now, I am mostly content with my progress and my life style. As time goes on, I will make other enforced adjustments and they will become normal for me. I never thought I'd be able to give up my favorite fast food hamburgers and french fries, but it hurts to eat them now and I realize I don't miss them nearly as much as I thought I would. Life is a series of compromises; what I can eat and what I can't has become just one more thanks to a physical barrier to past eating excesses.

I could not have come this far again without help, and I am grateful I was able to have the banding done. Good insurance made it possible, as did some financial sacrifices in other areas on the part of my whole family. My band is a second trip overseas, the new living room bump out we didn't build, a remodeled kitchen, a new truck. I can't imagine anything I'd rather have more, though, than my life and mobility back, not to mention a decrease in physical pain due to too much weight on my joints. I'm grateful that my husband has supported me the entire way.