losing4life

I'm a mom & wife in the great city of Houston, TX. I started putting on weight the summer I turned 19, and steadily gained until I hit 350 in early 2005, while pregnant with my first child. I spent the decade leading up to my first pregnancy trying diet after diet, witnessing my weight go up & down. I remember having my first consultation with a surgeon on the SW side of Houston in 2002 for gastric bypass and he said I wasn't ready for the surgery mentally- I frankly do not remember why. Then I found out that even my employer had decided to exclude future surgery requests (because they had already covered three that year). Ultimately, I put surgery out of my mind and continued looking for ways to whittle my waistline.Jenny CraigWeight Watchers (I do enjoy using eTools)SlimfastXenical - not so niceMeal delivery - Absolutely terrifc! - until I realized that losing the weight so fast was contributing to my ailing gallbladder. I miss you gallbladder, because without you I had to give up Popeye's.(Prescribed-don't remember name) - curbed appetite & made carbonated beverages taste weirdWeird normal thing about me:I've had nausea daily (mornings) since I was a teen.Nothing really helped. In June 2004, my family went to Disney World & had a great time walking all around the parks. My husband & I spent the first weekend of July moving to a new city. Then I started having stronger nausea than usual-I attributed it to having to rise earlier than normal for training sessions at my job. On August 9, I bought a pregnancy test at Dollar Tree & spent the next nine months, happy, pained, and eating. I craved sausage & mashed potatoes (a food I had detested from birth), tamales and barbecue anything. Yeah, I ended up tipping the scale at 350 pounds before my Chickadee was born.In 2005, we moved back to Houston and since my degree required PE credits I enrolled in a walking class. I learned how to walk & how to purchase shoes for walking. By the end of the course, my instructor told me she was very impressed with my progress. I went from this slow, very struggling waddle to a much stronger waddle? Probably. I then took weight training and did very well in the class. I bumped up my cardio too. Unfortunately, I think I did too much. I worked out for more than an hour at a time and eventually found excuses not to make it (after classes were out). I have since joined a local gym. They were so friendly when I joined and when my best friend decided to sign up because of me. Next thing I knew, they didn't know my name & I began to feel more & more uncomfortable there. Good bye gym membership.2006 - started seeing food therapist2007 - meal delivery (Dang! I want my gallbladder!); also broke the ball of my foot in October from overuse... WTH? That means I walked from here to there and it broke.*sigh* Tried to get insurace coverage for LAP BAND, no deal. Stopped seeing food therapist because we lost our insurance.2008 - Struggled with school, had a temporary pass for the first semester to park in handicap from the foot pain & healing. Joined the Houston SPCA & practically worked myself to death. (okay, at first)- their insurance excluded LAP BAND- then I found out I had plantar fasciitis & two heel spurs in my right foot...Found a wonderful job at a nearby college and attempted to find out if their insurance would cover it. no good. I tried to get financing, not enoughMarch 2009 - endoscopy performed (both ends) Found Hiatal HerniaApril 2009 - started working out in the building gym ('bout 100 feet from me). Walked every day Mon-Thurs for 30 minutes. I started having lower back pain...By mid-June the pain in my back was bad and my feet were now hurting 24 hours a day. I was ready to give up and stop dieting. Go whole hog and enjoy every bite (which I don't usually anyway) until I died.My mom listened to me as I searched for a place to have surgery and prices from several area hospitals. I was looking for payment plans, but running into walls. My mom called me one day and said she was ready to finance the surgery for me, and I could pay her as I please. I tried to keep this timeline short. I think it should give a small picture of what led me to the decision to get the lap band.