Longhorn

I finished my 300 calorie workout. It took a total of 75 minutes between yesterday and today. I tried to "sprint" every now and then to get my heart rate up. My goal is to exercise five days a week.

Yesterday was my first day to exercise after my surgery. I did 30 minutes on my recumbent bike. I had set the program to burn 300 calories, which looked like it was going to take more than 60 minutes but I got interrupted and didn't get back to it. But today is a new day!

Dorr: I've often thought that they should allow people who have lost weight to get a band so that they don't gain it back. To me, its value is more for the maintenance than the weight loss. I fully intend to lose weight with it and for me, it may be the only method that will work, now that I've screwed up my metabolism. But it's knowing I won't gain it back that means the most to me. By the way, you look great!

This is a great post full of wonderful ideas! Thanks for taking the time to share with us. I also share your philosophy and will be very pleased if I am as successful as you have been. :clap2:

Yes, but I don't really like them. I'm a picky eater. :confused:

When I realized my incision was infected, it was also a Saturday. I called my doctor and he called in the antibiotics for me. That way, you don't have to go to an ER. Just find a pharmacy that is open late before you call him if you want to pick them up tonight. My doctor told me ahead of time that it is fine for me to call him for something like this. Good luck!

I bought a $10 electric mini food chopper at the grocery store and it turns almost anything into a mushie! Tonight my husband made pasta with chicken breast chunks and sundried tomato sauce. I put it in that little chopper and in seconds, it was pureed and it tasted great!

Does it have Beans in it?

Well, I can add another meal to my pureed foods experience. I know a lot of people rave about the Magic Bullet but I got a $10 electric mini food chopper at the grocery store and it works great! Tonight my husband made Pasta with chunks of chicken breast and sun-dried tomato sauce. I put my serving, heavy on the chicken, in the chopper and pureed it in seconds. It tasted great and went down very easily. I chewed a lot and used my minute timer again. I even got a more definitive "full" signal this time -- just a little bit of pressure at the top of my stomach, along with that soft hiccup I usually get. Now I feel like I ate a big meal, but I'm still not uncomfortably stuffed. I probably ate about a cup of food. (My doctor never imposed a quantity limit. He said to eat until I'm full.) That little food chopper is going to open up some interesting possibilities! :confused:

Well, twice I cut the caps open and squirted it on my tongue and had enough of the that. The taste started making me feel nauseas and I was squirting it all over my vanity. So I went ahead and swallowed them and they went down just fine. But boy, oh boy, I forgot that there are some side effects until you get used to it again! I need to remember to take it with food. Glad I was home today! :confused:

Before I had surgery, I started taking CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) -- two soft-gels in the morning and two in the evening. There are studies that have shown that it can help get rid of belly fat. I honestly thought it was working -- without trying to lose weight, I had dropped about five pounds and my belly did seem a little flatter. I asked my nutritionist about it and she had read the studies and said she saw no reason why I shouldn't continue taking it, especially since I bought a large supply. Since they're kind of big, I haven't tried to swallow them. Even if I can swallow them now, I haven't had any fills yet. I'm going to be a pretty big baby about avoiding the PBs! This morning, I punctured two of them and squirted the oil into my Propel. Well, duh! Oil and Water don't mix! I'm sure I'll get some of it in my by the time I finish the bottle but the inside of the bottle is coated with oil. Silly me! Does anyone have any suggestions about a quick and easy way to get the oil out of the soft-gels and into me? Thanks!

I'll be interested in what you think about it! Thanks!

There are all kinds of surgeries. Could you tell your friends you've had surgery to repair a hernia? Turns out, I had a hernia that I didn't know about that was repaired during my surgery. If you don't want to lie (and don't end up having a hernia,) can you get away with just saying you've had some minor surgery but don't really want to discuss it? Or perhaps you hurt your back and your doctor said not to lift anything? Almost everyone has had back pain at some point in their lives so it's pretty well understood. Whatever you decide, don't be lifting heavy objects! I suspect it won't be comfortable bending over too much by then anyway. It took me a little longer for my port pain to go away. You'll still want to take it easy. Good luck!

I think so, too! I got the impression that the Bugg could somehow detect calories in as well as calories out but according to someone on that other thread, you still have to enter your calories. It sounds like a great idea and I'm sure there are others who are finding it helpful but I think I'll stick with something less expensive for now.

The 17th is my mother's 75th birthday. What a special day for so many people! I'll be thinking of you and sending you positive vibes! Good luck, Tish!

Welcome! Glad you came through your surgery okay! For the weight tickers, just click on the link next to someone's ticker and that will take you to one of the sites that offer them. Once you go through the menus and create your own, you'll get a code that you paste into your signature (go to UserCP at the top of any page on this site.) For most ticker sites, I think the code in the top box works the best but you can preview your signature on the Edit Signature page to make sure it's working. Take care!

