Fanny Adams

Oh god, to wear a skirt or a summer dress! *dreams* I can't sit comfortably with my knees together yet, and haven't been able to for years - not sure I even remember how! I've tried a few dresses but I look like a sausage tied up in the middle and SO uncomfortable when sitting. Can't wait for that NSV!!

You're welcome! I don't claim to have lots of answers - I'm just as new to this as all of us in this group - but my doc's advice really struck home for me last time, particularly when I realised that I had forgotten the bit about not sticking to a meal plan and not worrying about breakfast. I, like most people I'd guess, had heard the "must eat breakfast!" message so often, that it just didn't sink in when he told me that the first time. I feel much better about managing things now. A suggestion for your lunches that you might like to try: On the weekends, when you have time, marinade up a half dozen boneless, skinless chicken thighs for an hour or two. I use a 1/2 cup of soy sauce, 1/4 cup of honey, teaspoon of tobasco or 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder. Grill them or fry in a non-stick pan (with no oil) then let them cool, then chuck them into a good tupperware container and put them in the fridge. They should last about a week like that, using one a day for lunch. At the same time, chop up a couple of celery stalks and carrots and put them in another sealed container. Drain a can of unsweetened pineapple pieces and buy a punnet of cherry tomatoes. Then each morning you can pack a really quick meal for lunch into another plastic container and you're ready for the day - lunch anywhere anytime and no utensils needed! You can try to eat this in one sitting or snack on it all day, whichever suits best - just put the lid back on when you stop feeling hungry and come back to it when you're ready. PS: CHEW CHEW CHEW this well!! It is very bulky and will keep you full for hours but you gotta chew evey last bite! Don't try this within 2 days of being filled - my doc says liquids only for at least 48 hours then test the waters carefully as you move back to solid food.

When I went back for my last fill, my doctor reminded me of his advice, which is contradictory to standard dietician's advice, so I guess I had forgotten it amongst all the other messages we receive. It was this: Don't try to eat when you're not hungry, just because it is meal time. Don't worry about trying to force in Breakfast if you are tight in the mornings - drink fluids and wait until you are hungry in the afternoons/evenings to eat. Don't try to eat until you are "full", just try to eat until you are "no longer hungry". Push the food away as soon as you stop feeling hungry. If you find that you are hungry again later, you can always go back for more, but most times you won't need to. Aim to eat like a picky 3 year old - use a small plate and be prepared to leave food on it! I think the getting stuck/pb'ing thing is almost always related to eating too quickly and not chewing well enough. I think we all try to do the right thing immediately after the surgery but when we have healed and start back on solid foods and discover that, because we don't have restriction yet, we can eat just about anything, we can get complacent and not follow the rules. I know that is true for me. Before my first fill, I chewed and chewed and was so strict with myself and had no problems. Then I accidentally forgot a few times and swallowed a bigger bite - and waited for the pain. Nothing happened! So I got lax about paying attention and the bites got slightly bigger, the chewing slightly shorter and the wait between bites slightly less. After my fill, again I tried to be "good" but didn't get the pain indicator when I made mistakes, so became even more lax. After the second fill, occasionally I would get a twinge if I was gulping food but still no real STOP NOW indicator. Now, after my third fill, I finally get what restriction, getting stuck and PB's actually mean. I can still eat anything I want but I HAVE to pay close attention to every bite and HAVE to chew every last tiny little lump out of it or I know all about it! I have had a number of painful episodes that passed quickly without a PB, when I have not chewed completely. I have only gotten stuck to the point of having to PB to relieve the pain a couple of times, and both times have been when I was talking and not paying attention. A couple of those is all it takes to remind me what the bandster rules are all about! I'm really trying now to follow my doc's advice - and it seems to be working because the scales are moving faster and I really feel like I am at the "sweet spot" already.

I need to add a letter to that - B for Am I Bored? I find eating when I am bored is my most common trigger :huh2:

Am I the only person who has read this thread and is totally uncomfortable with the acronym "POS"? To me, that abbreviation has always stood for "Piece of Shit", in the same way that "SOB" usually stands for "Son of a Bitch". I KNOW it isn't meant that way, but I have cringed every single time I've read it in this thread and 6 pages of using it to mean "Person of Size" has done nothing to alleviate that cringe factor! I HATE the way those terms are associated in my mind - is this just my own paranoia?

