Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.

I've fought with my weight my entire life. Growing up in the deep south fried food is a staple, meals are a social activity, and cleaning your plate was a requirement. When I was about 5 or 6 I remember sitting in the Jenny Craig office nibbling on a dry cake doughnut. My mother took me to Jenny Craig that young. I still can't eat plain baked chicken and it was years before I'd eat green beans again. When I was 12, just starting 7th grade, I weighed 201 pounds. My parents drove me across the Alabama line and into Mississippi to a quack doctor that would prescribe diet pills to me. Phentermine. God I loved those pills. My the time Christmas vacation was over, I had lost 65 pounds. I eventually got down to 125 pounds. Those pills were like legal speed. My mind was too busy to think of food. I usually only had diet coke for meals. My parents were ecstatic. One day at school, on the way up to the second floor for class, I passed out on the stairs. I came to with one of the history teachers hovering over me and my friend shouting in my face to eat the blueberry muffin he was holding. I stopped taking the pills and I gained some weight back. I was holding fairly steady at around 160, which looked pretty decent on my frame. Then at 15 I was moved up to North Carolina where I didn't know anyone. Depression hit hard and fast. I started slowing gaining more and more weight. By the time I was graduating I was around 200. Then before I knew it 250, and then for years I held steady at 299. Then early 2012 I got pregnant and gained 60 pounds with the pregnancy. Now I weigh 348. I don't know how I got here. I don't know how to fix it.

What was (is) the worst thing about being overweight?

Other than the taunting in school, the way I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, and a million other things... One time I was with my husband (boyfriend at the time), best friend, and her boyfriend at the fair. I love rides. Her bf wanted to go on a ride that no one else would go on, so I said I'd go with him. I sat down and they lowered the bar over me and couldn't get it to latch. They asked me to remove myself from the ride. That was horrifying and public. When I was 19 or so I was out with my parents and grandparents and we stopped for gas. I went in to run to the restroom and when I came out everyone was standing by the car. My grandfather looked at me and said "she's built like a linebacker" and he and my dad laughed and laughed. They didn't think I could hear them. I could, very clearly. So other than snide comments from family and strangers, being unable to fit in amusement park rides, getting winded walking up stairs, and being squished in theaters, being unable to find cute clothing that doesn't cost a ton, having pool-side anxiety, having aching joints.... there's so much that's the "worst thing".

If you have had weight loss surgery already, what things do you most enjoy doing now that you weren't able to do before?

I haven't had surgery yet.