Hi. This website has been so helpful to me in learning more about the LapBand procedure. As soon as my student teaching is over, and I receive a teaching position, I plan to get financed for LapBand. My question to you all is:

What was the "last straw" for you? What was the moment that you realized that you were going to fight the hunger battle head on and change your life?

I think everyone has atleast one, if not many, of those types of moments, and I am curious to know what did it for you. Thanks.

going over 200 lbs. i saw the scale and was shocked!

Seeing my own 800# patient at work and realizing what had to be done to her to provide medical care due to her weight.

I am an avid off-road dirt bike rider (motocross, woods racing) all four of my kids ride as well as my wife (5' 6" and 120lbs no matter what she eats), and lead a pretty active life inspite of the extra weight I was carrying around.

But then I topped 300lbs, and nearly all of that stopped. I wasn't riding, wasn't taking the kids riding, I wasn't taking the kids riding, I wasn't playing with the kids anymore and the weight was piling on quicker than ever.

Then the day can when I was on a business trip with my business partners. We were in your standard mid-sized rental car getting in the car was no problem but when it came time to get out I realized I could no longer just get out of a car I had to heave my self up using the oh-shit strap like a pregnant woman or an obese person. That was when it really hit me - I am obese.

While I don't have high bp or diabetes yet, if I don't do anything I will. I have been active my entire life and have never had success loosing weight. Even when I was in the Army I had to spend countless hours working out on top of the normal 5 day a week Army work out. So I decided that I needed some assistance and chose the band.

Surgery is on oct. 1st

I knew I was significantly overweight and had tried countless diets to try to lose weight. I avoided scales and cameras for the last few years prior to banding, but when I saw photos taken of me at a holiday get together.........MAN OH MAN, I knew something had to be done. It's amazing how you adjust the other things in your life like the larger clothes, the uncomfortable positions you have to get into for those activities of daily living or the activities you avoid because they're too exhausting or even painful. But to see yourself through those unbiased lenses were just too much for me.

I was watching a documentary on three people who had lost substantial amounts of weight and managed to keep it off for a couple of years. It was stated in the show that only about 4% of obese people who lose weight manage to keep it off. I had this realization that I would never be in that 4%, that no matter how much I lost that I would always regain. That's when I began to research the band.

I broke a toilet seat. Yep. I'm pretty sure I just sat down funny and maybe too hard, but the darn thing cracked in two. I was so totally mortified that I never fessed up to it. And that was it for me. I was determined to make a change lest I experience something even more embarrassing like breaking a chair in public.

Here's a couple more good last straw threads:

http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f17/what-your-last-straw-19859/

http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f17/what-last-straw-36304/

http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f17/last-straw-stories-33153/