salsa1877

Yep Karey...I agree with them. At this point you HAVE to get an unfill. And you are a star. Why do you think that Frangi, Becky and I turned to you when it came to PS? You have been my role model. Please take care of yourself.

It has always been my belief that the band was more than just a weight loss tool...it was the tool that was going to help us keep the weight off.

Congrats. Running has changed my life. Recovery is going VERY well. IN fact I posted on my blog that I wish that it actually had hurt MORE so that I wouldn't be so anxious to get back out there. You are right though...it is definetly worth it!

Wow...2 mommies...Too much excitement! Actually I have to step on the scale...doctors orders. We have to make sure that I don't drop too low. Both doctors are afraid that I am going to lose too much weight. PS gave me the okay to go to 1500 but if I start losing weight...UP UP UP they go. Yes the band did stop me from being hungry. I honestly didn't have much hunger for the entire time I let the band work for me. I ate when I was supposed to. I am not like Janet and can go for long periods of time without eating during the day. I am used to pretty regualar meal times. I just am not staying full for very long at all. Thanks for the compliments! You are right Peaches I am very happy! Last night I was looking at that picture and the first thought that came to my head was "Wow...you have done so much this year". It wasn't "wow look how much weight I have lost". Shedding the pounds has opened me up to do and be so much more. I feel fantastic. I will feel better when DH gets dinner done though...I'm hungry!

Jody - YOu look amazing. Your smile is so radiant!

Karey - How many days do you have left on this diet? Do you have to pay for your fills? I guess those would be the 2 things that I would think of. I always advocate unfills because staying on the looser side worked for me, but I was eating double the calories that you are. I guess if you could get a bit of an unfill for the duration of the diet and then perhaps get a fill if you need it afterwards that could be an option. i don't have to pay for fills but the drive is 12 hours round trip, so I am very cautious. I hate that "am I or am I not" going to PB feeling.

I can't believe I am saying this but I think I am going to get a slight fill when I see the doctor on 8/11. I want a VERY small fill though. I have done a lot of thinking and I have to use a LOT of will power to make sure that I don't eat too much because I don't get the satiety feeling much any more. I figure I paid for this tool I might as well use it. I have to stay loose enough so that I can get enough calories for when I am training, but I would appreciate some help. Something to be there when I need it. Right now my band does VERY little for me. I have learned a lot about good and proper nutritionm but frankly I am not a big fan of the hunger feelings that I have had for the last couple of days. Right after surgery I had NO appetite...now I could eat the entire kitchen if someone set me loose. Okay stepped on the scale again today and what do you know...the 2 pounds I "gained" during my doctor prescribed calorie fest are gone. Looks like it was swelling related. NOT good for the brain. Now I have that little angel/devil thing going on in my brain. Devil - "You ate all that food and didn't gain any weight. You never let yourself go hungry. If you were hungry you just ate and NOTHING happend. Just keep doing that and you will be fine. Not one thing was measured and the world didn't crash" Angel - "Yeah you ate the food cause you were a week out of surgery and all those calories were needed to HEAL. You aren't going to be healing forever so you had better just get your a$$ back to the way things are supposed to be, get a fill, and deal with the hunger. You have done this for the last 11 months...why would you even think of straying now" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!! Make the voices stop! My PCP did put me on different meds effective today. She agreed that the meds were probably my biggest problem. Everyone was amazed at my recovery. They couldn't believe that I am only 12 days post op!

Renew - I did low carb most of the time that I was losing but that is because that is how I had been eating for about the last 3 years so it was natural for me. Since I really picked up the running I had to start including whole grains and good carbs or I just couldn't make it. I thinnk now is a great time to start looking at how you want to eat for the rest of your life. Do you like eating low carb or do you find yourself craving carbs? Believe me I am still an Atkins fan. I know that I could go back on Atkins in conjunction with the band at any time and drop weight quickly...but when I started getting close to maintenance I really wanted to make sure that I was thinking about how I wanted to live the rest of my life. I also think that their little scale thing was probably off due to everythign that you mentioned. It sounds like you have a great plan going forward and certainly are in much better health.

