clairec

Hi to you all, Delilieflower I started off at the weight you did, and which is higher than the average bear! You are doing really well. There will be times when your weight does not seem to go down, and times when it suddenly does for no reason. Who knows why but it is just one of those things. I had only lost 83 pounds since the surgery 6 months ago when I came away on holiday, so you are doing better than me. I had lost weight in the 3 years before then so my weight is lower than yours overall if your ticker is correct, but your speed of weight loss is quite a bit more. So celebrate, and it will carry on soon I am sure. While we celebrate the fact that quite a lot of our group are in ONEderland, we can also celebrate when we get into the 200 range, I just have and you will soon. Everyone will then also celebrate with us, that is what this group is for.. celebrating, supporting and advising and sometimes giving a kick up the butt. Janette thanks so much for your excellent posts, really interesting. Sarahgirrl, you sound as if you are doing really well, it is not easy being perfect all the time, and none of us are, cut yourself a little bit of slack if you can. Hopetochangeyour life, you made it on here and welcome. We are all 6 months down the line as you can tell. This is a great group and we are so lucky to have found each other. We are happy to answer any questions you have. We are in the Smokie mountains at the moment which is just beautiful. Just had to say I went up a mountain chair lift, they were great about the disability side of things and sent up a wheelchair ahead of me to sit on, and back again. They were really great. I asked Alan to ask them about the weight limit before we bought the tickets under my old mantra about the times it is not safe to be "creative" about how much you weigh. With an anaesthetist before an operation, bungee jumping, hot air ballooning and in our case a chair lift going high up a mountain....! He said that they have people much bigger than your wife going up, which was wonderful to hear. I guess i always think that I am the biggest person on the planet, but not any more maybe! My mother took a picture of us coming down and even I had to say I didn't look THAT big. So a real result. Only problem is that I forgot that I was wearing flipflops and there was no foot rest so I had to clench my toes and keep my feet straight all the way to stop my shoes going into the abyss. Far from easy! Hope you are all having a good Summer. xx

Hi, Well done Sarah, Samantha and Deanna. Everyone is doing so well, as Deanna says we must sty in touch. Take care all of you Claire

Hi Janette, Nice to see you on here just now, how is the weather? I know what you mean about gurgles and intestinal hurry. it is a constant feature isn't it! However my gremlin is worse that and on days when he is having a lie down in a darkened room all is much better. Diarrhoea can still pounce unexpectedly but eating is less difficult. Well I have just revamped my ticker after your comment on Heidi's onederland status and realised that I am twopleased to be where I am. I will never be in onderland it just won't happen with the hormones etc but i started in the 4s and I have just tipped into the 2s yaaay! Thought you would like to know... Hope all is well Claire

Hi Heidi, I think you will find that most of us have had our times when we do not seem to be losing. My weight loss goes in fits and starts. The thing to do is not to panic and focus on some of the things that are going well, like the little non scale victories and the inches lost. I suppose that we will all stop losing at some point and we have been panicking from the first day of surgery if the scales are not showing a loss on an ongoing basis. There is no reason to think that you have stopped losing now, that would be really very early when everything seems to say that the weight loss might slow down a bit but continue for much longer than this. We are meant to be able to lose around two thirds of our excess body weight, although for a lot of people this might stabilise at around 50% I have read. A lot of people seem to be doing better than that though, so don't lose heart. You must be due to lose more based on the numbers on your ticker so your body just needs to cach up, which it probably will very soon. Please don't panic, just stay calm and stop taking diet pills, I am sure that is not good for you. If you have been exercising a lot then muscle build up can be the reason for less weight loss, or even a temporary gain but don't stop the exercise because of that.Sometimes changing what you eat might make a difference, not that you are eating badly but maybe your body might like a bit of a change. I honestly am not sure whether anything really makes a difference really but panicking won't make the weight loss happen again either, it will just make you feel bad. So that's my advice if it helps at all. Don't panic, stay calm and wait for it to start again. Meanwhile focus on the other victories and advantages of the 50 pounds you have lost. And well done to you too, you are doing well, you just don't think you are at the moment. Take care Claire

Well at least I am in good company Dreamin! I haven't been sick, thank goodness. It's the unpredictability of it all though that it is difficult. On any day I can eat most things, but I can't eat all of them every day and there no safe "go to" foods when I need to spend most of the day away from a rest room. I wonder if there is anyone out there with a little gremlin... Thanks for replying and take care Claire

