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I am 40 years old and have always been overweight. I have big bones and a large frame. I weighed about 160 when I got married back in 1989. After I had my second child, I had an allergic reaction in 1994 and the Dr's couldn't figure out what I was allergic to. I had to be put on steroids for 3 months and I gained 50 pounds from that. I was never able to loose that weight. So from there it pretty much started from 160 to 210 in 3 months. I tried and tried to loose that weight but no matter what I done the weight would not go away. I smoked from the time I got married in 1989 until Jan. 30, 2010. After I stopped smoking on Jan. 30, 2010, I gained another 40 pounds that I have not been able to loose which put me from 210 to 250 pounds. After I stopped smoking, I had to be put on blood pressure and cholesterol medication. I was diagnosed with non alcoholic fatty liver disease. I knew then I had to do something so I decided to go to a Bariatric Lap band Seminar at Princeton Baptist Hospital in Birmingham, AL. by Dr. Andrew Dewitt. I went to the seminar and decided that I wanted to pursue the Lap Band Surgery. I have Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama insurance and found out I had to do a 6 month diet with my family Doctor before insurance would cover my surgery. I started my 6 months diet in June and was done with it by December. I had to go through a series of different test and when those was completed and I was able to schedule a date for my surgery. I weighed 250 pounds when I started my 7 day pre-op. On Feb. 22, 2012 I went for pre-admission and weighed 242 pounds. Feb. 24, 2012 I had my lap band surgery. I went in surgery at 9:15 am and was done at 9:45 am according to my husband and mother. They was able to watch my progress on the TV monitor in the weighting room. Dr. Andrew Dewitt took my mom and husband in a room and told them how my surgery went. At 10:45 am I was in my private room and waking up. My mom and husband was already in my room when they brought me to the room. The nurse told me in 1 hour he was going to come in and get me ready to start walking. I had to walk the 4 hallways 8 times to equal 1 mile before they would let me go home. We was checking out and getting in the car by 3:00 PM. I couldn't believe how well I was doing. My throat was a little dry and I was a little sore but nothing at all like I had thought I would have been. I went to the Doctor for my 1st fill on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 and the Doctor said he put in 3 cc's. I weighed 231.5 at the doctors office Wednesday and today March 17, 2012 I weigh 229 pounds. I don't get hungry but I know I must eat protein and drink plenty of water. I think I am doing good since my surgery and I would recommend this surgery to anyone who really needs to loose weight. It is much easier than I could have ever imagined and I am well on my way to get to the weight I have always wanted to be. The only thing I must try harder doing is eating slower when I do eat. If you have any questions about the Lap band Surgery I will be happy to help in anyway that I can. My next Doctor appointment is on April 18, 2012.

I've been reading a lot of blogs where people are having a hard time with the band and losing weight. I have posted a few other times about this same topic so it may be helpful for people to read those as well. It's been over a year for me and I have been through all of these struggles- from not losing weight, working out ALL the time, to getting filled so tight that I threw up several times a day to eating less than 800 cals...... Ive been there! I went to an X national body builder and licensed nutritionalist and learned what I was doing wrong. Here's the deal: You MUST eat 5-6 times a day and get about 1500-1800 cals in a day depending on your weight and activity level. You can find out what you need by knowing your metabolic rate which you can get off the internet as a guide. You MUST eat a lot of protien or you will lose muslce instead of fat. If you weigh 200lbs you need 200 grams of protein per day. You MUST do moderate cardio 4 times a week for about 40 min ( dont go more or you will go into a catabolic state and burn muscle) You MUST lift heavy weights 2 times a week just to keep the muscle you already have - takes about 20 min You MUST eat a protein, good fat and incindental carb ( berries and veggies) with every meal You MUST have a good "cheat day" every week - it causes our bodies to not get use to the same food day after day and requires the body to work hard ( burn calories) to digest a heavy meal. You MUST limit sugar, starchy carbs and bad fat!! I can promise you that if you do these things you will burn fat. Throw the darn scale away. The scale does not indicate how much FAT you lose. I lose about half of a pound to a pound a week but Im very close to my ideal weight. My weight loss has been very slow the whole time, but thats OK! I got all the fluid taken out of my band a few months ago because I could not eat what I needed to eat in order to lose fat. Please email me if you have thoughts or questions.

