Well, hello all. I suppose this will be where I will share the journey of my future sleeve. I'll start off all formal.

My name is Eric. I am a 28 year old oil field mechanic working for one of the largest well services companies in the world. I love my job, always have. I have been in south Texas for roughly 3 years now, last 2 I have spent in a supervisor role managing equipment repairs in our maintenance department. The first 4 years of my career I spent as a field mechanic living out of an F-550 service truck. Spending that much time on the road, in hotels and sleeping in a truck really kills any good intentions of eating well. in the last few years, I put on about 70-80 lbs. But enough about work. I currently weigh in at 376 lbs with a BMI of 52 I believe, seeing this number hurt. I don’t "feel" 376 lbs. I stay very active at work, walking close to 5 miles a day just around the facility, so I suppose staying up and on my feet doesn’t allow the weight to take its toll on me the way a sedentary person would, i guess. You could say that I am on the healthier side of morbid obesity (lol) as in, I take no medications, my BP is spot on, blood work has always been good. I have no bad number but my weight. So maybe that’s why I don’t "feel" 376. Maybe someone with a similar feeling can give me their take on that.

I am lucky to be married to an awesome girl, who herself had the lap band put in about 4 years ago or so and dropped close to 100 lbs. Watching her struggle was tough, but we got through it together and I think I put on all the weight she lost. She is behind me 100% and I know for a fact this will be very important in the months to come.

About 6 months ago, I had my first consultation with a clinic in San Antonio only to find out a month later that the hospital they use for the surgery wasn’t "approved" by my insurance as a facility to perform the procedure; obviously, this was a progress killer. I became kind of bummed about it and let it go. Here we are in June, (bite me, I'm a few days late ) and decided that I wanted to try another stab at it. So I found an approved hospital, and then tracked down a doctor that used it; backwards i Know, but had to be done. So last Thursday I had another consultation, awesome doc, nice staff and has totally re-lit the fire that I had 6 months ago. I the six months that passed between consultations, I had only gained 3 lbs, not bad i guess considering my bad habits.

So thats me in a nutshell. I'm here, ready to do this. Started my 3 months of supervised weight loss per insurance regs, and I am going to take it seriously. I'm tired of being the big guy. I put a few before pics on here from my wife and I's diving vacation in the caribbean from last August, I think I will use these as my before pics, because the Caribbean has been our best dive trip so far, so good memory with a fat picture, haha.

Later,

Eric