I haven't been meandering LBT as often as usual, so I was missing out on some of my favorite groups... like ya'll! So I thought I'd check in.

I was with a friend at lunch the other day, my best friend who I've know since I was a baby. She told me how good I was looking. I mentioned I had lost 80 pounds. Then, being funny, I said, "80 down, 100 to go!" And she said, "Whatever." She didn't believe I had that much extra weight on me.

Thus leads me to believe that normal size people have NO idea. My sisters and I always say that 300 pounds is thrown around a lot in that on TV they'll say "She was ginormous, 300 pounds or something" or a friend might comment on someone being 300 pounds. They think they've excluded you from that category because certainly you're not 300 pounds. I remember someone making a comment about how big someone was, she said, "She was really big, like 300 pounds or something" and I thought to myself, "Huh, what would she do if I said I was 380?"

This experience with my friend just led me to decide when people ask how much I've lost, that maybe I shouldn't tell them. Then they'll start trying to do the math in their heads and suddenly realize, 300 wasn't as big as they had thought.

I totally agree with this. I was just talking to a friend about my upcoming surgery. He asked how much I have to lose and I told him, and he looked at me with dinner plate sized eyes and said "You weigh 360??" I actually weigh 376, but I didn't tell him that. I just said "close!" He couldn't believe it. I just carry it/hide it well with smart looking clothes, I guess.

I've got to lose about 180 lbs. Even then, I'll still weigh about 220. At that point, if I get below that weight, my rib cage and collar bones start to stick out and I start looking sickly. (Took off about this much weight back in college by working out about four hours a day, living a vegetarian lifestyle and having the metabolism of a 21 year old!) I was caught in the mindset that according to the height/weight charts, I needed to weight about 175. I just couldn't let it go. I was getting emaciated and looking very gaunt. Finally, after much urging by my friends, I had a hydrostatic dunk test and was told by a nutritionist that I was far underweight at 212 (8% bodyfat) and that I needed to put just a little weight back on in order to be where I needed to be.

Still, to tell someone you've never met on an online dating service or over the phone that you weight 212 instantly turns a person off and makes them think that you are an overweight slob. Far from it. I look at pictures from when I was that thin and feel ashamed that the man in those pictures never saw himself as he really was. He only saw a number and that number meant that he was grossly overweight according to societal standards. I wish I could be that weight right now and as fit as I once was. I don't think I would have ended up back where I started nearly 15 years later. Oh well. Banding date of January 2nd! 30 MORE DAYS, FOLKS and I'll be on my way back to a much more appreciative, healthy individual!

This is all so true! Every time I was down about my weight before I got my band, my skinny friends would be like, "You don't need to lose any weight! You look fine!" I would be like in my mind, "well you don't know how much I actually weigh". People just can't grasp that I have to lose 120 pounds at the least. I tell my friends and they're like, "You would be waaaayyy to skinny! You would die! You would be emaciated!" It's crazy to me how much people don't know how to gauge weights on people!

A girl at work told me yesterday that the 20 pounds she wants to loose is just as hard as the weight I want to loose (225 pounds). Right. (I wanted to say...) Because when you loose that 20 pounds then you are done, but 20 pounds off my 225 means I still have 205 pounds to loose. Right.

My boss asked me one time if I had gotten over 200 pounds. I was like, uh, yeah, my highest was 289! I mean, wow, no doubt I was over 200. I couldn't believe she wasn't sure... and I don't think she was just being nice.

I just hit 296.6 this morning down from370 im very proud of that but yeah people think I weigh less then i do

I lost almost 75 pds and still have 126.6 left to go.......maybe more if I get good at this but I think 170 would be good for me.

The first doctor I went to told me not to get the lapband because someone as big as me could not lose the kind of weight that I needed to loose (200 lbs exactly). He said the LB was for someone needing to lose 40 or 50 lbs. I was so discouraged - I really didn't want to do gastric bypass because the band just seemed so right for me. He discouraged me so much that I didn't pursue the lapband for another 18 months. I am so glad to read about you all doing so well. It reaffirms that I can do it. Imagine if I had done this 18 months ago? I'd be on here with you all writing my success story! 7 weeks banded 25 lbs lost! I'm on my way. Stay tuned - Success Story, June 2010?