kagoscuba

Once you are optimally filled, pizza won't be an option, so you won't have to worry about a stretched pouch. I was eating small amounts of pretty much whatever I wanted to after my first fill and lots of weight loss. When I went in for fill #2, my band was wide open, and I asked why, since I had seen it dramatically smaller during the first fill. My doctor explained to me the saline and body-fat work together to keep the band at a certain diameter. If rapid weight loss occurs, then the opening of the band can become larger without an unfill. That is what happened to me. Now that I have the second fill, I am eating the cup to 2 cups of food per meal I am supposed to. I'd be lucky to force down 1.5 pieces of pizza in a day, much less one meal. Not to mention it wouldn't even be worth it because I'd feel partially stuck and waiting for a PB all of the time. Unless you are geting stuck and PB'ing a lot, you are not stretching your pouch. Your band is probably just too wide open.

"My Dr forbids NSAIDS, smoking, soda pop, and caffeine" The first two are medical necessities (smoking can cause ulcers for some reason, with the band). The next two are purely lifestyle changes packaged with the medical necessities to have the appearance of being "required." Personally, I used to drink 3-6 sodas a day, and I haven't touched one since being banded. The carbonation wouldn't feel good, and by being off of them for three months now, I do not miss them. Even being next to someone drinking one, I could care less. Now, steak I miss. The caffeine I never dropped. I have three kids under age 5, an 80 minute commute each way, and I work as a project manager. Caffeine is the only way I function most days. Diet Red Bull has only 10 calories as well.

The story is still somewhat in doubt, but the Zoo officials in San Francisco believe the fatality "victim" of the tiger "attack" may have actually caused it himself by dangling his leg over the wall of the tiger pen. They think the tiger may have been unable to jump 20 feet over the wall, but it was capable of jumping 18 feet and using the guy's body as a climbing apparatus, then decided to munch on him a little. If this turns out to be true, it is another case of Stupidity in Motion, and our gene pool is a little cleaner today. Sorry for the crassness, but I'm all out of sniffles for a dee-dee-dee who teases a tiger and becomes a snack. Now, the two guys chilling out in the cafe who got attacked? I do feel sorry for them. Zoos should get the idea that humans will continue to be stupid (this is far from the first case of this) and provide security for the animals FROM THE HUMANS. Normal fences obviously don't do the trick, so how about electric ones or razor-wire? Pure craziness...:faint:

The biggest Protein myth is that you can only digest 30 grams of protein at one time. Find out what's wrong with this belief and just how much protein you need. This is a common question. I also get variations such as, how much protein can you digest at one time? There are two ways to answer this, because there really two questions being asked. 1) How much protein can the digestive system physically absorb into the bloodstream from a meal? And the MORE IMPORTANT QUESTION... 2) How much protein can you body actually utilize? The answers... 1) About 95% and higher, unless you have some type of digestive system malfunction. So if you get convinced by supplement companies to drink a 42g Protein shake in 5 minutes, you'll still probably absorb at 38 or more grams of that protein. Your muscle growth is not limited by the amount of protein you can DIGEST or ABSORB. Your muscle growth IS LIMITED by the amount of protein that your body can utilize for protein synthesis. So the answer to #2... 2) A lot less than you think. You really don't need 40, or 30, or probably even 20g of protein per meal to keep your protein synthesis humming along. See Nutrition Help Expert Brad Pilon's post on "How Much Protein Do We Really Need" Any protein that your body can't use for growth will be shuttled into a process where it is broken down (de-aminated: meaning the nitrogen is removed from the molecule and it becomes a carbon skeleton) to be used in energy pathways. Now, there are benefits for eating extra protein (in my opinion) when dieting, mainly that it helps to suppress appetite. But the bottom line to the question I am asked almost everyday is... a) Your body can digest and absorb almost all of the protein you eat without problem. Your muscles can only do so much with protein...the muscle growth process is RARELY, if ever limited by the amount of protein we consume. Almost all of us can easily get enough protein for maximum muscle growth without the need for eating 50g of protein 6 times per day. Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, and Gunter Schlerkcamp excluded, of course. Overall, I'd think twice about the need to slam down a 40-50g protein shake...just think of the children and puppies you'll save by not gassing them out with protein farts. Real food should cover all your protein needs. Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training for Fat Loss Nutrition Guidelines have helped thousands of men and women with weight loss and fat burning in less than 45 minutes three times per week. More nutrition help and fat loss workouts show you how to burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment. Craig's bodyweight for abs exercises help you lose fat without any equipment at all.

my gun-lovnig buddy thinks I am a facist, but here was my suggestion: 1. Let people buy ANY gun they want to up to .50 caliber, including automatics, if they can pass class III muster. 2. Every gun must be registered (just like now), and EVERY gun sold or transferred ownership (like parent to child) must be witnessed by a certified gun-shop owner or something like a gun-notary. 3. Any person caught in possession of an unregistered firearm is considered a domestic terrorist and will be punished severely to include the death penalty, if they commit a felony while in possession of an illegal firearm. 4. Any person caught selling or importing unregistered firearms will be classified a domestic terrorist and will suffer severe penalties. 5. Right to carry permits must be allowed in all 50 states and this includes NJ too. In addition, if states refuse to offer right to carry permits (without stupid rules like NJ), there will be a stipulation that any person who is killed by an illegal firearm in that state and they did not have the right to protect themselves, the state is required to pay the estate of the deceased $10m. If common sense won't make them do the right thing, money certainly will.

