Thank you everyone for your responses. I know there will be sacrifices for sure. I guess I have to be realistic about what life will be like. If I could say no to pasta and bread and sweets now...I wouldn't need the surgery. I am hoping the band will give me the power to make the right choices that I am not finding the ability to do now. I still have the class coming up...and haven't even met my doctor. I guess its just that after a lifetime of bad choices, I am skeptical that it will help me as much as everyone says it will in terms of allowing me the restraint. Nothing else has worked. But I am hopeful...and desperate.