Hi Kim, It seems unusual here, both the alien and the frequent and urgent diarrhoea. On the other hand I don't seem to get the dumping syndrome and on a good day I am very versatile about what I can eat. Other days nothing works. I am seeing the dietician a few days after we get back so I will ask her. Thanks for getting back to me. Claire

Hi, Dreamin you are looking so great, well done. Ryn I know what you mean about minor or non scale victories, they mean so much, and boots are important. So you are ready for the winter now. I can now cross my legs on some chairs, it has never been heard of before, I am amazed! Has anyone else got a little alien living inside their stomach, causing mayhem and the most amazing drain sounds? The problem is that it causes food not to go down well at all, and often I have to abandon meals at the start. It makes me feel slightly sicky and things can get stuck and then there is the diarrhoea and parping. All not very attractive and it seems to go on for days on end. Even drinking water can start it off and what happens next is so unpredictable. Not good news for our long road trip coming up next week, anything could happen! Hopefully it won't but the diarrhoea hits very fast and I need a restroom fast, and I mean fast. Has anyone ele got an alien like mine? None of the people in my British group have, am I unique? I really hope not and that someone has some suggestions. If not I will have to call in ghostbusters or Sigourney Weaver. On the up side the weight loss is slower but continuing (though goodness knows what it will do while I am away), I am doing sitting down exercises, and as I said I can cross my legs. All my clothes are too big and if I have them taken in they still don't work and look too big, I am getting ready to sell them on eBay, I just want them to go to a good home really because these things are difficult to find and I have been building up my wardrobe for some time. Then an excuse to shop, but what size am I? All very confusing but what a great problem to have. Take care all of you Claire

Hi Janette, Well you are doing great too aren't you! The awards come in half stones so you are almost at your 5 and a half stone award! Your area sounds lovely and I can feel a trip to New England and New York state coming on, in which case it would be great to meet you in person if/ when we do that. I am sure that it will be when not if, but we also want to go to Yellowstone and the Rockies soonish. As long as we do not exhaust ourselves with this trip coming up next week that is! I would love to meet you. Take care Claire

Hi, Well Deanna I would be surprised, like Janette, if it was eggs. Particularly if it has never happened before with eggs. Very odd, I do hope it is one off. I am really glad that you are still losing quite well Janette. I think most of us are slowing down a bit. I have lost 78 pounds in 6 months now but 126 since I started Slimming World 4 years ago. It won't mean much to you all but I got my 9 stone award last week! I also now have a personal trainer coming to my house to do exercises sitting down (because of my spinal problems). I am trying to strengthen my core and the muscles around my spine and in my legs which have gone AWOL since the operation. My muscles are the things holding my spine in place and my ability to go up a few steps has got much worse in the 6 months. So it is urgent really, also if I can boost my metabolic rate (which is a real problem) that would be good. Fingers crossed. The flipping diarrhoea etc is not great at all and how we are going to manage our road trip coming up soon is going to be a challenge. Lots of meds I think! Janette, I met someone at the weekend who lives near Rochester which is near you isn't it? New York state sounds lovely, we must do a road trip there next. Anyway not long till we go, only 10 days and I will definitely keep in touch while we are there. Take care all of you. Claire

Hi, Deanna, you look fantastic, how great that is. What is random dumping syndrome, I would be interested to know? Kim, I think you are very brave doing a detox as well as doing your normal eating thing. What are you actually doing with the detox? Happy 6 month anniversary to us all. I can't believe that I have only known you all 6 months. We have been through such a lot together and we are all doing so well. I hope that we all carry on keeping in touch for years to come. Issues are less immediate now but we are such a strong support system for each other and everyone is so nice. Take care all of you. Claire

Well done, so glad that you are feeling so great Claire

Well done Samantha, 91 pounds is absolutely wonderful. Is that all since surgery in February? That is such a lot to lose and your volleyball and softball sound great. You must feel great,congratulations! Take care Claire

Hello to you all, I am glad that you had a good time in Europe, Deanna. As you say the time difference and the jet lag is not easy, particularly flying east I find. Coming back from Hawaii takes weeks to rally feel that you are back in the time zone. Tammy, you look really good. Slow and steady wins the race and we can't all lose as fast as others, and some of us have further to go. It is just wonderful seeing each others successes and celebrating those. Kim, yes I think that having future surgery will be necessary for me too, although I would rather avoid it, all things being equal. It is unavoidable I think. As for my time off work I resigned from my really full on role in the Fall last year and would not have been able to cope with the post o symptoms since then if I had still been there. We do have more Annual Leave time over here than you do though and I have always been able to take about 5 weeks at least and 7 weeks including Bank Holidays most of the time. However I am still really busy teaching but a lot of it is on line. That meant that I didn't take any sick leave following my surgery and I can't really take any time as holiday without working but I can work from anywhere for a lot of the time. So on our trip to the South I will carry on working and will have a large glut of marking. That will be really difficult to cope with while traveling around all the time so we will see how that works out. Janette, I am not really very keen on those sweet sorts of foods and I don't seem to really dump (well not yet anyway). What will be lovely is trying the BBQ foods and some of the savoury stuff. With small amounts I am sure that will be fine... Take care all of you. Claire