Read a nice little tidbit this morning where the two factions who control the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem got into a fist-fight yesterday, because somebody from the Greek Orthodox faction accidently stepped into the Armenian section. Nice. There's nothing that says we love Jesus like fighting inside the church built in his name, at his birthplace. No wonder I have no use for organized religion.

I was seriously wanting some refreshment, took four sips of Isopure and threw it in the garbage. It tasted horrible to me. I was much better off with Myoplex RTD shakes and making shakes myself. During my clear liquid stage (only a week) I was told not to worry about Protein, as it takes awhile for protein deficiency to start to bother you. It's all relative though to what you personally like. I would advise against buying a lot of anything until you are sure you like it. I made that mistake with the protein bullets, and they are still sitting in my house.

"SO??? WE'RE SUPPOSE TO EAT THREE MEALS AND HAVE 60 GRAMS OF PROTEIN?" Yep. That's actually fairly easy to do. I get 20 grams from my protein pudding, 47 from my protein drink, and an additional 20-30 from tuna. My doctor also allows a protein snack, in addition to the three meals. 100+ grams a day of protein is not uncommon for a lot of us.

"'The state' here in sunny Orygun made the life of a neighbor miserable for years, when they were insisting he pay taxes YEARLY on the estimated market value of his 20 acres of timber..." While I think this is absurd, this is no different than the IRS making the new owners of a special home-run baseball pay taxes on it, right? The guy that had Barry Bonds' record breaking ball sold it because he was facing a huge tax bill and could not afford it.

I agree with spanking, as long as the woman spanking me is smoking hot.

Real restriction can be a bit tricky too. Treat every new food or even food you've successfully eaten elsewhere carefully. Case in point...I can eat a couple of dumplings from my local chinese place no problem...went to another place where they were a bit more doughy and almost PB'd on my first one. The rest of the meal was, "Ok, Kurt, small bite, chew, chew, chew, chew a little more, small bite, ect." There is not much more of a hopeless feeling than sitting in a restaurant thinking to yourself, "so, where am I going to spew?" In a bar, ok, I'd be typically tipsy, and I can't be embarrassed of what I remember fuzzily. Stone-cold sober, with my wife and kids, on Christmas Day, having a nice public lunch...not so nice.

"Look honey, I unwrapped an orgy...SWEET!!" Nope, that probably wouldn't go over very well. Besides, she'd probably say, "Who said the gift was for you!" I'd imagine the whole child-in-the-fire thing would need to be suspended from ages 12-18, or we'd never advance as a culture.

I wonder what would happen if the US shut "the borders" on these lands and no longer allows importation of goods, dissallows "international" travel, shuts off all utilities, and shuts off all communication lines. I wonder how far this "we are not American anymore" mentaility will go. If they want to be independent, fine, but let's see how far they actually make it on their own. It's a publicity stunt.

Sweethot...It wasn't about killing God. It was that God does not exist and people are responsible for their own evildoing. It's a concept that scares a lot of people.

I would not say Derick is a neo-Nazi. He is not advocating the death of anyone except those who have shown a overwhelming desire to do the same to him for a dissimilar reason. Radical Muslims want to kill anyone who is not a Muslim. People with Derick's mindset want to kill Muslims for self-preservation, not for the fact they are Muslim. Their adherence to Islam is just a side-effect to who they are. I do not recall Derick advocating the destruction of Jews, Mormons, Hindi, Daoists, Scientologists, ect. I just saw him reacting to a group of people who have declared jihad on him and his kind (anyone not Muslim). I understand his frustration, although I do not, in every case (I would personally help him shoot every member of Hamas and Hezbollah), share his destructive idea. Unless it has been effectively hidden, I do not remember a loud outcry from a lot of Islamic groups for many of the anti-not-muslim attacks in the last couple of decades, nor do I remember a whole lot of gratitude for support given for aid to majority Islamic areas like Indonesia after the tsunami. Hatred is bred from fear and/or ignorance. I would suspect hatred in this case was bred from fear and no one cares enough to not be ignorant, since learning about radical Islamic people doesn't do any good anyway. They'll still want to kill non-believers all the same anyway, so why bother? For those Muslims not wanting to be grouped into "the a-holes we need to kill" category, they'd better be more proactive in their actions/protests against their bretheren, or they run the risk of being considered one in the same.