I was never overweight as a child, teen or even as a young mum. I can remember crying my eyes out when I hit a whopping 60kg (132lb) at around 22 (daughter was 3 at that time), and promptly took diet pills to get down to 55kg again. I started gaining my weight in my late 20's, when in an abusive marriage, but didn't really balloon up until I got out of it at 30. I went on a 4 year binge, putting on the fat suit, and since then have struggled trying to take it off by losing some, regaining more and generally just getting fatter. 15 years after getting out of the marriage, I am finally taking the last steps to repair the damage it did.

Way to go, Joshie-Boo!! Congrats!

I think you'll find that the surgeon has to anchor the port to the abdominal muscles. That means that if you have a certain thickness of fat above the muscles, there's not much he can do to change the "depth" at which the port must sit.

IMHO don't switch doctors until you've tried taking his advice and eating solid foods. It sounds like you are still living on soft foods and that really works against everything that the band will do for you. Soft foods are essential in your first few weeks while you are healing but after that you NEED the solid food to feel the "full" effects and tame your hunger. For example, you'd probably find it quite easy to eat 2 cups of cream of chicken Soup and still might feel hungry at the end of that. Instead try 1/2 cup of solid chicken meat and a small salad, and I'll bet you feel MUCH more full! The band won't "magically" make you lose weight - all it does is help you to feel full so you don't eat as much. This won't work if you don't try the solid foods. The soft foods generally have way more calories, carbs and fat than solid food e.g. 2 cups of cream of chicken soup can be as high as 358 calories, 20g fat, 30g carb, 15g protein, whereas 1/2 cup of chopped chicken breast (no skin) with a green salad is only 144 cal, 3g fat, 7g carbs and 22g protein. What's more, this will make you feel FULL!

Hey wow! I'm from Perth, Western Australia and I'm planning a trip to the US in June/July to visit friends in various states. One of the places I'll be going is to Baraboo, Wisconsin! What a small world!

Hehe - apples are the one thing I reach for if I'm having trouble coping with the hunger pangs. It is absolutely guaranteed to make me feel completely full for hours. I do have to be supervigilant while eating them though, and chew chew CHEW!! I've gotten uncomfortably close to getting stuck on them with only the smallest of unchewed lumps going through, so really have to pay attention - coz even that much HURTS!

I was fully self-pay and didn't get asked to do a psych eval. I kinda regret that as I think it might have been interesting to see what came out at that!

Ditto - my surgeon has really only mentioned vomiting as a cause of slippage and he is dead set against getting so tight that you PB even occasionally. He gave me 2 lots of anti-nausea pills, one to take to control general feelings of nausea and one to put under your tongue for an instant "DO NOT VOMIT!" reaction when needed. I've not had to use them yet, but keep them close at hand in case.

Also check any painkillers you might be taking. Anything with codeine or any of the opiates in it (eg Oxycodone) will cause constipation. You might have to switch to something that doesn't give that problem.

I didn't even know you could do it on the public purse! I thought you HAD to have private health or fully self-fund (which is the way I went).

LOL! Yes, that Endone is strong stuff!! I only took 1 once on Day 2 and spent most of that day sleeping (although that could have been the aftereffects of the anaesthetic). I have the box stashed away with a mental note of "emergency use only!" Luckily, I had a pretty easy recovery and got by quite easily on a couple of the soluble panadol for the first few days.

I had one of those "moments of clarity" the other day and thought I would share. I used to share my house with my uncle (who is also very overweight) and cousin (who is only slightly overweight). One of our staple meals was the good old spaghetti bolognaise, which I always saw as a very low cal, low fat meal. I used high grade minced meat (very low fat), never added oil in the cooking and had myself convinced that this was one of our "healthier meals". I would cook up a huge pot, my cousin would eat a "normal" plateful and my uncle and I would pile our plates high, then go back and polish off the remainder for "seconds". They have since moved out to their own houses and I cooked up a batch for myself just last week. The recipe I use doesn't make it easy to cut down the quantity, so I figured I'd just put the leftovers into containers and freeze them for instant on-hand meals over the next little while. I ate one cup of meat sauce/pasta mix for dinner that night and 1/2 to 1 cup for lunch the next day, then put all the rest into 1 cup servings and froze it. The epiphany came when I saw how many one-cup servings were in that huge pot!! Even after taking 2 band-sized meals out, I had EIGHT cups left over!! I had to go out and buy more small plastic containers to fit it all. There was a total of 10 cups of food in that pot! I think my cousin would have eaten about 2 cups worth, and my uncle and I would have polished off 4 cups each in one sitting! What's worse, is that quite often, I would have made an even larger pot, if we were all feeling particularly hungry, and that would likely have made 12-14 cups - and we ate it all! NO WONDER we are fat!! Have any of you had a moment like that, when you finally fully realised how screwed up were your previous perceptions of "normal sized servings"?