You know I really wish that I would have known about Whopper or Big Mac Protein drinks a year ago. Wow...I can just imagine my life with them. 1-4 weeks Post-Op - Glorious wonderful shakes that taste like burger heaven 4+ weeks post-op - Whining, b!tching and complaining cause I can't loose weight. 11 months post op - It is okay that I have only lost 25 pounds. That is 25 pounds I won't gain back. I think I should have gone with bypass surgery though! Yep How life would have been sooooooo different!

Thanks for the compliments. I feel fantastic about it. Though I am in total swell hell tonight. Looks like I swallowed a watermelon whole. I am not freaking out toooooo much over the 2 pounds. Some of it could be swelling. I am going down to 1500 because I can't exercise. 1800 is where I can maintain when I am running a couple times a week. They are taking me off of the Cymbalta because they think that is what is causing the lightheadness and fainting. I talked to another friend today that had be taken off of it for the exact same reason. Plus I have about 75% of the side effects of the meds since surgery, which after reading about 50 medical journal articles yesterday I found out is normal if you have a spike in dosage due to taking more meds or reducing your weight. Well in a matter of hours I lost 3% of my body weight which is pretty significant considering the journal talked about rapid weightloss as 1.45% in a week. So my PS got me in to my PCP tomorrow with the hopes of getting me onto something that doesnt' have quite the side effects.I don't want to go off of something completely though because I can't go back to the feeling of compulsiveness that I was going through. Well I am going to try and go to bed soon. I finally fell asleep at 4:30AM last night and then was up at 7:30....Yep ANOTHER side effect of the meds is INSOMNIA...No kidding.

Good evening! I went to my PS today and she said everything is looking great. I got my final drain out today...YEAH!!!! Now I am in swell hell though! Seriously swelling bad today! I did get permission to go back down to 1500 calories tomorrow. Thank goodness since I pretty much gained 2 pounds in the last few days...and can't do anything to get them off. She did tell me that once my PCP starts getting me off the Cymbalta that I can start walking 1 mile per day and then increasing after a week. I just have to make sure to wear my binder. No problem there...it hurts without it. We went to Wally world today to get some yogurt and I found running tank tops for 3$ so I bought one. Here is a picture of me in it. There are NO binders, no spanx...just my bare belly and the shirt. It isn't the greatest picture of me, but my belly looks freaking fantastic!

Okay...I was going to take a better picture with our camera but I just had to post this here. I just bought a new running tank top today because it was only 3$ and this is what I look like in it. Mind you...there are no binders, no pressure garments... just the shirt and my bare belly. Yeah I know...HOLY SH!T

Here are my pictures from the half marathon. Too cheap to buy them so you can check out the website. I look totally constipated in the first picture...that was about .5 miles before I stopped running because of the pain. 552 FinishShots.com - Search Results

YEAH.... DRAINS OUT! Sorry Frangi but I beat you on this one. I only drained 10cc's in 40 hours. Let the swell hell start! I have been much more swollen on the right side (the first drain gone) than I have on the other side and I am assuming that is because of the lack of drain. So I guess now I will have equal opportunity swelling! Oh yeah and we got me into my PCP tomorrow in hopes of doing something about the Cymbalta. Talked to a friend of mine today who said that she experienced the same thing when she was on it.

Yep...one day I had to choose between dirty pants and ones that could potentially cause me to lose my teaching license for indecent exposure. I figured I had better go with the dirty ones so that I still had a paycheck to buy new clothes with!

LJM its the Enter key that throws them off. I think it used to say RETURN. So now they don't know which damn button to hit.