"people like him tend to garner alot of attention becuase they survived while many others did not." Agreed. I just lost a friend to pancreatic cancer less than a year after it was diagnosed. He was 37. As far as all of the scenarios go; it is still a matter of triage and business. An insurance company that issues out money from a sympathetic point of view is not doing their job. If I have a 17 year old...better yet, let's use my 4 year old daughter as an example. She's sick, and has a 65% chance of living for an additional 6 months with a new liver, and probably about a 10% chance of living an additional year. Also on the list for a new liver is a 38 year old man who has a 98% chance of living an additional 10 years with a new liver, who should get it? My 4 year old is obviously the emotional choice, but she's not the objective one. Of course, if the insurance company wouldn't pay, I'd re-mortgage my house, sell my car, and do whatever else it took to pay for the surgery. That's one item I saw missing from both reported stories.

I don't care much for insurance companies either, but CNN reported one fact ABC did not. The UCLA doctors (the girl's doctors) told Cigna that she had a 65% chance of surviving 6 months with the transplant. While the report did not say so, in cases like this that means the long-term survival outlook was even more grim, and that was WITH the transplant. From a triage standpoint, she was not a viable candidate. While that doesn't make her case any less heart-breaking, there were other candidates who probably had far better long term prognosis with the transplant. Sad story.

5 year weight history is what BCBS used to deny me. I said F that, went ahead as a self-pay, then submitted anyway and have been paid for everything except the hospital stay. So out of a $23k bill, I've ended up paying about $13k. Don't lose hope!!

So, I'm wondering how long it's going to take for her boyfriend to get charged with statutory rape? In Louisiana (where she lives), it is illegal for her boyfriend (he's 19, not 18) to have sex with her. Since he's not a black kid getting a blow job, nothing will probably happen, like it did in Georgia. Just thought I'd stir the pot a little. I don't think anything was wrong in either case, other than a lack of judgement. Certainly nothing criminal.

It boggles my mind how any rational person could seriously believe the earth is 6000 years old and all dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as humans. It baffles me further that rational people would base this falsehood on a book that is to be believed on faith alone. If the book would have been given to all people of the earth by angels from on high, or if the book mysteriously appeared at the bedside of every newborn, then I might be more inclined to believe its infallibility. Considering its multiple renditions and less than ethical beginning (men chose what it contained and what it did not), to base science on it is indefensible, except by the hopelessly deluded. I am not an atheist, but I am not a blind believer either. Saying the planet is 6000 years old is laughable. The people trying to say the earth is 6000 years old are doing it from a basis of trying to "shoehorn" their science into what they consider a fact: Genesis. Scientists trying to determine how old the is are always striving to learn more and question what is already known. While it is true science is guessing the planet is 5 billion years old, you won't find a single credible scientist who would say the planet is less than, say for argument's sake, 1 million years old. Even with that arbitrary number, I would venture a guess 99.9% of credible scientists would scoff at that idea too. For crying out loud, you don't even need carbon dating to do some of the dating. By measuring sedimentary layers a rough idea of time passage can be done, as well as studying ice cores. The point being, is how can I take seriously a candidate who believes, at his very core, that the points of creationism are indisputable and ignores science? I'm sure he is a very effective preacher and he sounds like a genuinely likeable guy, plus he's a ripper on the guitar, but as President? He'd have had a better chance if the president who preceded him didn't give Evangelicals a bad connotation. 20 years ago I would have never voted for Romney (my Methodist church told me they were a bunch of cultists), but I know better now, and he will likely have my vote. At least he has shown a tendancy to have views more appropriate for the national level.

I'll take skinny over chunky, heifer, whale, two tons of fun, or "jeez, you've put on a lot of weight" any day. I just want to hug people when they call me skinny.

My surgery was at 9:30 a.m., and I walked out, finally, at 8:30 p.m. I could have walked out at 4, if they would have let me. Hospital charged me for 24 hour stay though, as it is their minimum. That was a nice little $13k stick in the eye.

Some people just don't "get it." My personal trainer is awesome; the nutritionist at my gym? Not so much. When I told him my nutritional needs, he said, "My girlfriend is overweight and she mentioned getting surgery. I told her if she did, I'd break up with her." A-hole then went into a story about how he has helped her lose 50 pounds in the last year, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. He's a control freak and I never used him for anything past the initial free consultation, nor will I use him in the future. A weight loss adventure is just like a vacation. Take friends along from the beginning, because few others, including your friends, will understand or care about the path you went on, if you went alone.

*Raspberry Ice and Bacardi* Oh, sweet Jesus, I think I just found a new love. Thanks Julie!!!

hatmama....PB is a nice way of saying "vomit." You would be expelling both gas and food with a PB. A PB is usually, but now always, preceded by sliming, which is described earlier in this thread. Neither one is a lot of fun to experience. Rice is what gets me. Oh, and after my second fill, grits kicked my ass. It'll be a while before I try either one of those again.