One of the steps all WLS candidates take prior to surgery is a visit to the psychiatrist. This is necessary to make sure candidates are in the right frame of mind to undertake a life-changing procedure.

Last time I wrote about progress in 2010. Two weeks into 2010, how have I done? Quite good, actually. Have I been perfect? Nope. I forgot my snack a couple of times and as a result gave in to the temptation of the Cookie Monster at break time. But all in all not bad. This new determination to meet a goal of "Ideal Weight" prior to the fashion show in May has given me the opportunity to learn and re-learn things about myself.

Here it is, the week between Christmas and the New Year. If you survived Christmas without gaining too much you’re almost there. One more “Food” holiday before the year is done, but then what? Yes I know; there are all those resolutions you plan to make! As for me, I never make resolutions. Why make them just to end up breaking them at some point?

In my last post I wrote about the annoying hunger that I feared the most prior to surgery. It was my biggest pre-surgery fear that turned out to be groundless. OK, so what did I learn that was such a revelation? This ‘revelation' also turned out to be my biggest post-surgery hurdle.

When I first began thinking about WLS, I knew that once I had the surgery there was no going back. I began thinking about the consequences of that decision, trying to imagine how life would change afterward. Of course, all of my doubts and fears surfaced and had to be dealt with. One of those fears, my biggest, was hunger. I knew from past attempts at dieting that there were (for me) times when that annoying deep down hunger would just not go away and as a result the diet would invariably fail. So as the date of surgery approached, I wondered if this would be just another of my diet attempts that ended in failure.

Even though I have had LAP-BAND® Surgery and even though it's been over a year and even though I no longer eat like I did in the past I am still overweight and still over eat. There. I said it. But that's the bad news. The good news? Well, the good news is that I have at least maintained my original weight loss and have even dropped a little.

So far I have written about what led up to my decision to have WLS but nothing about the surgery itself. There.s really not much to tell - I was asleep at the time. But there was a .Day Of Surgery. and I.d like to share a little of it with you.

But Ladies are welcome to read along, of course!

If you're like me, the last thing you want to do when you get home after work is to start preparing lunch for your next day at work. Why not worry about it in the morning? If you're anything like me, you get up only after the alarm goes off and has been reset a few times and the last thing you have time for is making lunch. Why not have your wife fix it for you? Well, if you're like me, you have a wonderful wife who is out there working every day just like you. It's just not fair to expect her to do her job and then come home and do all those household chores traditionally left to women, including making your lunch. Most homes these days need two incomes just to make ends meet and that means that most couples have to share household chores like cooking, cleaning, laundry, caring for the kids, shopping, you name it.

Other than the obvious association of the word "Fat", what message am I conveying with this title? If you start with an agreed upon definition then there is common ground: "Fat Chance is a common phrase, used to convey extreme doubt that a certain event will occur." So if you said to me, "Dave, someday I am going to be famous", and I replied, "Fat chance" it would show my great doubt that you have any talent, skill or determination to achieve your goal.

Hello, my name is Dave.  On May 5, 2008 I had weight loss surgery in the form of a Realize®  LAP-BAND®.  The day I decided to have this surgery I weighed in at 384 pounds.  Before that, the heaviest I weighed in at was 404 pounds.  Since then, I have lost over a 130 pounds, gained back approximately 35 pounds, and lost another 10.  My current weight is approximately 310.  As I was told in the beginning, surgery is not the answer to my weight problem, it.s just another tool to use in a daily effort to become more physically fit.