blessedabundantly
So, this is where I spill my guts, huh? Ok, you asked for it. 
Well, right now I am a 34yr old SAHM to 3 boys. My boys ae 17,9, and 7. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for almost 17yrs. My hubby is in the US Air Force and we are currently living in Texas, but Missouri is home.
I am a fat girl (and yes, I am gonna use the word "fat". I know that some people avoid it, but I think it's an accurate description.) Now, I have not been fat my whole life. I was an average size kid. In high school I felt HUGE, but I wasn't. I was bigger than most of my friends, but I weighed around 175, which is not that bad really.
I put on quite a bit of weight with my first pregnancy, which I lost shortly after delivery, and then promptly gained right back. :) I've been going up since then. I have tried tons of diets including Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, extremely low-cal, etc. I even tried to talk myself into becoming bulimic, but I just can not make myself throw up. I have joined a couple local "Biggest Loser" type programs as well. Those included exercise classes, cooking classes, and meeting with a nutritionist. I have lost weight on all of those programs, but not much and it didn't stay away long. Right now I weigh in at about 285, and I have not weighed less than 220 in 16-ish yrs.
I have been researching the lap-band surgery for a while. I have never felt bad enough to want to risk any of the by-pass surgeries, but lap-band seemed to be a great option. I have been trying to figure out how I was going to pay for such a surgery because our health insurance did not cover lap-band, even though it covered the by-pass surgery.
I recently learned that Tricare (the military health insurance) has approved the lap-band surgery. WHOO HOO!!! You do not even know how super stoked I was to hear that. I looked up the qualifiers and thought I might have a hard time getting it approved because I don't really have any serious health issues, yet. I do have borderline high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but I don't take any meds for it and my dr's aren't that concerned. But, then I found out that ifyou are 200% over the recommended weight for your height and body size, you qualify based on weight alone. Well, sadly, I fit the 200% over.
Now, I finally feel like I can overcome this weight hurdle. I will be scheduling an appt with my dr as soon as we get back from vacation. I am hoping to be able to get things sorted and have a surgery date in a matter of months. We'll see how it goes. I will definatley be updating this as soon as I have more news. :)
