Fanny Adams

I don't eat breakfast until at least a couple of hours after I wake up and I've usually had 2-3 cups of coffee before I can face it. I take my brekkie into work with me and eat it around morning tea time. My doc says if you don't feel like breakfast, don't eat it! Save the calories for the evening when you are hungry.

:tongue2:

Many people report that both ToM and stress cause the band to feel tighter. If you are finding that you are losing well and not too tight when not on ToM but get uncomfortable during, you probably don't need another fill. If I were in that position, I'd just forget about eating in the mornings during my ToM and save those calories for the evenings when I wanted them. If it turned out that I didn't want more than my usual evening meal, well that's great - less food in for the day! It's not like we don't have reserves and are about to fade away to a shadow . Good luck with your journey!

I think it was directed at me, re my comments on those who do believe in a religion.

It's the latest fashion in porn, so I think a lot of people are doing it because they think it is sexy. Guys apparently get talked into shaving themselves because it makes them look bigger. I've only seen it once but I thought it made him look like a plucked turkey neck! EWW!!

I have two older brothers, so maybe that's where it comes from I was forever tagging after them as a kid, climbing trees and getting into fistfights with them. My entire wardrobe consists of either jeans or pants with tops of varying degrees of girliness. Standard wear is a simple t-shirt or tank top and my idea of "dressing up" is to put on a fancy top to go with my plain black pants.

So how girly is girly for everyone out there? I really don't see myself as a girly girl, although I will get dressed up on occasion. I can't stand dresses and skirts (that could be just coz they make look fatter than I am), don't get into manicures/pedicures, shoes or shopping. I do wear a little makeup most days (mascara and blush, nothing else). I was an outright tomboy as a child and was thrilled whenever someone would mistake me for a boy. That changed with a very early onset of puberty and I do like playing the sexy vamp on occasion, so I have some elements of "girly" in me - but frills and bows and fussing with clothes? Not me at all.

"Angry" is the wrong word. The correct word is "irritated" at your assumption that as an atheist, I couldn't have read the bible because if I had, I would have been smitten by its "obvious truth"; and at your assumption that the reason I don't believe in a god is because I am "angry" at him. My belief system is complex and I have spent a lot of my life thinking about it and how it was derived. There is too much to go into detail, but it can be summarised thus: * I believe that the physical world is a logical, rational and knowable thing, which can be explained by science and knowledge. While we may not know all the details as yet, the overall theories are sound, internally consistant and our knowledge of the facts is expanding every day. Each branch of science, from astrophysics to geology & plate techtonics to biology, reinforces the concepts in the other branches and makes a logical coherent whole. * That the "spiritual" world is entirely and completely a construct of Man's imagination and every part of it, from the deeply felt emotion of "being touched by god" to the sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, can be explained in this way. * That the concept of all religion, and most especially Christianity, is internally inconsistant, contradictory, inherently illogical and impossible. That the persona presented by Christianity as a god, if it were to exist, would be the most evil monster we have yet to conceive. * That people who believe in this delusion are either weak irrational people who need to seek outside themselves for a crutch to get them through life and/or are deliberately blind to rational thought. The irony is that in reality they are not weak at all - the strength they think comes to them from a god is in actuality their own inner strength, disguised into a form they can believe in, because they don't believe enough in their own power.

I have heard that the peel on an apple can be hard to eat if you are very tight, but I don't have a problem as long as I chew really well. When I'm living in the mine site camp (I work at a remote mine, 3,000km north of my home 8 days out of 14), I eat the same thing almost every day: Breakfast: Poached egg, 1/4 cup baked Beans in tomato sauce, 1/4 cup tinned mushrooms in sauce (about 170 cal, lots of fibre in the beans) Mid morning snack: 1 doz pitted prunes (150 cal) Lunch: 1 cold chicken leg, 25g Brie cheese, 25g mixed almonds/pecans/dates/raisins, 2 strips each of fresh celery, red pepper, green pepper, carrot, 2 snow peas, 4 slices cucumber (with skin), 2 slices canned beetroot, 2 rings canned pineapple (in pear juice, not syrup). (About 250 cal) Afternoon snack: small red apple (80 cal) Dinner: 1 baby boiled potato, 1 floweret broccoli, tablespoon of either sliced carrots, peas or corn (boiled/steamed), either 1/2 cup of whatever casserole looks good or 2-4oz of lean meat (roast lamb usually). (About 3-400 cal) Dessert: Tiny piece of cheesecake (2" x 1") or similar (about 200 cal) Total: roughly 1200 cal. Hehehe - there is NO shortage of fibre in my diet!!

I wonder how pretty the flowers are in Dafur? Do you think all it takes for those people is to look around them and see the hand of god?

LOL! What makes you think that atheists haven't read the bible? I've read it several times and in several versions and spent quite a bit of time in bible study classes, before they kicked me out for asking too many "hard" questions and "disturbing the faith of others". The bible is probably one of THE main reasons that I don't believe in a god. Well that and logic...

Where did you read to avoid food with fibre? I've never been given that advice. I eat fresh raw veges with lots of fibre every day and eat a dozen prunes as my mid morning snack. I HATE getting bound up inside and will go to substantial lengths to avoid it! I don't like the artificial fibre in Metamucil very much, so food with fibre it is!

