footballmom104

That's what I'd like to do - think of food clinically, just as fuel for my body and not as a form of comfort or entertainment. I, too, love to "gobble" or "scarf" as I call it. Nothing calms me down like eating a large quantity of junk food too fast - how pathetic is that :think? I keep thinking if I could just get to that place I'd be OK but I'm realistic enough to know that all my other problems, quirks, neuroses will still be there - I just wouldn't have food to help me deal with it.

I see where you're coming from (no pun intended! ) I work for a faith-based non-profit and share my office with Migration and Refugee Services and it freakin' amazes me, the hoops people have to jump through to get here - makes the insurance companies look like pushovers! I can almost understand illegal immigration - lest I get flamed, understand does mean condone -

Even if she likes to escape the house and go roll in deer droppings, like our border collie?

Thank you! I've wanted to say that for a long time but haven't had the guts. Some aspects of Christmas a just a huge pain in the butt. Like decorating. Why drag all that crap out just to have to tear it down again after New Years? I have no artistic sense whatsoever and anything I do looks stupid anyways:doh:. And all the baggage attached to gift-giving just wears me out! Why do I have to spend time and money buying stuff to ship to my obnoxious sister-in-law and her husband in Oregon when we see them once every three years or so. And heaven forbid my buying something on-line and having it shipped! DH says that's too impersonal. I do get more time off than the average person, as I work for a faith-based non-profit and it is considered a religious holiday, but then I have to listen to DH whine because he has to go to work ... I could go on but you get the idea -

Assistant Director, Catholic Community Services, Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, WV. Contemplating returning to school for graduate certificate in non-profit management.

Right: Bandsters have a right to complain about exercise ... up to a point, kind of like the people who fall of the wagon and confess to eating chicken nuggets, pizza, etc. I agree it gets old fast, but I really and truly despise almost all forms of exercise with a purple passion. I keep hoping being banded will make me a born-again gym rat but even I'm not that deranged! I went to a small school with a class full of "mean girl" jocks. I was not athletically inclined and just didn't care and they treated me like $hit! I was the only girl in my 8th grade class who didn't play basketball in HS. My mom, who just didn't get it, never has and never will, made me try out because she had always wanted to opportunity to play sports - and I hated every stinkin' minute of it. I was delighted when I got cut :heh:! Didn't mean to turn this into a rant, but you guys get the idea -

I'm kind of looking forward to the liquid diet phase. I've read posts where people say it had a detoxifying effect on them and they lost their cravings for sugar, carbs and other things bandsters are supposed to stay away from (which I know will be issues for me! :scared:)

I haven't been to Cabela's yet but my family has and they love it - they always want to go to Wheeling with me when I have a weekend meeting. I grew up in Huntington (GO Marshall University Thundering Herd!) and have lived in Charleston since '91 - transplanted by my husband.

Whoo-hooo! I just got a call from the surgeons's office - I go for my initial visit Dec. 6! She gave me several dates before this, but I had to be out of town on all of them ! Any words of wisdom, etc?

I lived in Newark. OH for about 18 months right after I graduated from college.

Is that anything like West By God Virginia? :clap2:

For real? My dad grew up in Vincennes, went to Butler in Indianapolis, then went to work for Lilly as a sales rep, which is how we ended up in West Virginia. My mom was born and raised in Indianapolis and most of my relatives still live there. I truly consider it my second hometown -

I'm in Charleston, WV but travel to Wheeling quite often for work. I have my first consult with Dr.Robert Shin at CAMC 12/6.

I'm still in the preliminary process (sent my first paperwork packet in this week ) and I was really hoping the band would help with my PMS. I'm 46 and the older I get the worse it gets. I read somewhere that as you age, your body has to work harder to find a viable egg to release and PMS symptoms become more intense and I believe it! I, too can eat a horse a few days before and nothing satisfies me except carbs and protein. Maybe it's just what my body nees or something.

