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I am a teacher at a high school. A student who gave me nothing but problems last year walked up to me today and shook my hand. I was like what is that for??? He said I want to say that you have done a good job losing weight and that I was not even sure it was you this year. It felt good to even have the kids recognize my hard work! I teach freshmen, so they do not know what I looked like last year. They think I have always been this size. 24 more pounds to go and I will be to my goal.

Today I start my new life as smaller person. I have roller coasted my entire adult life. Today at 3 pm I have my lap band surgery. I very nervous for several reasons. The unknown after surgery problems. My ability to deal with not being able to eat some of my favorite foods. Etc Etc. The list goes on. I'm doing this for my family. I want to see my kids grow up. I want my wife to see me in a different light. I want to see myself different on the outside. The inside is fine. I would never dream of having a picture of me taken with my shirt off, but I'm doing it on here as a reminder of where I am and where I'm going. Out with the old and in with the new. Here we go. Highest weight 298. 1 week preop 294. Not sure this morning.

wow! awesome for a kid to recognize and actually say something. i'm smiling for you!

We all have different triggers that cause us to overeat. For some people, it's celebrations. For others, it's stress. Or boredom. But for me it is depression, and everything that entails. I would regularly just get into a "funk" where I had super negative thoughts. I got very depressed, and sometimes really angry. I would pout and feel bad about myself, and bad for myself, and eventually end up deciding that nobody cared. And if nobody else cared, I didn't care either. And inevitably, this would end up with me binging on whatever I could eat in the highest volume. The more, the better. That little voice was telling me that I wasn't good enough, and I was trying to shut it up with food. A few years ago, I started to realize that this is what I was doing. I worked with my therapist to try to stop the behavior, because I knew in my head that it was bad for me. But when I would get in that mood, I would get to the point where I just didn't care. My emotions would override my sensibilities every time. And then I suddenly got a revelation. I realized two things - one, that just because my stomach felt a certain way didn't mean that I was hungry; and two, that even if I was hungry, that was ok. It was like someone flipped on the light switch and suddenly I could see clearly. It's not that these ideas were new - in fact, I had been talking about them with my therapist for a year and a half. I honestly can't tell you what it was that did it, but it just suddenly made sense. It went from being words to being real. And I was able to stop binging almost completely. Almost. Yesterday, for whatever reason, that all-too-familiar funk came back. I don't know why. It started out a pretty good day, but as time went on, that little negative voice started getting louder and louder. And before I knew it, I was brooding and thinking about how nobody cared about me. I tried getting myself out of it, but I just couldn't make that voice shut up no matter how hard I tried. And so shortly after my son went to bed, I baked and consumed an entire roll of flaky butter biscuits. With jam. Not all at one sitting, but over the course of several hours. It was as if I couldn't stop myself. I knew it was the wrong thing to do, and I winced at the idea that I would have to write this in my food journal. I imagined the disappointed look on my nutritionist's face when she found out. And I felt awful about that as I licked the jam off my fingertips. It is just amazing to me that such things can happen to a person. How in my head I can know something is the wrong thing to do, yet somehow my emotions put me on auto-pilot and I end up doing it almost against my will. Let me say for the record that I am not crazy, so far as I know. And I am not schizophrenic or bipolar. But every once in a while, my emotions just hijack my body in such a way that I could never explain to someone who had never experienced it. Today I have huge, painfully swollen feet because those biscuits had something like 500 mg of sodium each, and there were eight of them, so that puts me up to 4000 mg just from the biscuits. And because of this, I have vowed that I will not buy those biscuits again. But on the positive side, I do finally realize that this is not the end of the game. All I have to do is clean up the mess and keep moving.

I appreciate you for sharing your food binging trigger being linked to sadness and feeling sorry for yourself. I certainly have experienced that as well...feeling unloved, doing too much for others expecting a thankyou, love, attention...not getting it and then binging as I dull the emotional pain. My bigger issue is stress related. I have to drive 2 hours to have my apts related to my lapband surgery 3/21/12. Every time I passed a hurdle apt., I would stop somewhere on the way home and buy a lb. of fudge or go out to eat by myself. I felt I needed to treat myself because I put myself out so much and risked so much in the pre op apt(gas money, difficult traffic, extensive medical history, psych interview, nutritionist interview, hospital preop etc). I am 80 lbs over ideal weight with many comorbidities because I use food for reasons other than hunger"my drug of choice". I have heard "insanity is doing the same thing over and over , expecting different results" We all need to learn new ways to deal with our emotions. I am considering this a rebirth, a new baby stomach and a new way of thinking. It is hard to change but we are all brave for trying to improve our lives and health. MelVan

We got to keep each other motivated. i had a heart attack while visiting my grand baby in the hospital. i had a bad heart and never knew so that's what motivated me. i use to take 8 pills a day but im blessesd no more pills and 220 pounds lost.

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I haven't had the surgery yet, but since I am covered partially by insurance I have to do the 3 months of supervised dieting. I haven't told anyone but my husband and my other care providers (doctors), who I asked to write letters to the insurance for me to help me with approval. I have been struggling with what to say and who to tell, and then I came to an epiphany - for me at least. When I first started learning about the lapband and reading how it works I noticed the one word that everyone uses - TOOL. This will be a tool for us in the steps we are taking to make our lives healthier. This is not a magic fix-it band, not a you'll-never-crave-chocolate-doughnuts-again band, not a cure for the I-want-some-icecream-now band. It is merely to reduce the AMOUNT that we are allowed to eat at one time.. Everything else is up to us. It will be hard work, especially at first, and I will be consciously making healthier choices and chosing what I eat (already started in January to get ready). Now, if I tell anyone or everyone that I have this band, any steps I've done or long hard road I've gone down or sacrifices I have made will all be lumped into one phrase: "oh, she has the Lapband, no wonder she lost weight so easliy". It may be petty or feel like I need attention, but if anyone wants to pay attention to my weight and how much I've lost or how much better I look, then I want it to be about ME and about my choices and the hard work I've done to get there. Maybe if someone is curious about the band, or if I feel like they may understand how much work I still had/have to put in, then I may feel the connection and want to tell them about it. For now, I haven't even told my sister (who is one of my best friends) or my mother (who lives with me and my family) or any of my friends. I am a talker and constantly give TMI to my friends and family, and this has been hard for me not to say anything and gab on and on about it. But I know once I open that dialog up I can't take it back. So I found this website, and I found a place where I can talk about it and feel like everyone understands. This is a very personal decision and it's hard to decide what to do. Good luck with your decision. ~Kelly <3

I must have got the generic band cause mine was only 9600. If you are unfilled for whatever reason, you need to treat it as your bandster hell time and use as much will power as u can. Even if you can eat a whole hambuger and fries doesnt mean u should. I know with me, once I start down that road it would be hard to stop again. I have learned alot over the past year, but I trying that stuff would pull a trigger. good luck and try to get refilled soon if possible.

Yep, I started it about 2 weeks post op as well. It's an amazing program. I finished it, and am now training for a half marathon. Ran 4 miles last week and could have kept going. Love couch to 5 K!