I have heard of hypnosis weight loss programs, most of them are just scams like hypnosis to stop smoking. There are very few valid research studies on it and those that have been done show very poor results so I never even considered it. Bottom line is if you diet and exercise and have no health complications that make that too challenging you will likely lose weight and if hypnosis gives you the mental edge to do what you need to do, more power to you. This is however a group for those of us who have not gotten the results we needed to be healthy through diet and exercise alone and needed to take the extra step to have a medical proceedure done. It's a big decision so I understand wanting to know the steps.

1. Go to an education seminar hosted by a surgeon in your area or talk to your primary care physican about a referral.

2. Learn what the qualifications are for the different surgical options, pick the one that is best for your needs.

3. Work whatever pre-surgery plan your doctor sets up, which is usually based on your insurance. (mine included a 3 month diet and exercise plan, a psych eval, a sleep apnea test, 5 years of ineffective dieting history, a letter of recommendation from my primary care, being at least 100 pounds overweight with all health complications documented in my medical charts mine were: diabetes, PCOS, high lipids, joint pain, low thyroid. I lost about 27 pounds during this phase of the program)

4. Insurance approves, or declines or requires more stuff.

5. set surgery date

6. Start pre-surgery diet. (though this is different for many of us, some can still have solids, I could not for 2 weeks and then as with any surgery no eating or drinking past midnight the day before surgery and liquids for the next day or two as you heal.)

7. The last step is to continue all the habits you learned pre sugery, focus on eating right and exercise and continue to see the surgeon/team for follow up appointments.

I know you didn't mean any offense but with the hypnosis thing you make it sound like if we all just had more will power we'd have lost weight so for the record, If it were an issue of will power alone to control portion size I would have been a size zero. As for "mean side effects" the liquid diet is usually for shrinking the liver pre-surgery and for a few days after for everything to heal, it is not a big deal. The hair loss is avoidable with keeping your protein up and could affect people dieting that haven't had surgery for the same reason. The toilet problems are also avoidable by watching fiber just like eveyone else who is on a diet. There are some actual side effects that they don't warn you about but they fade in importance as the results stack up. There is a ton of valid research on RNY, and Banding. The Sleeve is the newest to the group and all early reseach says it's getting results similar to the RNY but the longitudinal studies won't be out in mass for another couple years.

I've been obese but quite healthy for close to the past 20 years. Then I lost my mom a couple of years ago to weight related illnesses. That got me thinking. Then about 6 months later I started dealing with hypertension and had a bad case of pneumonia that turned me into an asthmatic. That made me ready. I had a heart scare also that turned out to be nothing, but all of these things finally convinced me that I needed to start being proactive instead of reactive. Having lapband surgery in Jan '12 was a great decision for me so far. Blood pressure meds-gone. Asthma-gone. Heat PVCs-gone. 70+pounds-gone. Life is good.