Fenton

Sorry to hear about your setback there, Cowboy, and glad that they fixed you up. Looks like you're doing great there, Mike! An inspiration to us all...

Of course, the heavier you are, the faster you lose. Jack knows that all too well - now that he has the build of a 14 year old ballet dancer, losing those last 30 has become increasingly challenging!

We've all been impressed by the wide variety of approaches different surgeons have. The liquid diet can be a pain in the ass <tm words I couldn't use in mixed company, but can be comfortable using in these testosterone-rich environs>, but you lose really quickly on it, I found...

Whoa! Cowboy! You shoulda told me that you were going public with this little face-off! I've been out of combat for the last few weeks. I kind of hit the skids diet-wise - I've been doing this without a fill, so I'm working with no restriction, and losing by dieting. I'd lost 97 pounds at one point, but over the summer, with vacations and dealing with renovation stress, I pretty much screwed the pooch, and got back to my old and bad eating habits from the Bad Old Days. But I'm back now. I got my first fill this week - 3 cc in a 14 cc AP-L band . Zero restriction, but I'm BACK, baby! I weighed in this morning, and it's bad, but not as bad as I'd thought: I'm up 15 pounds. SO, Cowboy? This thing is ON!!! And any of youz who want to join in, it's time to weigh in on Monday. Let's see how we do Week by Week. I guess we can tally up at the beginning of each week, and see who're the winners by Pounds, and by Percentage of Total Body Weight Lost...

Well, I weighed in again - the damage wasn't TOO bad - I'm basically up 9 pounds. But, still, if I think that I've lost two months in which I'd have lost at least 10 pounds a month, I'm effectively up almost 30 pounds above where I should be right now. DAMN! If this snowboarding trip in February is going to happen, I'm going to have to work hard. Particularly if I'm going to spend the entire month of December in Paris. ALSO! I hate October on a diet! Endless open bowls of mini-bars of Snickers and Twix during the run-up to Halloween. Plus I'm going to be at the Bouchercon Thriller WRiter festival in October, which means socializing in restaurants. I should probably get a fill before I go, because this one just ain't happenin'...

At the end of the day, it doesn't make all that much difference whether the root cause is genetic or behavioral: the problem remains the same, and so does the solution. Weight loss will always mean using up more calories than we take in; I think genetics probably play their biggest part in how many calories we burn (think of those people who eat like horses but stay thin because of a high metabolic rate), while behavior obviously relates to the amount of calories we consume. I think the band helps mostly with the intake question, but I really do believe that it's the calorie-burning part of things that really makes things move WL-wise. So, yay exercise! In other news, I don't have much - if any - restriction. I"ve been pretty good, but Did It Up a bit last night. What can I say, I'm a sucker for that duck! But last night was last night, and today is today, and I feel good and in the groove, and know that I'm not going to overeat. I'm going to get back to Daily Plate, on which I logged my intake for, like, one day; I do believe that it is a real help in controlling eating. A reality check. WHich reminds me: I was in a McDonald's the other day. In NYC, all of the chain restaurants are now obliged to display the calorie content of their food prominently. I wonder how much difference that has made to McDonald's (or other restaurants) sales. My guess? Not much. I don't believe anyone kids themselves into thinking that a 1/3 lb Angus beef burger with barbecue sauce, cheese and bacon, along with a large size of fries and a large COke, is a healthy 400 calorie meal. I figure most people will see on the sign that it will run from 1150 to 1700 calories, shrug, and say WTF, and go ahead and order the meal. And, after they've done it the one time, will never think about it again.

Congrats on returning to the Grid, SpecialK! Electricity is FUNdamental! Only one person in my family - out of two parents and five children - has not had weight problems. I think we were normal weight for much of our childhood, but bad habits kicked in later in life, and it seems that we all turned to food as our instant cure-all. While there have been genetic links to obesity proven, I'm sure that in our case it's more a question of behaviour - you slip into choosing your drug, and we chose food. It's a pattern that starts pretty young, I think. It always worries me when I see parents doing what mine did: using food as a reward when bad things happen. Fall over and skin your knee, an ice cream cone will make you feel better. Someone's mean to you, a cookie will make you happy again. And in the end, it becomes the treatment for every crisis. The hard part, of course, is changing your reward patterns, particularly when, if you don't eat, you'll die. The band helps with the actual quantity you give yourself; I expect that also it will help with the behaviour, as the momentum of weight loss is a strong motivator. But for me, also, eating badly has its own momentum. A small cheat turns into a blown day, and then I blow days, weeks, and finally, about a month or so. Urk! I don't know how much restriction - if any - I have from my fill, but I've gone back to being in the groove. My body feels so much happier there, I have to say, and I think it's more than just psychological. Good luck to me! And congratulations on your Bandiversaries and great weight loss, all of yaz!

