In the beginning...

...I was a very thin child. Very scrawny, always had bruises from poor iron levels, not very fit because I didn't have the energy because I didn't eat a whole lot. All that changed at puberty.

13 hit, the hormones hit and so did the weight. No-one knew at that time that I had SAD and PCOS. I would be 22 before PCOS was diagnosed and 26 before SAD. One leads to hormonal imbalances, the other brain chemistry imbalances. Both lead to improper eating which leads to fat.

Over the years I have tried every diet. I have yo-yo'd so many times, I have begun to look like one! (ie, all round).

Feb 2007 an online friend mentioned the lap band. I'd never heard of it before. I was very much against the idea, still believing that if I only tried hard enough, I could lose the weight. Well guess what - I CAN'T. So October 2007, I signed up for private health insurance to make this operation possible. On 29 October this year I will be having surgery at Greenslopes hospital in Brisbane, with Dr Copps.

What changed my mind? Partly going on another diet, but mostly coming across other people's stories. I even found an online forum for people from all over the world who want to have, are having or have had lap band surgery. The stories are amazing, yet all true. You really can lose weight with this procedure. No-one knows exactly why, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that I can finally lose weight.

See, I'm not lazy. I'm not stupid. I'm not greedy. I have tried the 'diet and exercise' route to weight loss. It hasn't worked in my case. I'm not actually an over eater. What I do is eat a lot of the wrong foods, but this is mostly due to the SAD or PCOS kicking in. Both create a craving for high starch foods, bread, potato, etc.

The more I read about other intelligent women and men who found no answer until they had surgery, the more I realised I wanted this too. Its not an easy way out, not a cheats way out as some believe. Its simply a way out.

So what is life pre-lapband like?

I hurt. My joints ache a lot. I am out of breath a lot. I can' move fast. I'm not flexible, with minimal twisting/bending ability. I cannot lower myself to the floor or get up quickly, or easily. I feel 'tight' in my own skin all the time and often feel like a whale. My body and face is bloated. I often look in the mirror and don't recognise the face staring back at me. I'm podgy. I'm rotund. I'm obese.

I'm also short. This means the weight has that much of a greater affect on me and also that many people don't see me as obese. When they think of obese they think of the michelin man walking down the street wearing a muu muu! That isn't me. I don't look that shape because the weight is pretty much evenly distributed. My largest part is my tummy, but I also have really big boobs and that's what makes people think I'm not that bad. I'm fairly proportioned. But it comes back to being short. That makes all the difference in the world.

So, this is just a short entry to outline where I've come from. I got fat initially because of the chemical and hormonal imbalances going on inside me. I got obese because I dieted. Dieting makes you fat and in my case it made me obese.