Introduction to....Me! :-)

I decided to start a new blog so the readers of my homemaking blog don't get bored with my "whining" about my weight. Of course, usually it's the skinny people who think you're whining!

Growing up I was always thin. I started to gain a few pounds a year in high school and this continued through college. But it wasn't until after I left Army basic training due to an injury that it started to come on more rapidly. I developed an "addction" to soda, which got worse when I moved to a state with super-cheap soda at convenience stores. Two years and sixty pounds later, I was over two hundred pounds, and couldn't get a date. I happened to meet my husband, who is slightly overweight but very handsome (who'd have thought I'd get so lucky) and we married. I had four children back to back, all of whom were worth the weight I gained...but now I'm 250 and miserable.

I've tried many diets, and of course, lost hardly any weight, the few pounds I lost came right back and brought a few of their "friends" with them! Atkins was the only think that worked reasonably well. I lost 25 pounds. But I was so depressed and cranky from the lack of carbs, it wasn't worth it. Some people get that way on Atkins. Quite a few, in fact. It's a well-known side-effect. Although I felt better after going off Atkins, much of the depression remained, for over a year. It was very difficult.

Now I am wanting to get Lap-Band surgery (adjustable gastric banding). There are risks with it, but they are much less severe and less common than the long term side effects and risks of gastric bypass. I have researched it THOROUGHLY over the last TWO YEARS, so please NO flaming me with warnings, advice, or tsk-tsking about my choice. There isn't anything you can tell me I haven't already heard about. I've talked with people who have had serious consequences to all types of weight loss surgery (WLS), and I'm very well informed, probably more so than 95% of people who seek WLS. I've created this as the one place I can go to pour my heart out. I understand that other people have had success with one weight loss program or another, and that's great. But telling me how it worked for you and I should try it...well to me, no matter how well-intentioned, that makes you just another skinny person telling me what a failure I am.

I really need a support network in my attempts to lose weight. Someone may feel like they are supporting me by giving me advice, warnings, etc. But if your advice is not supporting the weight loss choices I am making now, then in reality you are just undermining my attempts. You might as well be buying me a pint of Ben & Jerry's. In fact, I'd rather have the Ben & Jerry's, because if I'm going to be sabotaged, I'd rather at least have the five minutes of pleasure BEFORE I start feeling bad about myself! (Mmmmm...Ben & Jerry's...just kidding) I applaud anyone else's weight loss, but everyone is different, and what works for one person may not for another.

So I welcome anyone to read my blog, but if you can't keep your comments supportive and positive, please keep them to yourselves. I hope you understand.