Daisalana

Maybe try drinking less and less from your cut off point. For example, try not drinking past 7pm.. if that doesn't work, go to 6pm, etc. And make sure you go pee before you go to bed, even if you don't think you have to.

The band currently takes all fun & enjoyment out of eating. I dread eating at the moment. I skip food lately and go for the SlimFast or soup.. which does fill me up! I am addicted to food, so that's pretty darn good. If my band came off, I know I would be eating the house.

I haven't shopped in a mall for x-mas in YEARS. Don't shop at mookiegifts.com though.. they took my $80 and disappeared, I don't even think they're still in business. Amazon.com is good, we were able to knock on 70% of our shopping there. I also like E-bay too (yes I know, e-bay is evil!).

I posted this in R&R but in case you guys don't wander there. Just got back from cleaning up after the X-mas party. Sales doesn't get the raffle prizes (Wah!!) AND we had to clean up. This is an e-mail I got when I came back............. I am about to explode. I will give the brief background. A local church (all black, sadly this is relevant), came to us to make their dedication yearbooks. First, this is not what we typically do. Our industry is CD & DVD. But we CAN do it, and back when we were a smaller company we did a lot of local stuff. So, we take the job since it's a local church. First, their artwork was a nightmare. Our graphic artists (who normally spend 5 minutes lining up customer artwork onto our templates) had to spend over 8 working hours on their project. We did NOT charge them extra for this. We set up meetings and met with their committee to get everything right. We delivered the proofs (they are suppose to pick them up, but they were 'busy')...TWICE. She called me every hour on the hour for weeks while our artists were fixing it. They had a deadline of Dec.9. I ALWAYS called her back, even though she just always wanted to complain about how long it was taking. We took a while trying to fix THEIR problems for them, since they didn't know what they were doing to begin with. But we promised we would make their deadline. We did, they got it in time. They still owe us about 40 bucks for a page they had to fix after we started printing the job. So anyway... I e-mailed her the other day, said hope your holidays are good and yadda yadda, we never got the $40, if you could let me know how you'd like to pay that. All of a sudden no response from her. We figured we'd write off the $40, this is why we make everyone pre-pay. Well I wrote her again this morning, I POLITELY said I haven't heard from her, just checking the status of the payment. Thanks so much! And this is what I get back................. You have treated us like second class citizens throughout this entire process. Perhaps you're not accustomed or don't even like working with minorities? Perhaps our job was too small for you and didn't warrant superior customer service? Whatever the reason, your customer service and how you treated us was unwarranted and unappreciated. Again, you will definitely get your money this week. OMFG. 1. That is COMPLETELY offensive to me 2. We went above and beyond and I am just SHOCKED that I got any kind of negative e-mail. I am so mad I can't stand it. I want to slap her. We did so much for them, and this is their response?????? Thanks to them, we're not doing any more local work. The CEO is offended, and they're sending her an e-mail personally.

And so you know my response.. I wanted to blow up and get angry with her. This was my e-mail back.. That is an extremely offensive e-mail, and I’m sorry that you feel that way. You may mail the check. Have a happy holidays

It is illegal to record someone without their knowledge in a lot of states, you'd have to check your state's law. I can't think of a solution, it's really a crappy situation. My sister had the same thing happening, some a$$hole neighbors always called the cops on them just because they were lesbians and we're in the Bible belt. My sister & her gf had to move due to it. It's not going to be fun, but the best thing you can do if neither of you are moving soon.. is to bury the hatch. Take her some Cookies and say you want to work things out. Be the bigger woman and try to settle whatever this dispute is. Otherwise, you'll both be miserable till one of you moves.

Yeah you can click the number to see who voted what. It's sexist, and I don't care.. but I do not want to see Hillary in office. If nothing else, it would make our country look weak. And as much as you want to argue it (or maybe other women can agree with me!) women are more emotional than men, and make decisions based on emotion sometimes. I don't think that's good for a president. DH and I have been talking about it, I worry the future of our country if a woman was in power.. but he pointed out, if she is president, she will just be a puppet for Bill.. which I can live with (even though I am republican).

Wow is it only 1 month away? YAY! I miss it when it's off.

I know what you mean Karen.. I can look at pics of me from about 5 years ago and I had SUCH A PRETTY FACE!! When I see pics of me now, my nose and chin look odd.. I don't see the prettiness I use to.