Congratulations and thanks for sharing your experience! Wow, I'm glad I've been able to help -- my enthusiasm for this decision must be showing. :girl_hug: I think you'll be amazed that the soreness you are feeling now will go away so quickly. After the morning of my third day, I started feeling better and better, even when something new came up like my incision infection. Today I have no soreness at all in any position and I exercised for the first time on my recumbent bike. I got interrupted after half an hour but I'm going to get back on and do some more. My husband and I moved it up to our bedroom where I think I'll use it more often. Get plenty of rest and let yourself heal as much as you can. You'll probably find that the getting up and down is the hardest part, so once you're up, take advantage and do a slow stroll around the house. Don't forget the heating pad for the pain! I'll look forward to hearing how you're doing! :clap2:

Kristin: We have so much in common! I, too, can stick to just about any diet as far as WHAT to eat but it's the HOW MUCH that would get me. I would just feel so deprived if I had this *tiny* amount of food on my plate and I would feel hungry all the time. I could control it for awhile, even long enough to lose some weight. But then the weight loss would stall (for weeks, not just days) and I would give up. Or, on the few times that I reached my goal, I would go back to eating what I thought was normal and gain the weight, even when I was exercising and trying my darndest not to gain. I now realize that after you've lost weight, *normal* isn't normal any more. My husband and daughters can eat twice what I eat and I would still gain. But I couldn't face a life of being hungry and/or deprived on the new *normal* for me. This is why I believe the band is working for me and will continue to work. When I can eat almost anything I want but in just a couple of bites and not be hungry and not feel deprived and then be rewarded by losing weight or eventually maintaining -- that's a dream come true! It felt so good Thursday night to eat four fried cheese sticks and feel as if I had had a great meal! I wasn't stuffed but I didn't feel like I wanted or needed any more food! My doctor wants me to eat three meals a day with no snacking but frankly, I don't think snacking will hurt me because a 100-calorie sugar free pudding does the trick and I'm satisfied until the next meal. In the past, that just wasn't the case -- a "snack" could turn into two hours of grazing and then it was time for the next meal. I almost always made good choices and I never binged. I even kept track of what I ate and rarely exceeded 1600-1800 calories in a day, which was supposed to be a deficit of at least 600 calories, not counting what I burned through exercise. But I either stayed the same or gained. Between my age and my history of dieting, I realize that I can't lose weight on that many calories. My body won't be "fooled" again. :girl_hug:

You can also PM or email someone (depending on his or her preferences) by clicking on the member's user name in a post and then click on "View Public Profile." If the member allows getting PMs or emails, there will be a link on that page.

I haven't had any pain from eating. Last night, I swallowed two soft-gel supplements, one at a time, waiting in between, and I could feel the second one but it wasn't really pain. As far as food, I usually start out with what I believe is a reasonable amount and that's all I serve myself. The only question, then, is will I eat all of it? I'm eating so much more slowly than I used to (with a one-minute timer to help me between bites) that I find that I just *feel* like I've had enough. But at the restaurant where I had the fried cheese sticks the other night, there were probably ten to 12 on the plate. I was sharing them with others so I didn't ask to have any removed. However, I used my timer and after each bite, I evaluated whether I felt like I was satisfied. I was especially careful on the fourth one because I felt like I was reaching my limit so I took it very slowly. Amazingly, in the time it took me to eat those four cheese sticks, my husband, daughter and son-in-law had finished their sandwiches and fries! I also sometimes get a soft hiccup a few minutes after I finish. It feels like an affirmation that I had enough, I guess because I have read on this board that others say that's their way of knowing. If I stop too soon and find myself hungry in an hour or two, I have a sugar-free pudding or a Low-Carb SlimFast but most of the time, that hasn't happened. Of course, I'm still learning like the rest of y'all! But I'd be thrilled if I never experience any pain or other negative side effects, even if it takes me longer to lose weight.

I didn't have staples either but I was able to sleep on my side the first night. I slept with a body pillow tucked under my belly and between my knees (you can use two pillows, too.) It was uncomfortable to turn over from one side to the other but once I was in position, I was okay again. I also was taking Tylenol with codeine. I asked my husband to sleep in another room so I wouldn't have to worry about disturbing him when I turned or if I had decided to get up and sleep in the recliner. By the third night, he was able to sleep with me again. I still had some soreness that I could feel when I turned over for about the first ten days.

Your recipe sounds great, bandpal! And for those who don't know, you can get canned chickpeas to save a little time. They have them on the veggie aisle at my regular grocery store.

From the FAQ board: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f73/post-op-checklists-things-have-before-surgery-14814/

When I saw my doctor eight days after surgery, he noticed that the edges of my port incision were red and a wider band around the incision was a lighter red. I had no fever or other symptoms (though I had a fever of just under 100 the first couple of days after surgery.) He told me to watch for either band of redness getting wider, which could be a sign of infection. The next day, the light red band was wider so I called him and he called in a prescription for antibiotics. I wasn't able to pick it up for two days and the redness seemed a little wider and the incision was still sore. Within a day of taking the antibiotics, the incision started looking better, the red started to fade, and the soreness started going away. It healed up just fine. I think it's normal to be sore but you'll want to watch for other signs.

I've been on mushies for two weeks and I was nervous, too. Here are some of the things I've been eating: sugar free pudding made with a scoop of unflavored unjury Sugar Free pudding (pre-made) Soup at Hand tuna salad and small, soft whole-wheat crackers soy crisps Low-Carb SlimFast refried Beans with melted cheese and cottage cheese or guacamole scrambled eggs broth with chicken-flavored Unjury Laughing Cow spreadable cheese oatmeal I'm not supposed to have fruit or fruit juice for two more weeks or I'd be having applesauce. Yogurt is good at this stage, too. Some of these foods are more of the "soft" variety than "mushie" but I am always sure to chew and chew until they are at least the consistency of pudding by the time I swallow.