Karey I was thinking that losing the weight so quicly might be putting the body under stress and I know that my band tightens WAY up when I am stressed...both physicall and mentally. So perhaps that is why you are so tight. Good luck. You are doing fantastic.

I have been on and off of antidepressants for many years. I have just been on Cymbalta for a month because I was hyperventilating so bad that it was interfereing with everything. The anxiety about maintaining my weight was so great that it was throwing me into panic attacks. We tried a lot of things because I didn't want to go back on meds but when it was getting to the point that I couldn't hardly work because of the hyperventilating I figured I didn't have much of a choice. The meds have helped me not freak out over calories. I was to the point that if I was told to eat 1800 calories in an attempt to maintain that I would eat no more than 1805. I would weigh my food obsessively, count calories obsessively, and pretty much was making my life and everyone around me miserable. Since I started taking the meds I have calmed down a lot. I still worry about calories (though in the last 3 days have consumed several thousand thanks to docs orders) but not to the point that I am shaking and panicking about it. I would love to never take them again but I also don't want to feel like I did before I started taking them. Hopefully we will figure something out. Thank you to everyone for all of your support. I greatly appreciate it!

You all are right. I am just not one that can do nothing. I am too dizzy to work on school curriculum so I have been reading, reading, reading. IN fact I have read 4 books in the last 3 days! That is why I was hoping I was going to get to go to the library today. But maybe tomorrow. I am going to try and work on some school work but I don't know if I have it in me mentally right now. I have a lot to do so I have to get it done sometime!

I know I need to take it easy it si just that I feel so damn good from the neck down. I have VERY little pain...a little discomfort if I move the wrong way. But otherwise I feel 98% of my normal self. So I think that I should be able to do whatever I want. Then there is this whole dizziness/lightheaded issue. My PS is more convinced today that it is a drug reaction to my Cymbalta. We and she looked up the side effects possible and I have almost 75% of them. I have been on this med for about 1 month but I read a few journal studies that show that surgery/anesthesia with cymbalta is not recommended. None of us new that before apparently as it is not in the general literature of the meds. I spent several hours reading medical journals this morning. One of the side effects is syncope (or passing out) and lightheadedness. PS thinks that with the hormonal changes caused me the removal of fat and the fact that she took me off my birth control for a month to reduce blood clot risks may be another part. Also there could have been an interaction with the anesthesia. Problem is that I can't just stop taking the Cymbalta. You have to be weened off of it. We are going to call my PCP as early as possible tomorrow to see what she says. I think I am going to demand to be taken off of it. She said when she first put me on it that she could switch me to prozac (never taken that one) if I couldn't take the Cymbalta. Hopefully she can do that tomorrow.

Congrats BBK! You totally deserve that small!

Uggghhh... Almost biffed it this morning getting out of bed. Holy crap I got so lightheaded. My legs were shaking, I almost threw up (that would hurt), and my vision was going in and out. So now I can't walk my mile today. I am pissed off BIG TIME! I do get to walk to the library, but that is about 3 blocks from here.

Uggghhh... Almost biffed it this morning getting out of bed. Holy crap I got so lightheaded. My legs were shaking, I almost threw up (that would hurt), and my vision was going in and out. So now I can't walk my mile today. I am pissed off BIG TIME! I do get to walk to the library, but that is about 3 blocks from here.

WOWEEEE! OMG you look SPECTACULAR. I know the before pictures are hard, but it makes the afters feel so much better.

Today was a pretty good day despite the fact that my drain is leaking around the incision. I had to resort to using a feminine pad around the drain to catch it all. Leaked on to my underwear this morning. I did take a shower this morning and managed to stay on two feet the entire time. My arse is thanking me. It really hurts from the fall. I bumped my tailbone on the back of the toilet today and almost shot straight up. Unfortunately my sore tummy muscles stopped me. So we did take some pictures this morning so here they are. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new tummy. I put a t-shirt on this morning and there was no bulge! IT WAS PERFECTLY FLAT!