I read Khaliah Ali's story Fighting Weight and it was like looking into a mirror. Several years ago I considered Gastric Bypass and my therapist wouldn't give approval, my employer stopped paying for bariatric surgery and so I didn't give it much more consideration after that. The gastric surgery always scared me, a friend had the surgery over 5 years ago and she has regained weight. I've been working with my therapist and we agreed gastric bypass was too radical. But after reading Fighting Weight, I thing banding is the answer, and it helped me see that being severely obese is a medical condition along with my co-morbidities - hbp, syndrome x, pcos, depression and anxiety. I think I'm better equipped for banding than I was when I was considering gastric bypass. I haven't been able to figure out why I can't get myself to exercise everyday but in the book it was the factor of failing, failing again, not being able to face doing the work and failing, we set ourselves up to fail believing the People magazine yearly article "Losing 100 pounds without Surgery doing it with Exercise and Diet" - what chances do I have losing more than 100 pounds with just diet and exercise. Banding is a tool and I'm ready to use it