kimalicious

Wow, my band surgeon charged my insurance $24,000 and they paid every last bit. I only had to pay like $600 out of pocket. THey overcharged them so much it paid for everything else. THere is always a way. Keep trying and you will get your band. Don't give up.

No biggie, I start over with every fill I bet. Sometimes I start over with every new day. Once you get your fill it will be like a new start anyways. Every fill after that is different also. Don't get down on yourself and don;t mind what you eat, just start exercising if possible to keep yourself motivated. Good Luck.

"lady sips" I love it. Mine is weird, when I drink cokes my port will hurt 2 hours later for the rest of the night. I swear our bodies are weird. If anyone asks though I haven't touched a coke in a year.

Everywhere has some sort of soup and baked potatoes or some sort of potatoes. If he is pushy about you trying food then he doesn't sound like a winner anyways. I'm sure it will go great, If you are far enough into your mushie stage you should even be fine eating salad and chips if you chew them enough. I was wide open 2 weeks out. So let us know how it goes after the date and give us the scoop on this guy, I am nosey! Kim

OK, I am having your same problem now! I have been religiously eating 800 calories a day and doing 30 minutes of aerobics a day, every day. I was steadily losing this month and was down 13 pounds since the 3rd. I jumped on the scale this morning and somehow GAINED 2 POUNDS. Of course, this put me into a tail spin and I ate like 700 calories at lunch and feel like everything I did this week was for nothing. I am hoping it was the whole "not getting enough calories, so your body is hoarding" thing goin on. Now I want to eat everything in sight. I swear this lifetime long struggle will be the death of me, DEATH OF ME I SAY! Just had to say that I understand and I hope by overeating today my body will see a change and drop some more. UGG!

Are you feeling better today? That would happen to me when I drank carbonation, make a list of what you ate so you know to be more careful next time when you eat that, it might be something you have to take out of your diet all together. Hope you're doing better!! Kim

I was not a believer of the less you eat the more your body holds onto for fear of starvation, but others are, so maybe you weren't getting in enough calories and you body was thinking you were starving? I love the games our bodies play on us. Good job on the weight loss!

23 pounds in 1 WEEK!!! That is awesome. After the liquids mashed potatoes have never tasted so good....Keep it up!!! Kim

Don't wire your jaw please. It took me 4 fills before I started really feeling restriction. You have to stay on top of them. If you can still eat a lot you need a fill. As for the not eating enought calories, if you do it long enough you will lose no matter what. Are you ding any exercising. I would schedule a fill and start exercising and you will see the pounds go quickly again. I'm at 2.9 in my 4 cc band and know that I will need another fill in a few months. I waited months with no restriction, thinking this surgery was a total waste...you just have to get the fills right and you will start losing weight. Please keep your head up and keep us updated... Kim

I just thought of this and it is related to the season. It was when I was in about 4th grade. My mother had bought the Halloween Candy on sale a few weeks early and left the bags ready to go in the candy basket in her closet until Halloween. I would go in night after night and sneak some reese's peanut butter cups (still my personal all time favorite). I thought she would never notice a few gone as I would put the wrappers in my backpack and throw them away at school. When Halloween came around I heard my mom yelling for me as I was putting my costume on. I followed her yells into the closet to find that I had eated every last piece of candy in the basket and had not realized it. She knew it was me because it wasn't her or my dad. We had no candy to give out for Halloween that year, don't think I didn't go out trick or treating for more though. My mom still gives me a hard time about it. It's funny to me now, but I never realized to think of my food obsession even back then.

I have done all of the above! My personal favorite is walking up the stairs at school and standing in the stairwell until I catch my breath and then walking into the halways after normal breathing came back. There are so many more I can't even begin to remember.

I just gagged out loud at my desk at work...Ah, I love the smell of liverjuice in the morning.

My doc requires you to stay on liquids for 3 days after a fill and ten mushies 3 days after that. That is a pretty substantial amount and there is no way I could get more than liquids down the first few days after my last fill. I tool me 2 weeks to get regulsr food down once the swelling went down from the fill. Take it easy and slowly work new foods through. PBing will take it longer to get the swelling down. So stay with liquids and I hope you feel better.

The doc said this is normal?

Do let us know Vines, 90 minutes a day would suck but you would be the strongest person on the whole board! Just think of it. You could bench us all!...

