Fanny Adams

I think you, yourself, are proving the accuracy of your first statement. They say ignorance is bliss... bliss for the ignorant, maybe, but not so much for the rest of us who have to listen to their ignorant opinions.

I can eat just about anything in limited quantities. For example, my Breakfast this morning was a poached egg, 1/4 cup baked Beans, 1/4 cup tinned mushrooms. My mid morning snack (just finished!) was a small banana and a mandarin. I had steak, corn, broccoli and a baby potato for dinner last night. The quantities ARE very limited (2oz steak, not a whole pound, 1" baby potato, not a whopper). Because these small amounts keep me feeling full and satisfied, I have the will power left over to resist eating junk. I stick mostly to fatfree/sugar free but I'm not strict about it. I don't get the urge to snack, I rarely have refined white carbs but I don't cut them out of my diet completely. I will occasionally indulge in Pasta with a creamy sauce, but usually it's a tomato based sauce and never more than 1/4 - 1/2 a cup at a time, with other fresh veges as filler. The one thing I have given up completely for the band is carbonated drinks - they just fill me up with gas and give me instant heartburn. I still drink alcohol but have switched to the occasional scotch and Water, instead of coke, and I don't miss coke one bit! Yes, the trade off is that you do have to work with a looser restriction to eat like this but it is a MUCH healthier and much more satisfying way to live.

Closer - Nine Inch Nails seems a popular choice and it gets my vote too! That song is pure sex on a stick!! Nickelback's Figured You Out rates highly on my list too...

I thought this email I received was appropriate for this thread - you guys can substitute American Women for Australian Women if you want :thumbdown: Duties of Wives.. Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties. Terry had married a woman from Greece. He bragged that he had told his wife she needed to do all the dishes and housework. He said that it took a couple days but on the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were all washed and put away. Jimmie had married a woman from Italy . He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn't see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done, and he had a huge dinner on the table. The third man had married a Australian girl. He boasted that he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, laundry and ironing twice a week, lawns mowed, windows cleaned and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, just enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher, and call a handyman.

I personally count it in increments - so for me, moving from a size 24 down to an 18 is 3 sizes down.

Hi Chris Check out the Australian Bandsters section: Australia Local Lap-Band Support - Lap Band Surgery and Lap Band Discussion Forum There are quite a few of us here on this site and many many more throughout Australia. The lapband is by far the most common Weight Loss Surgery in Aus - something like 98% of all WLS's are lapband with the remaining 2% divided between gastric bypass, vertical sleeve, etc. Australia has been at the forefront of using this technology for much longer than the US and our surgeons have a much longer history of installing the band.

Just FYI in case your insurance doesn't cover you. I was banded with Dr Watson in December last year but I didn't have private health insurance at the time, so went the fully self-pay routine. All up, including hospital, anaesthetist, Dr Watson and various medications, etc, it cost me $12,700, of which Medicare refunded about $1500, so about $11,200 out of pocket. Fills cost $150 a visit, but Medicare covers $100 of that (and I would guess private insurance covers the rest?? not sure about that). It was a lot of money but SOOOOOO worth it to me! I'd pay it again in a heartbeat!

Oh my... I am getting close enough to dream of this. From 275lb, I am now only 8lb away from Onederland. If I stick to the rate of 8lb a month, that means I can make it for my birthday on 24th September! Wow, now won't THAT be an awesome birthday present?

No they don't!! Nevah!! :biggrin: Those silver streaks are just extra blonde bits!! :cursing: They're not greys at all! :thumbup:

Whoohoo!! Twelve months ago, when I started my new job at a new mine, I had the horrible experience of having to go up yet another size in men's work pants and had to tell the guys in the store what size to order - which they didn't even have in stock! There was a whole embarrassing kerfuffle that went on for months as they had to order my size (127cm). When the pants finally arrived months later, they just fit and in the weeks before my surgery, they were really uncomfortably tight. Three months ago, they were falling off me and I went back to the 122cm pants I was wearing at my previous job. These have been getting looser and looser and this morning when I got up off the bus seat, I almost left them behind, so I thought "Right! Time to change!" It was a wonderful feeling to walk into the stores and announce in a loud voice "I NEED SMALLER PANTS PLEASE!!" What was even better was, after I tried them on, I didn't just go down one size to the 117cms, I fit into the 112cms and THEY'RE NOT EVEN TIGHT!! :biggrin::wink_smile: WOOOHOOOOO!!! PS: I would have put this in the NSV thread but I couldn't find that. I went back 4 pages on the index too - where did it go????

