Jachut

yep, this is totally normal. It only began for me once I had my last fill (well over a year ago) so its definitely a restriction thing. It makes me imagine a stopped up sink, you know how stuff bubbles and percolates when you try to get something thick to go down? Its like that. You get the bubble and girgle, but no actual burp. It can be loud - usually mine is fairly subtle, but I was at a funeral the other day and it was really embarrassing as I was sitting so close to other people and it was so quiet in there.

Probably not, I just have very very fine body hair,and despite being dark haired and fairly olive skinned, my body hair is fair. I can leave my legs literally three weeks, have no noticeable hair on my arms etc.

I dont do it either. I have a good routine going, twice a week at night, I slap a bit of Nair on legs, bikini line, underarms, then get in the shower, have a good scrub, put on the fake tan. Keeps me brown and hair free all year round. I have had my bikini like waxed before but what I hate about waxing is that you have to let it grow back some before you can do it again, bikini lines get itchy! I dont see the point in Brazillians. I just dont understand the attraction, I find it slightly sick, this obsession with looking like a prepubescent child. And I think that at 42 after 3 babies, a bit of camouflage is a GOOD thing. I'm not sure I'd like what I saw, caesar scar included. I get my eyebrows waxed though.

I'm dark so I dont have the brassy problem, I colour my own hair becuase the grey shows through so fast. I only use the 24 wash type things, as I find what happens when you colour your own hair is that you're often not very good at just doing the regrowth and eventually the colour builds up on the ends. I wouldnt touch my hair if it wasnt relatively short and so the ends are cut off before they get too dark. to be honest, if you've done a colour you dont like, and you've used a permanent colour, I wouldnt stuff around with it anymore, I'd seek professional advice to fix it. Many stylists will sell you colour to use at home and give you proper advice about how to use it too.

I'm not a man, obviously, but you can weigh whatever YOU want to weigh, you dont have to go by the charts. However, in my experience, most obese people's perception of normal weights looking skinny or sick are way way off. People seem to need to start this journey thinking they are the one special case that can be heavier and still healthy. Its rarely true. The only reason why you would be heavier than a normal BMI and still healthier is if you ahve a lot of muscle. Many people have the type of body that is muscular and look better at a BMI of 24 or 25 than they do at a BMI of 20, for sure, just as many people are finer built and look better lighter. It also varies depending on what you find attractive. Personally, for men, I agree with you a little, DH is banded too and if he got down to a low BMI he would be scrawny becuase he has a runner's body, tall, long and very fine boned and muscled. Not my idea of the ideal shaped man, sigh. I prefer him a bit cuddly. But he'd be healthier scrawny, without the pot belly. In the end, nobody's holding your nose to the grindstone, you stop where you want to and feel you look best, and thats your right. Dont engage in all the debate about what you "should" weigh, believe me, if you're not trying to argue why its OK for you to be a bit heavier and you feel best that way, you'll be justifying that you're not sick and anorexic. Everyone's always got something to say about it.

Because when I inevitably indulge in foods that I shouldnt eat, when I go off the rails for 3 days before my period as I sometimes do, when i get insanely busy for weeks and lapse in my dedication to shopping and cooking healthily, I *STILL* cant eat enough to gain any weight and I can ALWAYS get back on track by making a committment to staying away from soft foods and eating the more solid ones first. Other than that I choose to eat healthy most of the time and I choose to go out and run every day. But even there, I found those behaviours much more rewarding when I actually saw weight lost as a result. The band gave me the results which enabled me to keep up those behaviours long enough for them to become habit. I now enjoy running just becuase and not because i expect to see 2 lb gone at the end of the week (which never happens any more).

I feel normal, I can usually feel increased restriction for a day or two and then it goes away and I feel normal again. I have never had a fill where I could suddenly eat dramatically less, it was always barely noticeable but just enough to keep weight loss going.

I eat bread with no problem too, I usually have half a piece of toast in the morning, and often eat a sandwich for lunch. I cant eat the entire thing, and i have to cut the crusts off - why waste stomach space on crust when you can eat the bread part and nutritious filling?