I have the opposite problem, I would stuff myself until I got that so full feeling pre-band. Now I am never full, but satisfied by the small amounts I eat. I am hoping that is how skinny people do it when they eat the little bit on thier plate and say how full they are. I think it is actually satisfaction rather than fullness. I still miss the fullness since the band, but and learning how to deal with the satisfaction of eating enough food to stop me from feeling hungry any longer. I know this doesn't help you much. There are actuall conditions I have heard of in the UK where the person literally NEVER feels full. Even after eating for hours. I forget what the condition is called, but maybe you should do some research on that too. I remember the column I read was about a child who had this condition and his parents had to lock his food up so he would not die from eating too much. Good idea coming here and researching also. I know these are extreme cases but you just never know...thanks for listening to me babble.

mmmm. beer bong. I guess I can never relive the dorm days again...I guess that's a good thing.

chichigirl is so right. I once seriously wanted to stab a delivery man from a local burger joint because not only was my food late but my food was soggy from the containers they came in and onion rings are inedible soggy to me. I threw a fit screaming and literally wanted to stab this man. Talk about drug addiction, I thing I have seen that on CSI about cocaine or something. I never thought of the correlation that would have to food addiction. I have also filpped out on my husband when he forgot to check the fast food bag for ranch before he left and came home with no ranch for my sandwich. I have never thought about that before. Keep writing Nykee, you and chichigirl gave me some insight. thanks, kim

I could not sleep on my side for 3 months out due to my port. I don't even feel it now unless I drink carbonation and then it's like it wants to shoot out my side. It will go away I promise.

I personally have set my calories at 800 a day just because I am crazy. I also do cardio everyday for 30 minutes which burns about 260 calories. Every nutritionist and doctor I have ever talked to told me not to go below 1200 calories in a day. And that if you aren't losing weight with that you should be exercising to take up the slack on the rest. If you are insulin resistant the calories aren't your problem, the carbs and sugars are. You have to stay away from white breads and pastas and sweets entirely. You can stay low carb, notice I didn't say no carb, especially when you are insuli resistant and lose weight with 1200 calories a day and exercise. Most endocrinologist will say the same. Now this, of course is the healthy way to lose weight and the slow way, so I don't listen, but if you are wanting to be healthy about it no doctor should tell you otherwise. You can go on the web and search for a calculator where you put in your weight/height/age and exercising and it will tell you how many calories you need in 1 day and from that it will tell you how many you have to cut in order to lose what you want. Those calculators will never go below 1200 calories though. I know everyone on here used to have a link to one and if you do please post it for everyone to use. Hope this helps a little...I know the band docs say you don't have to count calories, but you do if you want to weight. Good luck sweetie!

Holy crap, this is my favorite post of all time. Nanu Nanu!

My doc told me it wouldn't cause slippage but it would stretch the pouch. She even got on to me because I went in for a fill and had nothing to eat or drink since the night before and she could still see air pockets in my stomach and said that the gas from the coke I had the night before was still in my stomach and could have caused stretching. She thinks it hadn't yet because my restriction was at a low. My favorite drink is Coconut Malibu and pineapple juice. Best non-bubbly drink eva!

I so too go on my rollercoaster with my food obsession. I cry sometimes because I cannot put things in my mouth I used to. With my restriction now I wouldn't dare try to eat pizza, or rolls an butter, big fat cheeseburgers or a Mc Griddle. Since my band won't take anything solid until after 10:00 I will never get to eat a McGriddle the rest of my life, since Mickey D's stop serving them after breakfast. Why did this make me sad? It should make me estatic. I am coming to terms with it slowly and working on the getting excited part of it that I can no longer eat that crap I shouldn't be eating in the first place, not even on a splurge. I know I will PB and I know I don't want to do that. I second guess everything that I eat now and that is how I am slowly losing my obsession. Keep writing and keep pushing to understand your obsession and how it ticks and how we can get it to stop ticking for good. Good luck!!

I hope you don't find this offensive as we are all over weight and I specifically got the band to lose enough weight to have children. If you read up (even online or in nutrition books) on obesity and pregnancy you will see the dangers there can be for the child and you. Even being just 30 pounds overweight is dangerous and causes all sorts of other problems. I also have PCOS and have noticed that the more weight I lose, the more regular I become and the better opportunity to become pregnant on my own. My OBGYN has also said these things to me. You have got to know that as you become pregnant you will more than likely gain more weight, so I say the more weight you lose the better before getting pregnant. You are still very young and have plenty of time to start a family. The docs tell us to wait a year so that our weight can level off and we can be down to a healthier weight to carry a baby. Please read up on this before you make your decision to start now. Please do your own research to understand the difficulties of having a baby while being obese. I have wanted children for 3 years now and keep holding off knowing the less I weigh the more healthy my baby and pregnancy will be in the long run. It shows you only to be 23 and you have a lifetime ahead of you to be the ones with the kiddos running around. You can take this with a grain of salt or however you want because I am not a doctor, I just hope you take all of that into consideration before you rush into getting pregnant. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you decide and hope you didn't take this e-mail as badgering or being bitchy! ) Kim

You gotta pay by the yard at Lane Bryant, that is why they are so expensive. I've shopped there for years and the styles change, some years are good, some not. I am short with tiny little legs and big in the middle, so no jeans fit me right, I am a big Fashion bug fan and I love TORRID...for us younger folks, thier clothes are hot!