So Wednesday it will be 5 weeks since i had my Tummy tuck and I can't believe i'm saying this..... but i can't wait to get back to the Gym. I feel so tired and lazy and the daily walks are not enough. It is so true what the say about people never being happy with our bodies. Now that i have a simi-flat stomach (still swollen). I now notice my inner and upper thighs....(guess they were hidden from view by the apron) they are not terrible by any means, but they can use some slimming down with exercise... i can do this...I know i can. Just have to get back into the gym. On another note.... i need a fill.... i have 0cc in my 14cc band. My PS removed it all when he did the TT. I have so been knocked off my "high horse".... I had it in my head that if anything was to happen to my band that i could continue life with out her help....Boy was i wrong. In the past weeks that i could eat all the thing my band prevented me from eating.... I pretty much ate..... Bread, rice, pasta, pizza....OMG what a eye opener. I do need help, I do need my band.... So i'm sending up a prayer ..... Dear Lord... Please protect my band and never let anything happen to her... I need her, i know now i can't do it alone.

My surgery took place on March 16, 2012 in Celebration Florida and was done by Dr. Keith Kim, a very good surgeon in this field. I have done research for about 4 years on the subject and talked with countless people about the surgery and those who have had the procedure done. The most surprising thing that I learned was that most people view WLS as a negative cheating way to lose weight, but the majority with that viewpoint were often uninformed or just ignorant to the whole weight loss process. As I sit here 3 days post-op and can feel my body returning to the size it was meant to be I can say that much of my concern is not centered on getting in shape. As a former Army recon scout I was really ashamed of how I let myself become out of shape and lacked the self discipline to eat right and stay in shape but I vowed to not be over 50 and fat……. And so begins my first steps.

Well this is my week of post-op!! I am so excited! I have been in many surgeries before, so I'm not nervous about that. But I am nervous for the life change. I am ready to make it though. I have been on a strict diet to shrink my liver and so far in a week I have lost 6 lbs! My surgery date is for April 2! I hope everyone has a good Easter! XOXO- Haley

Today, March 19, 2012 is the start of a new life not just for me but my family as well. Today marks the beginning of a life for health, fitness and well being. When I started this journey on February 17th, I never thought that I would be here based on all the things I have heard and seen. Hearing my husband stating he would have to wait six months and reading his information, who would have thought that a month later I am starting my PreOp Diet. However, when I think back over my life, in 2002 I started Hydroxcut and lost 60 pounds and gained it all back with the birth of my son in 2003. In 2009 for one solid year, I took Adipex and lost 30 pounds and gained it all back. In 2011, I was a contestant in the Genghis Grill Health Kwest and lost 13 pounds and gained. So for almost 10 years, I have been trying to get this weight off and nothing work. I have decided to put my fears aside with this being a major surgery and starting to concentrate on what God has prepared for me ahead. This will be a huge milestone, but I am so happy I have the support from my husband and mom which means the world to me. To the wonderful support system on LapBand Talk, you are the absolute best anyone can ask for. Yes, the next two weeks will be hard but I will make it even with me being sick right now. What I realize this morning is that it will be better for me to prepare everything for me to eat during the day to avoid eating the junk foods at work. But I am going to enjoy my soup and salad tonight like no other!

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.

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I haven't blogged in so long! I am currently almost 4 weeks post op and am getting ready for my first fill on Thursday morning. I have to be at the surgery center at 7:00 for my fill at 7:30....having it done under fluoroscopy. It should take about 5 minutes and I am SO ready for it! I am hungry!!!!! I am trying very hard to follow the rules and so far have been able to do so. Let's see what I've discovered so far in my journey: *my stomach growls a lot *even without fluid, I can't eat as much as before *I need my water *Remembering to take my vitamins is hard to do *my incisions look incredible...i only have 2...one is a tiny one below my breastbone and the other at my belly button *I've been very selective in choosing the people with whom I've shared about having surgery...those people have all been incredibly supportive *I am steadily losing weight...with my home scale showing about 21 pounds as of this morning *I feel incredible and have a lot more energy than I did 21 pounds ago *choosing food at a restaurant is tricky *finding time for exercise is sometimes a challenge while raising 2 boys and teaching *my portion of my hospital bill so far is about $2200.00 (I'm not sure how many more bills need to be processed by BCBS) *the things that I write here on this site have inspired others and that means the world to me And finally....I've learned that for me, this has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. I don't regret it at all and pray that my positive experience continues. Sending positive vibes to everyone on this journey!!!! Deana