Most of mine have to do with my home state, West Virginia. We are not all, as one state education official recently told some school board members in one of our more backward areas, "four-wheel riding, dope smoking, alcoholic rednecks" who had no interest in education. Hello ... I have a master's degree and my husband (who is not my cousin!) has a bachelor's. We both have professional jobs and make good money by local standards. I've never lived "up a holler" or on top of a mountain; in fact I've spent most of my life in metropolitan areas with populations of more than 100,000. I've never even been on a four-wheeler, although my older son has. I do drink occasionally but haven't smoked dope since college. I will cop to one WV stereotype - we are one of the fattest states in the Union and I do fit that description but hey, one can't win them all!

Actually, I graduated from high school in 1980 and I honestly remember our clothes being relatively modest. The Annie Hall look was big. Skirts tended to hit just below the knee and tops were blousy and loose. I remember having some pretty outre platform shoes, but otherwise we dressed pretty conservatively. Slit skirs came in around my junior year, but even they weren't too sleazy. And when I hit college, the Izod-Calvin Klein prep look was in. God knows I fought with my parents over everything else, but clothes seldom came up because there just wasn't much to fight about.

This is absolutely me! I get something almost every time I'm out alone, and eat big lunches at work. I also sneak food in and eat it when my kids are in bed, etc.

<TABLE id=HB_Mail_Container height="100%" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0 UNSELECTABLE="on"><TBODY><TR height="100%" width="100%" UNSELECTABLE="on"><TD id=HB_Focus_Element vAlign=top width="100%" background="" height=250 UNSELECTABLE="off">For me, it hasn't been so much the ignorant remarks, but the horror stories and urban legends, like the guy who was banded but one night decided he was going to have KFC - ate an entire bucket of chicken, biscuits etc. and ruptured his stomach. I mean, where do they get this stuff? </TD></TR><TR UNSELECTABLE="on" hb_tag="1"><TD style="FONT-SIZE: 1pt" height=1 UNSELECTABLE="on"> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Me, I'm looking forward to being cold again! I love winter clothes - boots, sweaters, jeans - and I've been too warm to wear them since I gained weight.

All this having been said, boys have their clothing issues too. Here, a lot of the kids like the knee-length t-shirts, pants six sizes too big and gigantic work boots or zillion-dollar sneakers, with the price tags left on. One night I picked up my older son from FB practice when they'd been "lumberjacking" - practicing in helmets and pads, but wearing shorts instead of FB pants - and even on the field, some of the kids had their practice-uniform shorts pulled down over their butts with their boxers showing! I can't believe the coach didn't call them on it -

Because life isn't fair - if it was, someone (including ourselves) would take care of us once in a while -

Uniforms rock! My older son wore them all through elementary and middle school and my younger son will still be in them for two more years :clap2:. I actually feel sorry for #1 and his friends in high school though. Some of those girls flat out look like ho's - skin-tight micro-mini's and the babydoll tops with their boobs hanging out. How can teenage boys be expected to concentrate and learn with that all up in their faces, both literally and figureatively? I volunteered in the office yesterday and one of the three kids in school who doesn't have a cell phone came in to call her mom because her jeans ripped ... they were ultra-low-rise and sprayed on. I wanted to say "If you were my daughter, you wouldn't have been allowed out of the house like that," but I probably would have gotten sued or something. Thank God for sons who are perfectly content with jeans from Target and anything NFL -

to me it depends on who says it and how it is said. I work for a faith-based non-profit and deal with a lot of senior-citizen clerics and women religious, and I get a lot of "honey" and "dear" from them. But the condecending ones - forget it!

WW irritates the bejebbers out of me! I e-mailed them yesterday to try to get my lifetime membership number so I could get some records (I can't find my membership books) and they were like "We cannot provide these kinds of records for you, you will have to show your physician a cancelled check or your membership book" and gave me info on how to obtain a new lifetime membership number - in other words, how to rejoin. I always had trouble sticking to their plan because I simply cannot eat fruit and I was told that it was required. And the people who own the franchise here are soooo self-righteous they make me want to scream . I did much better on ediets, but I still gained all but 5 lbs of it back. That's still better than WW, where I always gained it all back and then some :faint:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Right or wrong, overweight people are treated differently and I'm tired of it.