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

Before children, I was a tiny woman. I never weighed more that 120lbs. With my first child I gained about 85lbs. Was able to loose the weight about 2.5 years later and weighed in at 150. A short time later I was pregnant again and gained 55 lbs. About the time he was 3.5 I weighed 160lbs. For workouts I was doing The Firm. It seem to work great. And I was loosing more. However, I was pregnant again with my last child. I went from 160 to 215lbs. With all kids I had c-sections. My lower abs could never get back tight and lifted after any of the c-sections. Two months after my third child was born, I had the IMPLANON placed in my arm as my form of birth control. I started at around 4 months after the baby was born, starting some workouts. I always use Walk Away the Pounds first. It introduces my body to later workouts. Walking outside, doing the video DVD's, and other ways to work out, just didn't seem to do anything for me. I was always tired, I mean tired. Exhausted! After about a month, my mom convinced me to go in and get checked out. Turns out, I have hypothyroidism. Which is basically what controls your ability to loose weight, maintain energy and it also keeps your metabolism in check. Making sure it is working. Which nothing was working. I started on my synthoird in order to help it out and to help bring everything in order. Still, after many more months, I went to my doctor and asked her about weight loss surgery. With them running labs on me, I did have a fatty liver, pre diabetic, High cholesterol etc. I went to see the doc, and I had a lil talk with him. He then instructed me on going through a few things first before he commits to surgery. The way his program runs, you have to see a nutritionist once, a fitness expert once, and you have to see a therapist. At least two visits. All in all, I had done everything and had my surgery May 24th 2011. It has never been hard for me to loose weight or workout before. I am a marine brat. Grew up with my dad in the military. So PT was an everyday thing. Playing sports, and going to the gym on the weekends. It was something that was just there in our family. SO, to not be able to loose the weight despite all my efforts was just hard for me to understand. I would change up my workouts all the time to see if that would help. But it didn't.

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

No energy! The way I would just look at my kid's playing and having fun while Im looking out at them from the living room window was just horrible. I thought, this isn't me. But, when I would go out there, I was stay for maybe 15-15 min then come back inside. Even going to the grocery store was hard. After buying food and walking around, I was done for the day. My husband would put away the food and I would just go upstairs and lay in my bed for hours. It was horrible.

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

My surgery was on May 2th 2011. My energy levels seems to come back tremendously. I have the want, to go out with my kids, walk them to school, do workouts, be a busy bee with less weight to worry about. My weight loss has been steady with the Lapband. Loosing about 1/2 lb a week. It's slow but, steady. I have had some complications these last 3 months. I have not lost any weight. I have gained a few lbs to tell you the truth. My diet is still the same. My workouts change up a bit, but that is not a reason for weight gain. We did move from SC to CA a month ago. I may have a hernia right now. My doc is getting me an ultrasound to find that out. And I found the bariatric clinic at Balboa in order to see what's going on with the Band. I have had a lot of pain at the port site. So, I may be in the red. And soon hopefully with be in the green. On the anniversary on my 1 year with the band, I am hoping to be 165. Which I am about 19 lbs from that goal. But until I know for sure what is going on, the doc's don't want me to do strenuous workouts, so it's just walking for now.