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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

Congratulations! So that's 5cc total? F YI it may not last, or be permanent I should say. Most people's come and go at this point but it is enough to let you know what better things there are to come. As a side note, there are actually people, who have been banded, that is against feeling any restriction at all! Go Figure! And to make things more insane, they belong to a support group where people are trying to be successful!

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.

Its ok keep in mind the long term goal a healthy life. I lost 220 lbs so i know

Keep working hard and use it as a motivator! Most people have responded positively to my weight loss and have also been supportive. If they are talking about you and you don't mind telling them about your surgery, than do it! Some people need to be educated. I hate when people comment how fast I've lost weight and start talking about having the surgery because they think it's some miracle that will make you drop all this weight. I explain to all of them that my band HELPS me lose weight and I couldn't lose all this without it but I have made a serious lifestyle change as far as my eating habits and exercise goes. Keep going, you're looking great

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!