Hello all!

I am a single Mom living in Maryland, 46 years old. I need to lose and maintain a loss of 120 pounds (or so) and I know from experience that I will have an extremely difficult time doing this on my own. I am finishing up the 6 month weight loss requirement that my insurance has for qualifying for the lap band surgery. I'll be finished with that in the middle of September and I hope that the insurance will approve the surgery!

I'm hoping to use this forum to help me manuveur my way through this process. I've already gone through a lot of the pre-op requirements but the insurance "wait" has stopped my journey for now.

I'm also looking forward to the support this forum will give me. I don't have a good support system in my life (most of my friends and family live far away from me), so you guys are going to help me get through this!

Thanks for listening.

My insurance also required the 6 month weight loss attempt. Don't view it as a roadblock, or delay, but as an opportunity to learn all you can about the band, the surgery, what to expect, the good, bad and ugly. During my 6 months I joined here and read everything I could (obesityhelp.com is another place to get lots of info). There are several good books out that would be helpful to read. Two that I have are The Lapband Solution, and The Lapband Companion. I got them from Amazon. There are many others, as well as cookbooks for post op, you name it. I also spent time adjusting my attitude. I work in a fairly large office and my desk is at one end. The phtocopier/scanner is at the other. Originially I resented the hike every time I needed to copy or scan (walk to the scanner, put papers in, walk back to my desk, activate the scanning software, when done walk back to get my papers and back again to my desk). Now I view it as an opportunity to get up from my desk, and as additional exercise walking back and forth. I stopped being mad about it. By the time I had surgery I knew so much about it I could almost do the surgery myself (just kidding). I also got my head around the fact that for the band to work, I had to adhere to the program, make a committment to exercise and eat better. I still try to eat too much, and maybe don't chew as thoroughly, but with very little restriction I have lost around 80 pounds. I had one fill that made me so uncomfortable I had 2 unfills. The last time I saw the doctor for a fill he talked me out of it because I had still lost 7 pounds between visits, and he said I was ahead of schedule for weight loss for all three bariatric surgeries. So I can eat more, but I am eating better, and occasionally the density of the protein or something will remind me there is some restriction, if not a lot. I am very happy with my progress so far.

Thanks Patchelton! That's great advice! Since I've been waiting six months, I've actually forgotten a lot of what I learned about the system, so I need to get back up to speed. I wish I would have done more research during this slack period.

I do hope to lose a lot of weight, like you, without having to have a lot of fills. For one thing, it is an hour and a half drive to my surgeon's office, so the less time I spend there, the better!