Hehe - I see Dr Watson too, and this is exactly what he had me do on my first and second fills :biggrin: On the third one, he managed it without the pillow - yay!

That's the one that gets me too. I find it harder to read than all caps. Does anyone know HOW that happens, because I find it hard to believe that so many people are actually typing a capital at the beginning of each word. It seems more like it is some kind of software problem, but I can't think what software would do that.

I too was afraid of my first fill, for several reasons. I was afraid of being too tight, afraid of the PB'ing or sliming, afraid of not being able to eat my favourite foods. I asked my doctor to take it slowly as I wanted the time to get used to the whole idea, and in the mean time, did the best I could with will power. He was great about that and only put in 1cc instead of the usual 2cc at my first fill. By the time the 2nd fill came around I was really feeling the hunger again and was over all my fears so told him to "go hard" this time. I wanted another 2cc, he usually only does 1cc on the 2nd fill and we split the difference at 1.5cc. The third one was the charm, with another 1cc and now I'm feeling the sweet spot really well. If you're hungry for whatever reason, go for the fill, and if you are worried about it being too much, just take it gently at first. I think you'll soon find, like I did, that the fear doesn't last long and you want to really get into the swing of things once you've gotten over it.

Miss P, check your paperwork again because Dr Watson certainly gave me a list of Do's and Don'ts, as well as some brochures from the lapband people, etc. If you can't find it, call the office and have them post the stuff out to you. In the mean time, Dr Watson seems to be more liberal in his regime, that other doctors (as reported on this site). From what I've known, he believes a lot more in "listen to your body" than in imposing strict schedules for various food types. I had typed out and posted some information from the handouts he gave me and have copied it here: ""Stay on fluids until you start to feel hungry. Water, juices, yoghurt, thin soup. After a few days, these fluids will be less satisfying and you will want something more filling. Thicker soups, jellies. Make an appointment to see your GP at 5 days after surgery for removal of staples. After that time, you may need more substantial food to ease the hunger. Try very soft mushy scrambled eggs, mashed vegetables initially. Gradually over the first 4 weeks after surgery, the hunger will increase such that by about a month when you come back to start having fluid placed in the band, you will be eating an amount of food more than you had expected. Fish, chicken, pasta. Then, at one month, we start the process of placing fluid in the band, every month for three months, then less frequently for the next few months. REMEMBER In the first month, gradually increase the food and ensure you eat slowly. Avoid a situation of food getting stuck as vomiting, especially early, may tear some sutures around the band and increase the risk of SLIPPAGE and further surgery." On my last fill, he reminded me that his advice was a little contradictory to most dieticians, ie, he recommends NOT eating to a schedule, DON'T try to force breakfast if you don't want it, ONLY eat when you are sure you are hungry and stop as soon as the hunger is gone, don't try to achieve that old "full" feeling. Good luck with everything!

As a completely off-topic idea, I thought it might be fun to share pics of our grandbabies, for those of us who have those wonderful angels in our lives. Given that this is the Forties thread, I figure there might be a few of us! I have two granddaughters, ages 6 (in Feb) and 2, from my only child (daughter, age 26). Kayla Rose: Charlotte Ashleigh: My girls :smile:

A size 16 in the UK is the equivalent of a US size 12. That being said, I think she could affort to lose 20lb or so. I don't like the stick thin look but for a beauty queen, she is a little overweight. For her height, she should probably be a UK14 (US 10) at most and would probably look better as a UK12 (US 8). I'm quite a bit shorter and I'd be happy at a UK12 but at her age I was a UK 10, which is a US 6. I was very curvy still at that size, not a stick figure at all. I think the US 4/2/0 sizes are too thin for most women, but a US12 is big for a young beauty queen. International size conversions: Clothing sizes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josh, you look fabulous, doing really well, but I have to tell you this - you need a smaller suit!! :huh2: Isn't that great?