So...

I'm actually pretty good at making a long story longer, so I'll do my best to keep these ruminations brief (lest I bore anyone away). I'm 39 years old, married and a father of two boys (5 and 17 months). My boys have only known me fat, so they don't have a frame of reference to back when I was a pretty good lookin' guy. I guess to them, I'm Superman, so they don't care. For my wife, on the other hand, it's a slightly different story.

When she and I met, I was a portly 260lbs. Overweight by far, but I carried it well and people would more likely refer to me as 'chubby' than as 'fat.' While she thought I was a 'biggun', she also thought I was cute! Over our six years of marriage, she watched me shovel entire large pizzas (in one sitting) down again and again, with only a slight grimace (at first). After I ballooned up to 300, and after the birth of our first son, she started objecting when I would order huge portions of food for myself at restaurants. After I finished every morsel and then ordered dessert, she'd be in a bad mood for the rest of the night.

After the birth of our second son, and my topping 330lbs., she began to urge me to "do something." While I took her concerns seriously, everything I tried to "do" just pissed me off or depressed me. What happens then? EAT, of course...

I bought a year's membership at 24-Hr Fitness and went in exactly once. Disappointed and disgusted with myself over that thought, I ordered a pizza. I had a formal affair come up, and when I couldn't fit into the fattest tux I'd ever (quite recently) bought, I got so upset that I ordered a pizza. You get the picture, I'm sure.

A couple of months ago, I started thinking about getting a lap-band. Unfortunately, my insurance wouldn't spring for it unless I satisfied a litany of outrageous prerequisites like losing most of the weight by other means or gaining enough weight to qualify as an 'emergency' case of morbid obesity. That's when someone mentioned the Mexican option. I was amazed at how many people around me had either entertained the idea themselves; or had actually done it. One co-worker described it as the 'best thing she'd ever done.'

After much research, I opted instead for gastric sleeve surgery. I read and re-read this site, and made scores of calls and emails to providers. I settled on Jerusalem Weight Loss (mostly for the price, I admit) since there wasn't anything I could find that other clinics were offering that Jerusalem wasn't--for substantially less money.

Well, I did it! I had the procedure last Friday and was sent home Monday afternoon. If you aren't bored to the point of suicide contemplation, I'll write about the experience later tonight or tomorrow.