We were considering the same thing, from Australia. Here its the norm to book DL or DW as an all expenses paid thing, accommodation, entrance, meals, rides etc. But I guess that's because for us its an OS holiday. Strangely, our kids are ambivalent about it! We thought we'd better do it before they get too old (oldest is 14) and I think they'd rather go to Thailand. I'd definitely rather laze on a beach in Thailand and its heaps closer, and cheaper, so who knows? I cant believe my little brats are so spoilt. We've never taken them overseas, I wouldnt have thought they'd turn their noses up at anything.

I was actually a more "normal" shape when fat, lol. I've always been pear shaped, and whilst I was at my heaviest, I didnt have the gapping round the waist problem that I'd had when I was younger - things fit my thighs and bum and then have 10 inches to spare at the waist. I've noticed a *slight* return of this problem, although I'm better proportioned now because of the running. However I was trying on bathers yesterday in a room with a 3 way mirror. I can look and like what I see now, imperfect as it is. But it honestly from the back looks like someone else's fat arse has been grafted onto my body. It goes: long neck, graceful shoulders, fine shoulder blades, narrow waist, pleasing muscle tone in the back, WHOA LOVE HANDLES, CELLULITE, DIMPLES, SADDLEBAGS, toned thighs, nice knees, nicely shaped carves and slim ankles. Its sort of problem enough that I'd thought of lipo (which I know wont get rid of cellulite) but the advice I've had is that buttock skin after weight loss is usually of not good enough quality and firmness to cope and that the only answer is a buttock lift. Have you seen the scars from a butt lift? Horrid. And way way too high to wear a bikini that is any way fashionable. Sigh. I think the best bet is to learn to love what we are, and just be able to look around you and realise nobody else is perfect either. But I agree, its much easier to be a pear. You can always get the waist altered.

Lol, Helen, we'd better not tell em what the rest of the world says about American food! Or the coffee over there. Actually my MIL is English and she cant cook at all. Bland, starchy and yuck. However, I suspect its more her than the fact that she's English, she's rather bland, starchy and yuck herself (ooh, miaow, dont let DH read that). She drives me freaking nuts with her whining about whatever I cook when they come here, too spicy, its got bones, upsets her stomach, blah blah blah. Granola is muesli here. But said m-yoosli, not moosli, that drives me crazy! Biscuits are Cookies - jsut little ones that you'd buy in a packet in the supermarket. cookies are bigger, same thing but more often speciality or deli items. What you guys call a biscuit, we'd probably call a scone, although there's no exact equivalent. but you dont have crumpets. mmmmmmmm, crumpets with butter and honey. A sausage is something in a casing, of decent quality, that you'd cook on the barbecue, not little bits of Breakfast meat. Lamb and rosemary sausages for example. Bangers and mash!

Me either, although I've heard it said that the 4cc band can hold 5cc at a pinch. If you're meaning 4cc I've got one, I have 2.8cc in it and its perfect. I can still eat things like bread, I just cant overeat. But what someone else experiences with this is absolutely irrelevant. Some people cant swallow saliva at 1.5cc. Others have little restriction at 3.8cc. its all totally individual.

We've got 3 kids so like most people at this stage of life, stomach bugs have been a regular part of the last 10 years in this household. Someone is always puking. Thankfully, my kids seem to be growing out of this now, their immunity is becoming more adult like and they're not always bringing home these things, Eliza at 6 has had so much exposure through daycare, kinder, school, big brothers etc that she rarely gets sick. however my oldest son started with the temperatures, vomiting and diarhhoea the DAY I got home from being banded. I was in an absolute panic! I went straight down to the local doctors and got a script for an anti nausea medication and keep this to hand at all times. When the kids have been sick I've turned into the disinfectant freak, I do not touch ANYTHING without gloves, bleach the toilet and bathroom every time they use it, bleach in the laundry, all round the washing machine doors and buttons, spraying Glen 20 on every single surface, training myself not to touch my face and using that hand sanitiser a million times a day. It works, they've been sick 3 or 4 times over the last four years and I've not caught it. I'm about to finish my teaching degree and will be working next year, I'm really hoping that as an adult graduate, with kids myself, I have a strong enough immune system not to fall victim to the legendary horrible first year of illnesses!

