Well let's see. I am a wife to a wonderful husband for 21+ years and mother to 3 children (17,15,13). I didn't really have much of a weight problem as a child. I mean I remember being a little chubby around the age of 10, but it didn't last long. If anything, as a teenager I was a little on the too skinny side. I remember being 14 and my now mother in law wouldn't let my now husband take me to the mall unless a had something to eat....I guess I was smaller than I thought.....That is NOT a problem now-haha. It seemed my issues came from having children. I gained large amounts of weight with each child. I was able to lose it in between kids until the last one. With 3 kids under 4 1/2 and a husband in the ARMY....there just wasn't time for me. I sometimes felt like I didn't have time for a shower, let alone an hour a day to exercise...I was just too tired!!!

It just seemed like my body changed. When I would lose the weight in the past, it would stay off....until I got pregnant again--haha. But the third time was different. I worked so hard....eating right and exercising almost every day....almost excessively. And a would get 30 or 40 lbs off and be a decent size 10/12, but the day I would start to return to a normal food intake (and by normal, I simply mean about 1400 calories)and drop back to exercising 3 days a week....suddenly I would start slowly adding on the weight again. About a pound a month. So six months in I would be 6pounds heavier....a year later I would be 12 pounds heavier. you get the picture. Before I knew it I would be 30 pounds overweight. I would get serious again!!!drop back to 900 calories start exercising everyday and would get myself down again. and you know the rest. Repeat-above cycle two or three more times over 10 years, then just give up. That’s where I have been for the last 4 years...refusing to repeat the cycle anymore. As a result, that 12 pound a year weight gain is now 50 pounds. Add that to the 15 pounds I could never get off in the first place, and here we are... needing to lose 65 pounds (really to be ideal weight that would be 80 pounds)---but I'll be happy with the 65 pounds.....Honestly, I'd be happy just to be able to return to a life of camping, hiking and swimming like a used to do all the time....regardless of what the scale says.

So now I'm playing the waiting game. I will have my last appointment on Tuesday February 21 (my 40th birthday) and from there everything heads to insurance for approval. I have Tricare North and have heard they are pretty good about approving the surgery. I didn't want to get this far in the process and have the insurance company decide they wanted me to do the supervised diet for 3 months, so I went ahead and did it voluntarily with my GP (lost 12 pounds for good faith effort). Just being proactive!! So hopefully on Tuesday I will get a surgery date; the sooner the better. I would like to have it done by the end of March. We are taking my oldest daughter on a cruise for her graduation present the first week in May and I want to be nicely healed from the surgery before I put myself on a boat in the middle of the ocean for a week

Well that’s it. If you can offer any insite into how long it takes for tricare to give approval or if you have tricare and can educate me on anything, please let me know.

Or any other advise is more than welcome too. This is such a lerning process.

Thanks,

Tina