My surgeon says that the average is that 50-60% of excess weight is lost after 2 years. You have to keep in mind that an average means that some people lost 100%, some lost 0%. You can lose it all if you want to put the effort in.

Hmmm... jelly (and yogurt) was on my list for the full liquids stage and potato bakes were on my mushie list - as given by the doctor. What do you see as "after the liquid and mushie stage"? My first "real" food, i.e. not Soups, not pureed, just "normal" food was grilled chicken, boiled potato (a tiny baby one) and steamed veges. I kind of phased my "mushies" slowly into "soft foods", without much of a distinction though. I ate quite a few slow-cooked casseroles that would have been "normal" food and counted them as mushies in the later stages of that phase.

Good luck with the support group and the new focus, Brandy! I hope that works out well for you.

I am not a very hairy person anyway, and have never had a problem with curlies outside the bikini line. I'm blonde and all my hair (legs, armpits, etc) is very light and wispy. If I'm seeing someone, I will make an effort to trim the hairs short, and will occasionally shave a shape into the top area for fun, but that always comes at a price of horrendous itchiness afterwards. I have used Nair (the one for delicate skin) a couple of times to really reduce the forest, but that tended to leave me looking motheaten as it is very hard to control the edges. I wouldn't mind using this option to get rid of it all, as I don't have a reaction to it, but I'm with Jachut in that I think the bald look is a little bit creepy and smacks of pedophilia. I haven't been seeing anyone on an intimate basis for 12 months anyway, so at the moment, I'm at full bush, hehehe.

To me that sounds like some deep bruising from the operation that has finally surfaced but is almost faded out. Does it look like the yellow you get when a bruise on the surface fades?

I think giving yourself permission to eat the 1.5 - 2 cups also plays psychological games with your head. You're not as frantic to eat quickly when you know you can eat till you're not hungry. Also, I tend not to eat breakfast till a couple of hours after I get up. I drink coffee in the mornings and take my breakfast to work with me and eat that at morning tea time. You might find having a warm drink before eating helps - 30 mins before if you are being strict about the drinking and use normal or peppermint tea (or ginger, lemon, etc) if you are staying away from coffee.

It sounds like you already know what the problem is - eating too fast and not chewing enough. It takes time to break old habits and learn new ones, but this is probably THE most important thing to learn when living with the band. Have you tried changing your cultery? Using a baby fork or a teaspoon to eat helps, as does putting your food on a much smaller plate. I used to play games with myself like "how long can I make this bite last in my mouth?" until the new way of eating took root. I have to say, eating small bites and chewing forever and a day, DOES help to make you more satisfied on much smaller amounts of food. It gives you the physical feedback sensations of having eaten a "full" meal, allows the tastes to linger in your mouth for longer than when we were shovelling our huge meals in as fast as they'd go (I was guilty!!), and gives your stomach time to recognise and send back the "I've had enough now" signal. Don't worry about the 1.5 - 2 cups per meal at this stage - tell yourself you can eat that much if you need to - just concentrate on trying to slow down each bite and CHEW! PS: 30lb since January is great!! Well done!!

I don't know if this is the issue, but everyone always says that muscle weighs more than fat, so if you've stopped working out, maybe you are losing muscle mass? You have posted several times that you are very athletic and do a LOT of exercise (well a lot in my book anyway ). Maybe you could look more at doing light cardio and toning exercises rather than heavy stuff that builds up muscles? Still, being fit and muscly isn't a bad thing at all, so don't let some silly numbers on a scale stop you from being what you want to be!

Bah! I decided to vote anyway. I'm away on site on my bandiversary, so won't be able to get an official weigh in then anyway. Besides, I'm counting my loss from the start of my pre-op diet which began on 1st Dec, so it's really cheating to wait another 2 weeks to count the six month mark. I should be happy with the 47lb that showed on 1 June. Can't wait to find out if there's more though!

Hmm... I'll make a point of asking for it when I get round to having the TT and BL. I don't shave, other than a close trim and tidy up, because my stretch marks go right down beneath the pubic hair and I figure it probably looks wrinkly as hell down there. No need to expose THAT, right? It would be nice to have the skin feel taut again.

I manage to get both major diarrhoea and constipation . On the day I get it, I always know before it comes because I start the day off with really heavy cramps and diarrhoea. I usually take an entire box of panadeine over the next 48 hours, so by Day 3 I have constipation, lasting until it finishes on Day 6. Such a lot of fun...NOT!! :thumbup:

I'll be getting a lift for sure, but don't think I'll need implants to fill them out - there'll be plenty of left over fat and breast tissue to plump them up. I just want them raised up about 6 inches! At my heaviest, I would have been a 24G (Aussie sizes, not sure of the US translation), but those are impossible to find so most often I squeezed into a 20-22F and got that horrible double boob effect when it cuts in in the front and accentuated back fat rolls in back *cries*. As the weight came off, the bras fitted better and better, and now are too big, so I've gone down to an 18F. When I was a skinnyminnie back in the day, I was a 12E (38" bust, 23" waist, Aus size 12 = US size 8). I'm figuring they're saggy as all hell now, so they're only going to get worse and are definitely deflating even as I watch. I'd like to end up at a 12DD after PS, which would mean being able to buy bras in normal shops for the first time ever!!