SpecialK - glad to hear you survived! Now, of course, *I* want a generator! And congratulations on your progress, Tess. I'm very intrigued about what it'll be like to be working with a filled band. I have to say that the last 24 hours have been pretty noisy, filled with stomach rumbling. But I'm doing fine - everything's going down OK, nothing's coming back up. I'm just hungry. Of course, I'm hungrier because of my recent weeks of bad eating, so it'll serve me right! And thanks. Teasing aside, it was nice to be missed.

So here I am! It's nice to see you all again. I'm sorry to have missed out on your trials and your triumphs lo these few weeks; the story about the brother in law's illness and the friend's pizza accusation was particularly upsetting, but I'm glad that sorted itself out. Thank you guys for missing me, and I owe a couple of yaz emails - I couldn't reply until I was ready to re-embrace the mindset. And I have. Today I had my first fill. It was fascinating. Painless. As he injected me, Dr. Fielding said, "You'll feel a little pinch, like drawing blood.", so I snorted and said, "I'm a physician." and he said, "Yeah, I was sure you wouldn't believe me." There was barely a prick - he injected through the scar tissue. He gave me 3cc in my 14 cc APL band to start off with, saying that if I'd managed to lose as well as I had, I had to have some restriction, so it'd be best to go slowly. WHen he injected, it was a fascinating feeling - a sharp scratching in my left armpit and shoulder tip, because, I figure, the band is up against my diaphragm, which shares a bit of its nerve supply with the shoulder area. I thought - think - it's strange that a mere 3 cc can make such a difference! Well, we shall see. I'm a bit worried about not being able to gulp down Water - on a hot day, one of life's great pleasures is gulping down cold water. And I'm worried that with restriction I'll end up with more kidney stones, so I have to be extra vigilant about keeping up my water intake, but there you go. You've all been there. And I now have to learn how to eat with a band. I't sbeen a luxury, being able to eat whatever I wanted, just less of it, but that will have to change. No more delicious chicken salad with mini crusty rolls for lunch. So easy, so convenient, so inexpensive... And I have to watch my Protein again. So, eek! I'm here! I'm banded! I'm back! xoJ

But one thing did stick: I'd got into the habit of walking, and am much more energetic than I was. I've just got back from Paris, where I spent two weeks working on renovating a tiny apartment I've bought over there (a place to write, where I can work on my books away from the distractions of NYC, and where I can start cornering the market on food and travel writing in Europe). The trip was a bit of a disaster - I'd planned to stay in my apartment, even though I knew that the place wouldn't be quite ready, but when I got there it was WAY behind schedule, and I ended up having to stay in a damn hotel for two weeks - FAR more expensive than I'd wanted. So it was stressful, and I ate badly. I mean, I ate some fantastic things, but I ate a lot of crap (which the French can provide just as readily as we can). But I walked a lot, at least three miles most days, often up hill - and, I suppose, down hill too, but still! I walked a lot and it was pretty good. And traveling down a good 90 pounds felt much better - I'm still hefty enough that I use frequent flyer miles to upgrade to Business Class, but at my high weight, even those Business Class seats felt cramped. Not any more! And I remembered - again - just how shitty it feels to eat crap for long periods of time. To feel nauseatingly full, to feel your system sluggish and overfueled. So, long story short, I'm ready to return to the fold.