Good morning violets!!! ((((JENN & TERRY)))) Hope today is better for both of you!! I made pot roast last night, while cooking pigs in a blanket for today's X-mas party at work. I don't know who I was kidding, I can't eat meat right now. I made mashed potatoes, and made a soup out of a scoop of potatoes and gravy from the roast. We picked up some Slimfast (a flavor I can tolerate) and I got a 4-pack of the EAS Myoplex. I can't remember what I heard about it.. but it's 4 bucks a BOTTLE!!! the 4-pack was 12 bucks, if I had noticed that when we were buying it, I would have skipped it. I'm having my Slimfast right now.. it's a pain to get down.. every sip is painful. This stuff is too thick for my morning tightness. My size 19 pants came last night!! Keeping in mind Alloy's sizes run VERY small (Junior sizes).. I laid all 3 pairs on the bed.. all 3 are different brands.. First set.. fit! Had a hard time getting my pooch to go into the pants (they were low-rise and I guess when a size actually fits, low-rise won't hold my belly LOL).. 2nd pair, fit PERFECT.. wearing them today.. they are tight on my butt, fitted on my thighs, and make the flares stand out since the whole thing isn't baggy. 3rd pair (tightest brand), was super duper tight, I could only wear them if I have a baggy shirt on. They make a muffin BACK.. where my back tattoo is, it poofs up over the pants lol. But this is a new size for me! YAY! This means if I went to Lane Bryant I could likely wear their 16 pants. Company X-mas Party today, I saw some of the goodies they're raffling off.. big tins of popcorn. Num num.

LOL. I was wondering the relevance of that.. Bumpity Bump!

I had to take magnesium citrate (I chose Cherry.. tasted like a tart grenadine!) pre-op for the surgery.. wasn't too keen on how it worked for me.. took a long time (3hours or so) and I'll spare the details but it was not a fun time for me and my DH in that hotel room. Since I went about 3 weeks post-op with no BM's, I was frustrated.. and I had DH pick me up prune juice. I drank way more than I guess I should have.. I've never had prune juice before, so didn't know how much to drink.. I had about 1/2 quart. But it flushed me out, and it didn't make me run back and forth to the toilet.. it just cleaned it out.

I have the same pain you're explaining.. It's above my left armpit, and radiates to my collarbone and into my left arm. I didn't get this until about 6 months post-op.. It's not gas for me. Mine is really bad when I go all day without eating (which I do on a regular basis, but this didn't bother me till recently). I'll sit at my desk at work and rotate my arm and push on my collarbone.. the only thing that makes it feel better is if I eat.. but if I let it get too painful before I eat, the pain doesn't fully go away until the evening. HOWEVER.. since you're right out of surgery, I would pay the ER a visit and make sure it's not a blood clot or anything. Better safe than sorry!

When I get things stuck, it normally passes within 30 minutes (or I spit it back up). I have tried meat tenderizer (I mixed it in water and drank it, wasn't sure what I was suppose to do with it..yuck), and I've tried pineapple juice from canned pineapples.. both just hurt like if you drink anything when you're stuck.. I didn't notice it get rid of the problem. I was eating a chocolate turtle last Friday night and I was eating it slow.. and then I was rushed because I was running late for something, and I didn't have hands to hold everything I needed, so I shoved the rest of the turtle in my mouth and ultimately didn't chew well enough. That thing was stuck there about 2 hours.. I could feel my stomach trying to push it out, then it getting lodged back. Seconds of relief, then pain comes back.. It must have sat there till the caramel finally melted.. OY! I threw up a lot of spit in that time too, but no luck at getting that thing to come out.

I'm sorry you're going through that. I was 100% self-pay and it was 15k (+2.5k for the port revision surgery).. I don't have an emergency plan if I ever had to take it out, and if I did take it out, I would want something else (that insurance wouldn't pay for). Let me know how you figure it all out, so I'll have a back up plan in case something ever happens. Good luck!!!!!

