 My name is Joe Monaghan. I've lost over 135 pounds after bariatric surgery. I was an air traffic controller for over 32 years. With that job comes a lot of stress, rotating shifts. You never seem to get on a constant regimen of when you eat, when you sleep. So over the course of that career, I gained over 100 pounds. I weighed 322 pounds. I'd given up pretty much on everything I enjoyed doing. I tried every way you could think of to lose weight. I tried Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach Diet, Counting Calories, you name it. I tried it and I have a certain level of success with all of it but I could never stay on it and the end result would be I'd wind up gaining more weight than I lost. After failing at every diet I could possibly find, I finally started to look at bariatric surgery. I did a lot of research. I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what I was getting into. I had a procedure at Mid-Michigan Medical Center. I had zero complications. I was in the hospital for three days. It took fantastic care of me. Bariatric surgery gave me my life back. Within about five months I'd lost over 110, 115 pounds. The pain in my knees stopped. The pain in my hips stopped. I no longer had acid reflux and I no longer had high blood pressure. After losing the weight I now can do anything I want to do. I feel 25 years younger. People come up to me all the time and say I would not recognize who you were if I didn't know who you were and I always laugh and say that's okay. I don't recognize who I am every morning when I look in the mirror. It's truly a gift to have your life given back to you like this. Everything about this surgery is about changing your life and a lot of changing your life is making better decisions. Bariatric surgery is not a diet. It's nothing that you just go out and think well let's give this a try. It's a complete change of your life. It's not a miracle. It's a tool but the results can be miraculous.