There are no real excuses for my particular trajectory, but there are, I think, a few things that went into it. Mostly it was stress-related. I finally broke up with a girl who I loved, and who loved me, and that was weirdly painful. But I dealt with it pretty well for a good while, until I learned that she had moved on and was seeing someone new, and it was serious, and that this person was offering her all the things that I had not. And it's a complex thing, but my weight was a big factor in me not giving her as much as I could. And I should specify that my weight was not a big factor for her as it was for me. And since my weight is in my own control, it's obvious that it was something I engineered to fail. I felt badly about letting her down, and felt sorry for myself for destroying something so good. So learning that she'd moved on was extremely painful; I feel like at some level, I had wanted to lose weight so I could "get back with her", as the kids say. Which is, of course, absurd, since my weight hadn't been an issue for her in the first place. But my weight had been an issue for me, which makes it weirder that one of my immediate responses was rebound sex with an ex-girlfriend. Which was fun, but ultimately didn't erase the final whisps of pain. WIth that, I plunged headlong into my good old bad eating habits. Ate badly badly badly. Lost all of the uh, "mojo", are we calling it now? that had powered me down 96 pounds, and am sure I've put on a good bit. Just how much I don't really want to know, at least until Saturday or Sunday, when I weigh in.

I've just read all the responses I've missed until the last page, and I have to say this: OMG! You guys are so GAY! Except for you gay and lesbian bandsters, who are, of course, SUPER-GAY! I felt like I was being waked! I'm not dead, and I was only gone for a while! I am, of course, kidding. It's always nice to be missed. And it's nice to be back. Which I am, I think. I've had a bad couple of months; I've decided not to weigh myself out of sheer fear, but I'll break down and do it on Saturday. I just had my first fill, and now I have to figure out how to extract something good and useful out of all my monkeyshines and shenanigans. I'm going to break down some "thoughts" into a couple of posts, I think.

My God, where did everyone go??? I'm back. Again. Arrgh!!! Yeah, I'm still in the weeds on this one. I blew off most of last week, ate really badly (well, I ate quite well, but besides that I also ate appallingly). I feel like I'm done with that right now, but am looking forward to getting a fill to make it harder for me to fall off the wagon. So, I'm back. And where DID everyone go? Amanda, maybe you should look into compression garments, which are discussed often on this board. As I understand it, they're tighter undergarments, most commonly encountered after plastic surgery, that give support to loose skin.

Yay, Christine! A nice landmark before your trip!

It's a good bet that when I'm postin', I'm behavin', and when I'm missin', I'm sinnin'. I did well for a few days last week, then I just kind of lost it. An old GF was coming into town, and that was both fun and stress-y. I don't know if I overate because it was stressy so much as because her arrival gave me an excuse to go out to eat, and since I was going to eat TOMORROW, why not just relax a bit today. But my behaviour isn't really one of relaxation, it's just pure binging. And the thing about binging is that it's a kind of absent behaviour - you're not doing it until you reach a particular end-point, you're just DOING IT. There is no satisfaction to be had. So I did badly last week. Thanks to good behaviour for part of it, I'm only up a pound, but, still: a pound up. I'm now 8 lbs away from my hundred. Which is pretty pathetic, considering how well I'd been doing up to July! My big fear now is that I'll use my "I'm getting my band inflated in September" idea as an excuse to have a month of Last Suppers. Which might be more of a temptation in Paris, where I won't be able to weigh myself. So, like, durn! Durn it all to heck! Either way, though, I'm back on the wagon. Again.

Awww. SpecialK, sorry to hear it. You and your mom are in my thoughts.

plain is right - even if he IS from Texas! This is a simple process - the LapBand is not an off/on switch, it's something that will work with you to help you get control over your eating and weight. And it's all simple math: if what you burn is greater than what you take in, you'll lose weight. That gives you two options: increase what you burn (exercise) and decrease what you eat (diet). More and more, I think that exercise is the key. From being completely sedentary at the beginning, I now walk more than 3 miles every day. I do my best to stick to 1500 calories or less, and, despite a disastrous July, I am down just under 100 pounds since February. Here's what I would do if I were you: 1. One day of liquid diet, strictly adhering to intake of less than, say, 1200 calories 2. One day of mushies, strictly adhering to intake of less than 1400 calories 3. solid food, 1500 calories or less (others would suggest a lower intake) 4. Get a pedometer and start counting your paces. Try to make each day more active than the one before. Set goals for yourself - say, a minimum of 8,000 steps a day, then 9,000, then 10,000. 5. Start journaling your food - go to dailyplate.com and start being compulsive about tracking how much you're eating. You'll likely be very surprised. 6. As your fitness level improves, keep moving forward. Get a walking buddy, join a gym. The process isn't easy, but it's simple. You have to be strictly honest with yourself about what you're REALLY doing - you can't just pretend that, because you have a lapband, you're engaged in weight loss. Time to do some WORK, my friend!

