bandas in People Mag

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Bandas

• two tummy tucks

• four liposuctions

• brow lift

• removed bump on nose

• eye lift

• suction to chin and jowls

• fat removed from upper eyelids

• skin removal on arm and lip

• hair transplantation

• gastric bypass surgery

• fat injection from buttocks into left cheek

• abdominal scar removal

• breast lift

• chest lift

• laser of lower eyelids to smooth out wrinkles

• dermabrasion

• face-lift

• microsuction to cheeks

• total cost: $126,000

While growing up on a farm in Temple, Texas, Bandas and his five

siblings all struggled with weight problems. " I was morbidly obese, " says ,

51.

" I was the funny, fat kid. " Some of that excess weight was hereditary; some

of it was the result of poor eating habits. " We ate a lot of down-home

cooking, " says his older brother Rick, 60. " We had lots of chicken-fried

things. " It

wasn't until took off for college that he began to feel acutely

self-conscious about his girth. He shed 125 lbs. through diet and exercise and

then, at

age 26, had his first plastic surgery, a tummy tuck. After that, he recalls,

" clothes fit better, things just worked better. It encourages you to do more

things for yourself. "

As his weight bobbed up and down, those " things " added up to 45 major and

minor surgeries. Bandas has tucked and liposuctioned excess skin from his face

and body; lifted his eyelids, eyebrows, chest and breasts; removed moles and

skin tags; and transplanted hair to his balding pate. " If I weren't financially

successful, " concedes the unattached Bandas, who owns a tax-consulting-services

firm in Austin, Texas, " none of this would have been possible. " Of his

$126,000 tab, only the $14,000 gastric bypass surgery, which he underwent in

1998

after tipping the scale at 320 lbs., was covered by health insurance. Now a trim

190 lbs., the 6' Bandas says, at last, " I'm done. I'm happy with where I am. "