My goodness Erin, look at you!!!Amazing. My weight loss has slowed considerably but the inches are looking ok. I don't want to stop losing at this point, that would be disappointing but I have been warned that I won't lose what others do. Just had a fantastic week away in Italy and didn't do anything dreadful eating wise but that might have made some difference. Take care and well done!!! Claire

Hi, Bran and Miller you look great and it is good to see you on here. Tammy, the carbs issue is interesting isn't it. Hopefully it will go away again. You never know there could be some hormonal link as Erin suggests, despite being way past that. I am having the odd hot flush which is new and strange because my hormones are in such a state, and have been all my life. So I am waiting to see what happens next... The boobs issue I also have, and they were very small in the first place. Push up bras are everything, they look good on the outside and only we know there is nothing (or very little) in there! Someone in my bariatric group got wolf whistled by 3 men for the first time in years and she found it really funny because she thought what a shock they would get if she flashed her flappy non existent boobs at them. Take care all of you Claire

Hi, Wow Erin you two look absolutely fantastic. Thanks for sharing the pictures. As you say you have both done so well and look how healthy and happy you look. I like the fact that you feel more free, and not guilty, and you look so comfortable in your own skins. Interesting what you and Wallflower say about not tolerating much in the way of sweet things. Incredible that a banana would do that. I am really happy that fruit is not a problem for me, because i do enjoy it. Take care Claire

Hi again, Hope I haven't alienated anyone by my recent post. It was meant to be caring and compassionate in relation to how we all treat that important person in our lives - us! We would be so much kinder if it was in relation to someone else. Wallflower, of course you are one of us! I have been to the hairdresser recently but mine knows about my surgery. My hair is falling out and she is trying to reassure me as much as she can. Leigh, it sounds like you are having a really rough time. Losing all that weight is not so important as feeling well. It sounds like your weight loss is extreme because you have been so unwell. I do hope that things start improving for you soon. We are here for you. Take care Claire

Hi Deanna, Janette and everyone, I am glad that you are feeling a little bit more on track Deanna. It is so important that we can share our thoughts on here, with our friends who really understand what we are experiencing. Also if we can't be honest with ourselves how can we start to really understand what our problems are, let alone solve them. A few things occurred to me when I was reading your post though and I wanted to give an alternative perspective. Firstly, I think that we tend to expect our weight to gradually slide downwards in a predictable way. When it doesn't do that we think that there is "something wrong" and we are then very vulnerable to thinking that we have done "something wrong". I think that we are all experiencing stalls in weight loss and times when things go better, but it comes in fits and bursts. When we are in a stall we keep searching for reasons why this is happening and try to come up with reasons that perhaps don't give the full picture. Maybe we should just accept that this is the nature of the beast and that we are looking for trends rather than day to day or week to week losses. Then we won't beat ourselves up when it happens, we just think of it as part of the process. So we should anticipating these stalls not blaming ourselves when they happen. Secondly, many us are used to feeling guilty a lot of the time, particularly when it comes to food. So we are really vulnerable to trying to blame ourselves when we have done something which is not ideal. We are not perfect, and we wouldn't want to be, because we would be impossible to live with and hard to relate to. What is actually wrong with a few fried clams or some sugar free ice cream? As Janette says it won't kill us on an occasional basis. Was that really the reason for a slower weight loss, or was it just a normal part of the process? There are times when we can't do our normal exercise, whether that is because we are away from home, or because we are busy with work or because we are ill or injured. As soon as possible we need to get back to our normal activity but we shouldn't feel guilty for those understandable reasons for doing less exercise. It is the trends which are most important. We shouldn't be gradually upping our portion sizes, or unhealthy foods or reducing our amounts of exercise on an ongoing basis, we should be keeping to the healthy principles which we know work best for our current and future health. However a few less healthy food choices, are they really so bad for us? Lastly, we should be focusing on being happy and maximising our potential in life. Doesn't that include being happy and guilt free. If we feel guilty and blame ourselves that makes us beat ourselves up and lowers our self esteem and self confidence. There are plenty of people out there who can do that for us if we let them, do we really need to do that to ourselves? We are so much more healthy and capable of doing things than we were last Summer. If we had imagined how we are now even at the end of last year we would have been amazed at the changes in ourselves. We have done so well and should be congratulating ourselves, rather than concentrating on our perceived failings. I hope you really enjoyed your fried clams and your 4th July weekend Janette and I hope that you really enjoy your trip to Scotland. Deanna, you might not want to try the sugar free ice cream again because it sounded like it didn't agree with you, but other sugar free desserts might be fine. Or you might prefer fruit, it is always your choice. I thought that food on cruises can be really healthy so surely you can eat with your friends 3-4 times a day. You will be eating far less than them, with healthier foods most of the time, but surely that is fine. You will get back on track as soon as you are home. We won't spoil the success of the operation, or get in the way of the reasons we chose to do it just by having to make different decisions at times. Maybe we just need to make those active decisions rather than slip ups that we are not in control of. We have a tool for life and this is a life long journey and not a quick sprint.My dietician said that they do not recommend weighing and measuring food because it is better to just gauge how much to eat. So I stopped doing that and just listen to my body and stop when it feels right. I find that I end up having the amounts I am should be having, without trying. So maybe you can leave the food scales behind while you are away Deanna. We have made a huge decision to be healthy and we all believe in that. We don't want to start doing things that we shouldn't and we do need to do as much exercise as we can and eat the foods and portion sizes that we should be. Let's not let guilt get in the way of us enjoying our new lives. I am having a week in Italy next week and then touring the Deep South states for a month from mid August. I don't know how eating will be then and it is a matter of do what I say, not what I do, because I could be beating myself up too. If I am please feel free to give me a kick up the backside. Have wonderful vacations all of you and ENJOY, we so deserve it! Take care Claire

