easye256

Dude, congrats man. Thats an awesome amount of weight in less than a year. I am pretty much right where you were. 6' 369. How did the tattoo hold up on your forearm? Too say I am heavily tattooed is an understatement. Sleeved both arms shoulder to wrist, and have one leg done knee to toes. Off all the things to worry about with having major surgery, my tattoos are the only thing I am worried about. My surgery will be scheduled soon (just waiting on final approval)

True statement. Sucky thing is, I have a house, and I wont be permanently relocating anywhere any time soon, it's just the nature of the job. But, I am able to provide for myself and my wife gets damn near anything she wants, so its a decent balance (HA! yea right). I completely understand where you are coming from though. Up until 3 years ago, I moved to a different state, city, and 3 times I changed continents about every 6 months. SO glad that's over.

Happy Labor Day everybody! I'm doing exactly that, laboring. We don’t get holidays in the oil and gas business, so I am stuck here for 4 more hours trying like hell to keep things going in a positive direction. Had my second visit about a month ago, managed to lose about 4 lbs., which is good, I guess. I haven’t really changed much in my overall diet; just stopped eating so much crap and cut out the sodas almost entirely. Scheduled to have my 3rd and final visit tomorrow, we'll see how that goes. I know I will not get my packet submitted until I get my psych evaluation and find a doctor to give me a surgery release; just haven"t had much time to get these done. Moving around make it really difficult to have an established GP, you know? But anyways, hoping I can stick around home for a month or so, I slept in my own bed a total of maybe 4 days last month, starting to wonder if I should pursue a new career path, I'm tired of always being on the move.

I can completly understand where you are coming from, Sharon. I had decided as well to try and do it on my own after the insurance mix up, but as you can imagine, it didnt go so well. I'm not backing out this round, for anything. Thanks Sharon and Melissa for the kind words. I wish you both the best

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

Yep, I am about 4 months pre sugery, paperwork sucks and so do all of the pre op doc visits. But I keep telling myself it will all be worth it!

Totally get where you're coming from. I am a mechanic by trade, I used to always get the "little" guys that would come over and ask me to help them move/loosen etc something, regardless if I possesed the strength to do so or not. But just asking the big dude was help enough. I've carried the nick name of "polar bear" for years, and now that I've made my decision to change, that moniker is going to have to go out the window! I'll second JohnnyZ's comment, I never cared if my friends called me big guy, but it would send my BP through the roof if a stranger did it.