The Battle of the Bulge--Literally

This may be a bit long as it has been a long battle!

You know how kids can be cruel in school, well with me that was putting it lightly.  I was always teased and made fun of in school, it was bad enough that I actually went to live with a family member one year until my parents could find a job in another town just so I wouldn't get death threats and my freshman year I snuck my lunch into the the girls bathroom every day for half the year and ate in a stall because no one would let me sit at a table in the lunch room.  Enough about that though, the point of it was that one of the main things I was teased about was that I was F-A-T!  And when you hear something enough you begin to believe it.  Looking back now I was never fat in school, out of shape YES, fat no! So my battle started when I was in high school.  My junior year I joined the army and they told me I needed to lose about 5 lbs to make weight, so I went on a protein diet (which I found out later in life was the Adkins diet) lost the weight and went to basic training the summer in between my junior and senior year.  Funny thing is I went from a size 14 to a size 7, but I weighed exactly the same as when I went in.  The next summer I was suppose to go back and do my advanced training but when I went in to do the PT test I failed and was told I had to lose some weight.  My senior year had been very stressful and I was, at that point, on my own with no money and eating what I could afford; which was never the right kind of foods and the little bit of exercising I did didn't help.  I was kicked out of the army and thus started my adult journey to lose the weight.  10 years later and I am STILL trying to lose that weight, along with 80 more lbs!

I found out when I was 22 that I have PCOS which, to put it as bluntly and easily as possible, is a condition that makes it SUPER easy put weight on, and EXTREMELY difficult to get it off.  There hasn't been a year that has gone by that I haven't tried to diet and exercise.  In fact I have had times where I was doing everything right for weeks and even months at a time and not losing a pound. I have tried the adkins, south beach, weight watchers (3 times), HCG and calorie restriction (atleast 3 times).  I would lose weight on them but it was infrequent and usually painful.  So, three years ago I looked into the lap band and I have wanted to do it ever since.