Hey all, I am a formerly banded person who now has a sleeve. I do not regret my first LAP-BAND®® as it helped me to get to a normal wt. I had to give it up and gained a lot of my wt back. I had a subsequent band with little success in loosing wt but had major complications which resulted in an emergency removal and revision to a gastric sleeve.:thumbup: I am very familiar with all types of WLS including RNY as my daughter has had that surgery. I just wanted to introduce myself if someone reads this who is not acquainted with me. I hang out in LAP-BAND®® chat and vertical sleeve chat a lot.:sleep: I am making this post because I need your input.

I am toying with the idea of setting up a website about my local area, Chattanooga and Southeast TN. I would like to write about things like the local historical and tourist sites. I would also go heavy on the thing I know best, local eating establishments of course!

I need to decide whether it should be general with some space devoted to the interests of weight loss surgery patients, like in restaurants which serve WLS friendly foods, the accessibility of the various tourist and historical spots, and information on local WLS providers. Or should my website be WLS specific with the same information, which hopefully would prove interesting to the general public? I also plan to include recipes and a link for readers to make comments. I hope to add a couple of reviews per week of either a place of interest or a restaurant or both.

I am just in the early stages of planning on this and would welcome everyones input, maybe some ideas that I haven't thought of yet. A lot of this has come about because I need something meaningful to do while I await this disability process and if it can pick up speed then who knows?

Thanks,

Corliss

Band 1, Nov. 5, 2005-353 lbs

Removed Sept. 19, 2008-+/-155 lbs

Band 2, June. 16, 2009-214 lbs

Removed and sleeved, May 22, 2010-238 lbs

Current wt. 208 lbs

Just wanted to say that I love this idea...mostly because I'm from Cleveland!!! haha

If you want to be successful with the website, you'll need to see what other websites are already available about your area. Sites like CitiSearch seem to be cornering the market on general visitor info about various places.

If you want to have a gimmick that would work, I'd suggest you do a site that highlights your area specifically from a weight loss point of view. Once you have the kinks worked out, then you can expand the site to include other areas. You can recruit others to provide info about their areas, and you could end up with a site that could be a must-see location for all things a weight loss traveler might want.

Good luck!

Dave