The rearview mirror is my best friend. I'm always consulting it, flicking between the road ahead and what has just passed. For me, I'm obsessed with understanding and learning. I never take "I don't know" as an answer. There ARE no mysteries, there is always a reason. Maybe we don't understand it at the time, but that's what rearview mirrors are for; they are the teacher's answer key. And the more I know, the better I get.

So here I am one week from getting my band replaced and am glancing at the rearview of my band failures and successes. I feel very different than the first time I was banded, and it's made even clearer by the new people I am befriending here on LBT. All the questions and the anxiety and the excitement, it's like looking at a photograph. It makes me smile and I'm probably more excited for their journey than they are, knowing what's coming.

I want to be a good leader, a great example, and most of all I want to not repeat my own mistakes (for I am still a human leader). I wasn't perfect on the band like many others I see. I have a food addiction. And the first step in anything is owning up to your misses.

I remember the first few months with the "magic fill" - I was a kid in a candy store, eating cookies and ice cream or high fat stuff. I would MARVEL that literally, two squares of a Hershey's bar would satisfy me. I would fold up the candy bar and put it in my desk drawer. I'd open the drawer just to look at it and boggle at the fact that I didn't WANT it, and I could say no. That never, ever happened to me. I destroy food like Godzilla with a hangover. I would sneak ice cream as a 7 year old when my mom was in the shower. The taste of food was unparalleled joy, all the time. And I enjoyed my bad food for a while when I was newly banded, because I had power over food for the first time in my life.

I did eventually get too cocky and the band would interrupt a nice dinner I'd made or purchased, and all the food was put away because I had to PB, or just felt awful. Try having something stuck on a date....ruins the mood. I needed to go through that embarrassment and wake up call to get back in balance. Play time was over, it was time to work. Then I got in line with the band; roasting chicken thighs and carrots for dinner, portioning things out. Talking more with whomever I was with and letting food fall to the background. I never felt deprived because my food choices were just that - MY choices. It was so empowering I cannot even describe it. I literally felt like a normal person because my relationship with food was changing.

This time around, I'm not even interested in bad food, or the permission to have it in small quantities. I have tasted normal sized clothing, I have tasted normal relationships with food, and I absolutely hate where I am now. I'm 40 lbs less than my heaviest, but I feel worse than I ever have. For 6 months now I've been heavy (half the time with a baby...the last 2 months of pregnancy were awful!) or healing from a c section, and lugging around more fat with sleep deprivation. I used to feel GREAT! I want to feel GREAT again.

The band makes me feel GREAT because I feel in control. I am out of control now. And rereading my past entries, I fought and fought for stability with a constantly failing band and a less than ideal mindset.

I am blessed and lucky to have a second chance. I'm not squandering it. Open eyes, looking ahead and behind, changing the bad and repeating the good. It's not all daisies on the journey, but yeah, when you get there, it's a freakin' field of flowers