I was googling for info on Fiber & lap-band since I never heard about it doing anything to the pouch.. This first excerpt I found was from a bizarre website that was weighing pros & cons of lap-band surgery and how it effects religious beliefs.. anyway, thought this was interesting! Fiber is the part of our food that we can't digest. It thus doesn't add calories but it does take up space. It also absorbs toxins and helps purify the system generally. There are also different types of fiber, and different types do different things for us. Most Americans get about 10-15 grams of fiber per day in their diet. It's thought that we need 25-30, though many question whether that is enough. In some places, people eat much more fiber than this. It is reported, for example, that in some parts of China they manage to get 75 grams of fiber per day. Fiber can be gotten both from eating foods that contain it (e.g., nuts) and in the form of nutritional supplements. The latter are often packaged as compressed tablets, capsules, or powder. It's not easy to get significant amounts of fiber without adding calories just by eating food. Most foods don't have enough fiber in them to make that easy. Tablets also aren't great as they may not dissolve fully. Capsules can suffer from that, too. But powdered fiber works great. Of late I've been incorpoating significant quantities of powdered fiber into my diet (about 45-55 grams per day, in addition to what fiber I get from food), and I have been very pleased with the results. The fiber generates a sensation of fullness, a notable desire to eat less, and I've been losing weight more rapidly and without hunger. The effect has been dramatic. It also may be accomplishing the same thing as the LAP-BAND surgery (shrinking your effective stomach space), only without the surgery. You therefore might want to try this as an alternative before you try surgery. If you do, a few important notes: Rule #1 of using fiber is to Drink Lots Of Water with it. If you drink too little, problems will result. I generally stir three heaping tablespoons of fiber (about 15 grams) into 12 ounces of water, drink that rapidly, and then follow it with another 12-20 ounces of water while the fiber expands. Rule #2 of using fiber is Build Up Slowly. It takes your system a bit to adjust to processing fiber, and if you add too much, too quick then you feel an uncomfortable bloating. Start with one tablespoon (not even a heaping one) and build up slowly from there. Rule #3 of using fiber is to recognize that it changes the absorption pattern of food, Vitamins, and medicine. You therefore need to sequence fiber into your daily diet in places where it won't interfere with any medicines you may be taking. If you need to take any medicines on an empty stomach, don't take fiber for at least an hour before or after you take the medicine. If you need to take any medicines with food, don't take the fiber too close to mealtime. Personally, I try to take fiber immediately after eating (it kills any desire I have to eat further), but if you are taking medicines then you may not be able to do that. I've even been experimenting with adding moderately carb-laden food items (well, popcorn, anyway) and then taking fiber immediately afterward so that it slows the absorption of the carbs and doesn't cause my blood sugar to spike. It's worked well, and I'm still losing weight even though I'm allowing myself moderate portions of popcorn (one of my favorite foods that I haven't been able to eat in years while doing low-carb).

I haven't had any food dreams with the band, but when I was doing Atkins 'hardcore' and doing wonderfully.. I had nightmares all the time that I ate pizza, or drank a Mt. Dew, etc. I'd wake up panicked that I ruined my ketosis and I even woke up crying at one point. Of course, when I did finally screw up on Atkins with a box of Dunkin Donuts, I was enjoying my food high and didn't care heh.

Wheet, that sounds so nummy. I've never even had fondue, looks like something fancy I see on TV.. my mom has always said they're a pain in the butt.. so I believed her.. But that sounds so yum.. I may have to buy a fondue set lol.

Oh! And thanks about the quote, if you've never heard the song.. it's really pretty. "For You" by Barenaked Ladies

I am curious if your doctor says not to take fiber supplements.. let's say you're eating a high fiber food (which he approves of?).. would be the same as adding benefiber to a non-fiber food. So that makes me think he doesn't want you eating any fiber, and then you'd be in my boat, where BM's are few and far between and always a PAIN IN THE BUTT (Pun intended).

80 degrees here today.. flip flops.. check! ;D

Wow, never heard that before. I don't know then

Hello! I use to have regular bowel movements.. post-op I think I didn't get a bowel movement till 3 weeks in.. and I induced it with prune juice. Now, I can go days without a bowel movement. And sometimes it's very hard to get it to be productive. I know my problem is fiber. Fiber makes you poo! Take a fiber supplement (Benefiber mixes taste/textureless into other things). I try to do that but I forget since I have to mix it into things. They also have fiber tablets.. or just check foods you eat and make sure you eat more fiber. It can take a week or so to regulate you, but it does.

(((TERRY))) This too shall pass! Stay strong, and remember there's always tomorrow. Just a warning, not that you guys probably ever would have, but.. don't order from mookiegifts.com They are making me extremely nervous. I bought $80 worth of gifts from them 2 weeks ago. No status update. I've been e-mailing them asking for an update on what's going on with them.. no responses. I've tried calling, and it goes to a voicemail.. no response. Starting to think I'm out $80 :*(

I was 150lbs overweight.. I carry most my weight upper body. My stomach was pretty huge before I started, it's shrinking now, but I can't decide if the last of the rolls I see is skin or still weight I'm going to lose. It is all puckered and weird looking, but.. I don't see me getting plastic surgery for it at this point. I can easily tuck it under my underwear/pants, and I don't feel I have to show my belly to anyone. I do plan to have kids too, so if I do decide on it, it's still years away post-children. If I don't look majorly deformed or have a large pannic hanging down (and it looks like I won't, I think it would have formed by now), I won't be getting a TT.