Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.

My earliest memory of being fat was the feeling of being 'wrong' in Kindergarten. I was called fat by another child. I was a skinny child but assumed I was fat because that was the worst thing I could have been called and I knew I was 'wrong, bad, different'. I was highly self conscious as a older child coupled with precociousness. I learned to be outrageous and funny to compensate for my lack of self regard. I was slightly chubby and had a different shape to my friends. I was small waisted, large thighed and hipped. I felt like an elephant. I wanted to hide. I wanted the straight up and down figure that could fit anything. Coupled with ill resourced parents who found it hard to care for themselves I was bound for sadness and a strong relationship with food. I recall always scraping money up to buy chocolate bars and the feeling of happiness when my mother would buy me a packet of chips or biscuits. We had a poor diet growing up - fried meat, fries and a spoon full of packet peas. My family has never exercised and school sport was torturous - in retrospect I look back and was probably quite capable but my self esteem was crippled. In my teenage years I learned to portray myself in a sexual manner and be somewhat wild - I suppose I didn't think that I was 'enough' to be taken seriously. It is only recently that i realise that I am ok without sexualising myself. I always felt fat and huge even though I was only slightly chubby. IN fact I actually had a beautiful figure at around 14-17 but I felt disgusting and huge. My self image was different to reality. I became pregnant at 18 and loved it. I didnt put on much weight and looked good afterwards but of course still felt fat. By the time I was 19/20 I decided I needed to diet. This has been the story of my life until now at 45 years old. I was lap banded in 2001 with a grand total weight loss of 10kg! After so many complications and lack of weight loss I sort another surgeon advice and had a newer type of band placed in. This was around 1 year ago. It has also been a failure and now i weigh more than I did when I Had my initial band placed in 2001. I have also tried mediations - glucobay, reductil, xenical... Optifast, Tony Ferguson, Jenny Craig, Delivered Diet meals, Atkins diet, Weight watchers countless times, starvation, bulimia, overly exercising...you name it..ive tried it. I had my gallbladder removed and the band removed one month ago. I have put on 3kg since then! At the moment I weight 97kg and my BMI is 34.4 I feel like I have nothing left to undertake another diet. I used to be sure that I could diet and lose weight but knew it would come back on and more. Now I am not even sure i can diet again to lose the weight. I had done it so many times...so so so so so many times....I do not have the resolve to try again and to fail again would be devastating. I suppose I feel like i have given up.

What was (is) the worst thing about being overweight?

I feel like my life is on hold I am less able to move as easily My asthma is worsening I have intermittent lower back pain which is much worse I want to hide myself out of shame I feel shame on behalf of my partner to be seen with me I want to be able to do more things - e.g.. wake boarding. Having my emotional problems seen by the whole world in the form of fat the worst: feeling like food is in complete control of me....shameful, embarrassed, weak, hopeless, failure, lost secluding and becoming reclusive the complete and utter non stop thoughts about how fat I am

If you have had weight loss surgery already, what things do you most enjoy doing now that you weren't able to do before?

when i lose weight I am more social. less reclusive. am more confident to try new things The Lapband was not successful for me. It caused repeated and ongoing problems. I had more than 40-50 adjustments, port replacement, gastroscopes, gastrographin swallows, band revision, vomiting, nighttime regurgitation, chest infections from aspiration, severe reflux, chronic band slippage and non help in weight loss apart from vomiting.