Ack! Christine, that IS so hard! In those situations, what may help is to find a really articulate physician to explain to the family members one more time what the current situation is, and what the outlook is. It's often hard for families to really grasp the situation - the person in the bed is someone they've loved all their lives, but at the same time is only the shell of that person. It is so hard to let go. I think the temptation to eat at times like those is almost unbearable - when the world is piling up on you and all of your support mechanisms have been snatched away, falling back on the old reliable habit that has sustained you probably for decades is all too easy. I'm a textbook example - a couple of bumps in my relationship situation, and I'm all ready to ignore five months of excellent progress and strap on that feedbag! But you know that will only bring short term relief, and in doing so will make going forward a million times harder. Most of us have made the act of eating a soothing experience in our lives, but, of course, it's something that destroys us as we embrace it. And quickly the act changes from being pleasurable to being automatic, an action that is done without thinking or awareness of pleasure after the first forbidden bite. And we - certainly I do - eat so much that instead of feeling sharp and aware and alive, we feel numbed and sluggish and inhuman. And that's even BEFORE the self-loathing kicks in! It's hard, but you have to focus on your goals and objective. If the long term stuff like "feeling and looking better" isn't an intense enough reward to stave off that behaviour, how about treating yourself to something like a new dress, or a trip to the movies with the kids - or a Couch to 5K iTunes purchase! One thing: I am envious of your pool. Are you getting out to swim each day? I think swimming (and floating) provides great exercise for mind and body. Use that pool!

K-Pod, we all know you have the drive and smarts to totally nail this test! Don't worry about passing it, worry about *acing* it! And Tess, as far as giving support goes, you're one of the rocking-est Shamrocks around...

Yeah, I think that walking is even more important for weight loss than diet. Big Rick, how GREAT to hear that you're making great progress! I've been offline for awhile - last time I was here, you were having difficulties getting your sugars where you wanted them. Now, a couple weeks later, you're all about the exercise, with great sugars and great weight loss... CONGRATS!

Yeah, exercise is the key. I started dieting at the beginning of February, got banded 3/6, since then I'm down 94 pounds. For much of the last month, I've been going up and down, having a difficulty getting control of my eating as old behaviours have slid back in. I *think* I'm doing better now. We shall see!

Watcher, you mean you're getting your band in another month or so? First off, that's great! You don't have to mourn food, you'll just learn to eat differently. Right now, what you should be doing is mourning *life* - the rich, healthy, full life that being fat has deprived you of. You worry about excess skin already, but right now you don't care of the rings of fat with which you've surrounded yourself? It's a question of perspective. And you know the time is right for you to Choose Life!

I called and made an appointment for my fill - September 16. I'm in Paris from the 31st through the 14th, and I'm happy to not be banded then, to tell the truth. But I'm going to do my best to lose and keep losing while I'm there. I find I work best when I have a routine. Here, I have the same things pretty much for Breakfast lunch and dinner every day - my gourmet days are over! But the consistency is key for me, I think. My life is so ridiculously overcomplicated (by which I mean that *I* overcomplicate my life) that not having to make decisions makes life a lot easier. When I'm in Paris, it's going to be a question of figuring out a new routine, and sticking to that...

So, I'm beginning to sense that some people feel that I should get a fill... (insert winking emoticon here) I will. But it is somehow... important to me that I lose the first 100 without the fill (it never even occurred to me before the surgery that that was a possibility, so I don't know why it's become important to me now, other than for just the satisfaction). I tried to make an appointment for a fill on Friday, but they've switched the hours around at the clinic, so I wasn't able to catch them that afternoon. I'll call this afternoon... Also, I'm partnering with one of the guys over in the Men's Room as a weight loss buddy - a little competition to see who can lose faster. Thanks for your support and generous offers of a free @$$-kicking, whatever the heck that is!

Chica, I wouldn't have minded you being remiss! Well, I'm hovering between 6 and 5 pounds over my century mark, which is pretty bah. But not the end of the world, at least not quite yet. My preference is actually for the *vanilla* SFO as a base for that drink - all of the diet/nutrition-y chocolate beverages taste like crap. The vanilla doesn't taste great either, but it's a pretty good vector for the flavour of banana and Peanut Butter, which is what makes that shake so durn tasty.