Hi, Well I am not in your league but I am having some hot flushes which I haven't had at all because of my hormonal problems. They are fairly rare and mild though. I am generally much more cold than hot but then get a bit restless at night and have to cool down then. I don't think that I am having mood swings, but they could start any day I suppose! Take care Claire

A smiling you would be great Tammy but wow the difference! You look great. Claire

Hi, Oh dear the hair situation does not sound good. I have not been told that my B-12 is low enough to need replacements and whether you take it or not seems to depend on that with my surgeon. I have some Rogaine in case I need it which was suggested on here, I bought it when I was in the States last month. I will bear your suggestions in mind for the future. As people have said the hair loss seems to peak at 6 months, however much or little we all still have to lose. Mine is disappearing a little but not as badly as I feared... yet! I am waiting to see what happens from here. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Janette, happy first July 4th, how exciting! Take care Claire

Hi, It sounds as if everyone is doing really well. I think not knowing what size to buy is a nice problem to have but it causes difficulties too. I am not as small as most of you so I am still in big sizes and I do most of my clothes shopping online so it is all a bit of a gamble and I am not being too adventurous in terms of ordering things too small. Also I am buying end of line summer things in sales, which is possibly not a good idea because by next Summer they might be way too big. I have no idea of what I will be able to wear in the Fall either. I am not buying much but just a few things. I am finding that my altered larger clothes somehow don't suit me very much and I am wearing the one dress that I have bought recently all the time. My weight is not going down very much and some days I lose more than I expected and then gain again. I try not to sweat the small stuff and the numbers on the dial and just appreciate the fact that I am smaller. I don't think that I am getting bruises though that is interesting, maybe that will happen to me later. How is the hair loss going. Mine is not too bad really and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Janette, I hope you enjoy your break. I am eating out quite a bit at times and I just keep to healthy principles but if I have a spoonful of stuff that is not ideal I try not to worry because it is only a spoonful. Have a great time. Have a great July 4th all of you. It sounds like a great time to be in the States. Take care Claire

Interesting isn't it Janette, people can't quite spot what the difference is some of the time. I attended the graduation ceremonies of my last year's group of students last week and they know me well enough to comment on the fact that I have lost weight. However, they obviously could tell that something was different, but couldn't work out what. I am really glad that you have lost some weight again. it really is hit and miss isn't it, but 4 weeks is such a long time. hopefully the trend will continue for a while now. I think a recumbent bike will be too expensive if I get one that is ok for my weight. I will see if anything is possible elsewhere. Take care Claire

Hi Tammy, That sounds like a good idea, if you have a local gym. I think I will look into recumbent bikes and also contact a gym that has just opened nearby which apparently is particularly for people with disabilities. Thanks for the help and I hope that all is ok with you. Claire