Hi everyone !

My name is Shanya and I live in Las Vegas. I am a mom to two kids ages 13 and 7 and married to a wonderful man named Jason.

I have struggled with my weight on and off for the last 15 years, every time I got pregnant I would gain upwards of 60 lbs or more. With my daughter I tipped the scales at 350 lbs even after I had her.

I am pretty tall, 6' to be exact and I am an ex athlete so I carry a bit of muscle weight as well. Currently I weight 279 lbs ( give or take on the day) I purposely had to avoid losing any weight over the last 4 months in order to stay out of the grey area for losing weight.

I was on a medically supervised diet with pills ( research study ) for 3 years, one worked great and I lost weight but had to go off of it because of a problem that came up with my heart. That was found while on the study. I then moved over to a new study and was on a placebo with very strict dietary counseling.

My issue with food is not grazing, or snacking its that I love food. I dont eat out of depression or moodiness. I eat because I am a wonderful cook and LOVE to make elaborate meals and then my portion sizes stay the same like they did when I was in my 20's and playing basketball and swimming daily. I never took into consideration that after 30 the weight would stay on, it refused to come off and stay off.

After I had my daughter I lost a total of 150 lbs in just over a year on my own, I kept it off for the last 4 years till the scaled kept creeping back up. Once I found out that I had a heart problem that was largely in part caused by my yo-yo dieting I decided that it was time to do something and started looking into the lap band after my best friend had it and lost 130 lbs and she looks great.

I was told about this site from another soon to be bandee on Thinner Times and I look forward to hearing other stories !

I see lots of people have had problems with insurance, I guess I was lucky, all we had to do was provide my insurance with my charts ( which my primary took 2 months to do ) and it was approved less than 45 min after it was submitted.

Shanya

Hello. My name is Heather and I live in Minnesota. I am 35 and have 4 kids and struggled with the weight after the babies. I just had my Surgical consult on Friday. And left the clinic with several appts for this month. Then will wait for the insurance approval.

With your approval by insurance have you set up your surgical date? I am new in the past day to this site as well. But it sounds like people are very supportive. Heather:thumbup:

Hi Heather... My surgical date is March 12,2009. I go in tomorrow morning to sign all of the consent forms and go on my lovely liquid diet. I am soo looking forward to this. My husbands sister lives in Minnesota as well.. small world