Hello blog-o-sphere! I'd like to start off my blog by introducing myself. My name is Meagan and I'm a 25 year old pharmacy school student (4 months into my last year, Woot!) and I'll be having a lap band placed on Wednesday, September 11, 2013. My weight has been a battle my entire life. At my heaviest, I weighed 240 pounds... that was only a few days ago. That's really heavy on my 5 foot 5 inch frame! I've literally done nearly every diet out there, from weight watchers to curves complete to HCG; you name it, I've done it. So over the last year my mom and I started doing lots of research. Both of us are very overweight and really want to get healthy. We knew we've tried it all and finally realized what the common factor was in all our failed attempts to lose weight: HUNGER. So, instead of trying another diet, we decided together to get banded. My surgery is just days away and mom's is 7 days after mine on Wednesday, September 18th! We will be band buddies and we are so excited to be embarking on this journey together. So in case you're not a bandster (to steal a term from lapbandgal, who's journey has been an amazing inspiration!), let me explain how this journey to surgery begins. For my surgeon, it starts with a 10 day liquid diet to shrink the liver. For those of us who are overeaters and live on carbs and sugar, our livers are "fatty" meaning they are filled with glycogen (long links of glucose (sugar)) that our livers store up for use later... This makes lap band surgery hard. So I've been on a 1200-1800 calorie liquid diet these past few days. This means I can eat anything that can be drunk through a straw that doesn't contain sugar. So that means lots of soup! The other part of this diet means getting lots of protein, 50-60 grams per day. For me, that comes mostly from chocolate splendor Unjury! Its the best!! I hope to figure more of this blogging think out as I go. I'll be blogging again hopefully soon to update you on my status post-surgery! Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!