ckelleher

I have struggled with my weight most of my adult life.  In high school, I always thought I was fat because I grew up listening to my mother and older sisters complain about trying to lose weight.  In retrospect, I was only 5 - 10 lbs overweight back then and very active.  Even into my 20's I remained active and could lose any excess weight by concentrating on eating less for a few weeks.  It was not until my mid-20s and our first move that I started to gain weight that I just did not seem to be able to take off easily.  We moved quite a bit in the first 15 years of our marriage and I must have gained 25 - 30 lbs each time.  I have been active my entire adult life, but that just was not enough.  I first joined Weight Watchers back in 1993 and was very successful.  I don't remember my starting weight (must have been around 210), but I managed to lose 30 lbs over the course of 6 months.  I remember looking at my profile in the mirror once and thinking that I was starting to look "normal" again.  I did not actually stick with WW to make it to lifetime member.  I don't even remember the reason that I quit now, but the moves started again.We moved from Alabama to Dallas TX to San Antonio TX to Chicago IL to Houston TX in the course of 3 years.  When I got to Houston, I weighed myself and was at my all time high (at the time) of 264 lbs.  How depressing.  I tried WW again and then read Dr. Atkins book.  I have become a huge proponent of  a low carb diet.  What Dr. Atkins espouses in his book made sense to me and I found that by eliminating carbs from my diet, I felt better, I slept better and the weight started to come off.  But, I like so many others, could not give up my beloved carbs for too long.  I started studying for the CPA exam and started packing the pounds back on again.  A year later, I realized that I had managed to gain another 30 lbs and when we went to join WW, I was at my all time high of 295.In 2003, my husband and I committed to riding in the MS150 bike ride from Houston to Austin and started riding our bikes all the time.  We were averaging about 70 miles a week on our bikes.  As you can imagine, the weight began to come off again.  In all I managed to lose 58 lbs.  Then I got super busy at work (Sarbanes-Oxley anyone?) and had a hysterectomy that sidelined me for at least 6 weeks.  I lost all momentum in biking and started to gain again.  I have been back to WW a few times in the intervening years, but two years ago started to consider Lap-Band surgery.  My brother-in-law had the surgery back in 2007 and has done really well with it.  He is so undisciplined that I figured that if he could be successful, then surely I could!  I attended a seminar and thought that it sounded like a great solution.  Then I got caught up in the hoops that the insurance makes you jump through.  They managed to wear me down and I gave up.  I have reconnected with many old friends through Facebook over the past couple years and I have a 30 year high school reunion coming up, so I committed to trying to lose 100 lbs over the next year.  That is when I started to seriously consider Lap-Band again.  Only this time, I decided that I was not going to use the insurance, but to pay cash.  I am fortunate enough to have the means to chose this option, but it really was the best one for me since I am not good a jumping through the insurance hoops.I had my surgery on October 29, 2009 and am looking forward to completing the rest of my journey.