Hehe - I guess this is the answer to the old classic: Software Conflict: Wife 1.0 Upgrade Last year, after hearing how great it was for so long, a friend of mine upgraded from Girlfriend 3.0 to Wife 1.0. He has found Wife 1.0 to be a resource hog, leaving him very little free space for other applications. Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child-Subroutines, which further consumes valuable system resources. His system performance and resources seem to diminish with each passing day. At first, he thought Wife 1.0 might be infected with a virus, but other users have assured him that Wife 1.0 is behaving normally and this behavior should be expected due to the nature of the application. My friend also discovered that Wife 1.0 installed itself in such a way that it can monitor all other system activity. He now finds that some programs such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 5.1 and PubNight 7.0 cannot run at all. If he attempts to launch them, Wife 1.0 complains about a sharing violation and crashes. He finds this behavior strange since he could run these programs just fine before he upgraded. At installation, he found Wife 1.0 provides no option to bypass the installation of undesired add-ons such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Some features he would like to see introduced in the upcoming Wife 2.0 release: A "Don't Remind Me Again" button. A Minimize button. An Install Shield that allows Wife 2.0 to be uninstalled at anytime without the loss of cache or other system resources. An option to run the network driver in promiscuous mode. I have decided to forego all the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking to Girlfriend 3.0. However, even that option has many problems. Apparently, you cannot install one version of Girlfriend before you completely uninstall the old version first. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system. If the newer version finds a reference to the old version, Girlfriend will completely freeze until you reboot and remove the stray reference. I am told this is a long standing bug which I should have been aware of. Also, versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. Another thing that stinks -- all versions of Girlfriend continually popup little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0. ***** BUG WARNING ***** Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.0 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete all MSMoney files and take all your cache before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.0. will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources. ***** BUG WORKAROUNDS ***** If you can afford it, try installing Mistress 1.0 on an entirely different system and never run any file transfer applications such as LapLink 6.0. Another possible solution would be to run Mistress 1.0 via an ISP under an anonymous name.

With recipes like that, you can be as silly as you like!! It looks a little difficult and fussy to make but sounds ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!! I'm going to give it a go next weekend...

I just want to say that men suck, dating sucks and the whole shebang sucks!! Men! You can't live with them and you can't shoot them! /end pityparty

" And is that a bird of some sort flying out with the rainbeaux? " Hehe - I looked at that bit but was afraid to ask

Well, I'm not really going to climb back into the fat suit, just because some guy's insecurities got the better of him. Still, I just don't understand it. The day we had was wonderful, he was so enthusiastic and seemed delighted to find that I was intelligent and passionate about my work. Talk went from general to flirting to some pretty risque discussions about sex and, again, he claimed he was thrilled to find someone who could discuss such things openly. After all these years of being dismissed as a serious long term partner because I didn't fit the visual image, to be told that I'm now "too good" for someone, especially someone that I liked so much, is really ironic and damnit, it HURTS! :w00t:

What I find really funny about the Outback Steakhouses is that we don't have anything like those cheese fries in Aus! There was a thread about them several months back and someone posted a picture of those and the Bloomin Onions, also never seen here. They both look like a heart attack on a plate!!

Well so much for that little bubble of happiness. :thumbup: I just got the email to say that I was too beautiful, too sexy, too intelligent, too passionate about life and altogether too wonderful and that, in spite of the fact that we had a fabulous time together and he thoroughly enjoyed the day, apparently I frightened the shit out of him, he doesn't think he could handle it and he doesn't want to pursue it. WTF!!! :confused2: After all these years of being the fat pig that guys wanna bonk but don't want to get to know, now I'm too beautiful to pursue?? May be I should go back to being a fat pig eh? :thumbup:

I am writing this for all those who are struggling with the idea of "am I too tight?", "I'm hungry but I can't eat anything...". I just spent the worst 2 weeks of my lapband experience, suffering from the "too tight" affliction, and let me tell you, NEVER AGAIN! Up until my last fill, I've had a pretty dream run of things. No great post-op hassles, first 3 fills of 1ml each were space 1 month apart and came in just at the right times. 4th fill of 0.5ml 2 months after that also went well - great restriction but not too much. After 3 months, when my appetite was starting to rage again, and I was eating 1.5+ cups of solid food at every meal and fighting the urge to snack in between, I knew it was time for fill #5. The doc put in 0.5ml again and warned me to do liquids for a couple of days and ease back into solids after that. Unfortunately, that night I couldn't even manage thick Soups and ended up PBing half the night, till I remembered my emergency anti-nausea pills. I went back to clear consommes for Day 2 and creamed soups for Day 3 but couldn't move past them for a while. By Day 6, I was managing mushies but had to fly back to work and that, combined with getting my ToM a couple of days later set me right back to clear consommes again - anything thicker and I chucked my ring up. I lived like that for the next 8 days but could never get past soups and on a good day, mushies. Let me tell you folks, that is NO WAY to live! I booked the unfill before I came home (got home last night) and just had 0.25ml taken out today - ahhh sweet relief! This morning, I was gurgling and burping over a cup of coffee. This evening, I had a small chicken & vege thingie in filo pastry - delicious, and FILLING and no burping, no sliming, no pain! Best of all is that now I've eaten it, I'M NOT HUNGRY ANY MORE!! What I noticed more than anything with that overfill, was that even when I was gurgling and burping, sliming and PBing, I was HUNGRY in between and kept trying to push past what I was capable of eating. It was so hard not to just get in the habit of eating slider foods and saying to myself "at least I'll lose weight". Of course, the only solid things I could eat in all that time were cheesecake and Cookies... but healthy solid veges and lean meat - not a chance! If any of you are thinking to yourselves "I'm really uncomfortable, but I don't want to take the fill out in case I start to gain", please PLEASE take a leaf out of my book. When you are too tight, the only thing that goes down easily is crap and you won't lose weight eating crap! Life on the band is not meant to be not eating at all! It's not meant to be living on soups and mushies! You need to eat solid, healthy veges and meat and you won't feel hungry! Stay too tight and you'll be miserable, eat fattening non-nutritious foods and will be HUNGRY all the time! Don't do it!!!

Wow, 100lb!! Sheila that is a fantastic achievement!! Well done!!

Thanks Christasha! I'm on a real high right now - check out my post in the NSV thread - what a great week! :crying:

Wow, this thread has dropped off the radar, but I'm bringing it back with not one but TWO NSV's!! 1. I went on my first date in 15 months on the weekend and it was wonderful!! We met for coffee mid afternoon, talked for hours, went for a walk and ended up going out to dinner. Late in the afternoon, the lapband came up in conversation and he said he couldn't believe that I was ever heavy and that I was (and I quote!) "dropdead gorgeous right now and if I lose more weight I'd be blinding!" Over the top but MAN was that nice to hear! 2. We WALKED! For an HOUR! Down the port waterfront, out on the sea wall, across town, all over - and I DIDN'T GET OUT OF BREATH OR EVEN BREAK A SWEAT!! That was before the lapband came up and he never even suspected that 9 months ago, I couldn't walk to the end of the block and still hold a conversation at the same time! WHOOHOOO! I feel GREAT!! :crying:

Sorry to butt into a month group that's not my own, but I just couldn't let this go by without a comment. IT'S NOT TRUE! Yes, you DO have to be careful in the post-op stages and pineapple, beef and corn are going to be off the menu for several weeks after the op, but you DON'T have to give them up forever! The idea of the band is to restrict the portions of what you can eat, not the types. Some people will have trouble with some foods but if you take it carefully, chew thoroughly and eat slowly, you should be able to eat very small portions of anything, once you've healed properly. For example, I eat pineapple as part of my lunch almost every day. I had a small (2.5" section) of corn on the cob as part of my dinner tonight, together with a very small (2" square but thick) piece of roast beef (and some green Beans and a tiny baby potato). I still eat steak! I still eat Pasta (including lasagne!) The difference is before I would have gone for the biggest steak I can find, now I go for the smallest, most tender quality meat. Before I would have eaten a huge piece of lasagne (6" x 3" at least), now I am full on a 2"x2" slice. Once you've healed fully, the more fibre the better to help the band work for you. Fibrous foods stick in the pouch and make you feel full for much longer. Here's a typical day's eating for me: Breakfast: Poached egg + 1/4 cup baked beans (170 cal) Morning snack: One of either prunes, apple, mandarin, tinned cherries, banana (any fruit really, except I do have problems with watermelon after a fill, when it's tight) (80 cal) Lunch: Fresh garden salad (cucumber, celery, sweet red pepper, carrots, beetroot, pineapple) + 2oz cheese, tuna or lean chicken (200 cal) Dinner: 2-4oz lean meat, 1 baby potato, beans, broccoli, corn (250 cal) Dessert (yes, I said dessert!): 2" square piece of cheesecake (200 cal) Throw in a couple of cups of coffee with skim milk and sweetener and that doesn't even crack 1000 cal for the day - and I'm losing at the optimum rate of 1-2lb per week, without being hungry. You don't have to give up the foods you love forever. When you slow down and chew every bite thoroughly, you won't even miss the larger portions - a small taste of everything satisfies the cravings while still letting you stay on track.

I'd cross my fingers for you, Damo, but you don't need luck coz it's GOING to happen!

Preach it, sister!! *joins you on the soapbox*

I am resurrecting this old thread just to say that my "smaller pants" are now falling off me!! Whoohooo!! God I love my band! Back to the stores to order my next pants, another 2 sizes down!!