hello!
Well I am in the middle of the process right now. I have Kaiser for insurance which means I have to do a 6 month course before being eligible for surgery. I know this sounds like an annoying bad thing but since I have been doing the classes I see how important they are. They cover a lot of aspects you might not have even considered. They also make it interesting. The teachers are very nice and on eof them has already had gastric bypass. I have talked with a lot of interestiong people from here and I hope to meet more.
So this is pretty much how I got to the weight I am: When I was 6 and my little brother was 2 we were crossing the street in front of our house together when  i heard someone call my name from behind us.  So in the time it took me to do a 180 degree turn he fell off of the sidewalk and was hit by a car and died. After that of course a lot of ppl felt sorry for me but their way of trying to console me was with food. So that started my journey. As I got older I never stopped. And after I became addicted there was no stopping me!LOL I would sneak food all the time. Half the time i didnt even have to sneak food, I was a latch key kid from the age of 7 to about 9 then from about 10 on up. So it was pretty easy. Plus I come from an Sicilian family where eating and breathing go hand in hand but oddly enough that side is thin its my Irish German side where they are all huge,but I am by far the biggest. I fully realize that my size is only due to MY poor decision making. Not because my Nana made me cookies when I was 5. It's wierd how most of us know how to lose weight and what to do to keep it off, but we just can't or we dont know how to maintain the loss. Oh well pretty soon I will have a "weapon" to help me.