Most days I run outside for about 45 minutes. Some days I do an interval style run on my treadmill instead. At various points I've done regular circuit training at home (I make it up, use a sandbag for weight), and other times, Imight feel like going to a spin class. I love exercising!

YOu have to experiment a bit with this, I normally eat about 3 hours before bedtime and only have a cup of coffee after dinner. DH likes to make hot milo - milo is the same sort of thing as activity but as Aussie as vegemite :-) I cannot have milo at night, although coffee is fine, the milo gives me the sense that its going to back up and I cant like down and relax, I'm afraid of vomiting. Weird, its the same volume, but it must be the thickness or something. I have the old 4cc band too, there's 2.8cc in mine, and my fills were as tiny as 0.1cc and I've had a 0.1cc unfill once too when I got inexplicably tight - it made all the difference. But with 2.8cc in a 4cc band I can eat bread, toast, I can eat about a cup at a time, I can eat nearly any food actually, so you're not necessarily going to be very restricted at this level. but reflux with any regularity always means too tight. I'd prefer my band looser (like 2.8cc is for me) and make up the difference with running every day than to suffer reflux, huge restrictions on what I can eat, etc.

I think the goal is to eat like a normal person and learn to handle all foods. Personally, I believe if you grit your teeth and hang in by sheer willpower and avoid certain foods or entire food groups and panic when you're served mashed potatoes in someones home, or paintakingly remove grains of rice from your curry, you've not recovered from obesity, you're just holding out and eventually will cave. You've swapped one set of unhealthy eating behaviours for another. The key is to learn to eat whatever you want, but for you to actually want healthy foods most of the time, which only tends to happen when you have a normal and sane relationship with food. If you truly give yourself permission to eat whatever you want whenever you want it, you get over wanting chocolate for Breakfast, and it kind of all becomes normal. Takes time, but I think its key. That's becuase I think that losing weight from our bodies is really secondary to fixing our heads.

I dont like cold. It can give me a really painful belly ache. I hate cold fruit! I always have to take fruit out of the fridge the night before and bring it up to room temperature and when I take salads to work for lunch, I take them out of the fridge an hour before to warm up a bit. But that's not the band so much as me, I was always like that. I dont have sensitive teeth but there's something about the sensation of cold food that I really dislike.

Elcee, early on I noticed no time of the month symptoms. Then as I gained more restriction, I had a couple of events, my first pb came about a year after being banded. Eventually the pattern became obvious, I'd always get stuck or pb once or twice in the week before my period. Now, at good restriction, getting slightly stuck happens pretty often, not many meals go by where i dont have to pause to let something go down. I can also eat quite easily in the morning. I've just gotten back from a run and ate a piece of vegemite toast and am actually thinking about another! Isnt it funny, to me now that seems like absolute gluttony, a second slice of toast. I wont do it, but I could.

Pretty sure I want from 110 kg to about 82 kgs the first year and then from 82 down to 69 over the following fifteen months or so. so.....not quite 30 in the first year. You sound like you're having a bit of a process to get to great restriction, I found it much easier with a 4ml band, it came from the get go, and each fill just topped it up a bit. That really helped. By the end of the first year too, I was running between 6 and 10kms most days of the week and that made a huge difference. Hang in there, its not a race and when you look back, you're really not going ot care how fast you lost it. If its stopped, its fill time, and you need to increase exercise probably too.

I was going to start in with a lecture on why you are eating that little, but you ARE only 3 weeks out. Give it time, and as you heal, your calorie intake will increase, eventually to a point where you dont lose any weight, lol, which is when it is time for a fill. Long term, it is no way necessary to survive on such a tiny calorie intake and your body will thank you for eating more so that you can move more. As it is now, you're not only barely eating, but you're still recovering.

You can do this! Especially with a large weight loss, there's only so far diet will take you, the rest has to come from exercise. Its just a necessary part of the equation and honestly, with time, when you see what it can do for you, you can learn to at least like it a bit.

Not with a band, but my third pregnancy at 35 was a complete surprise too (but what a blessing!). I was 104kg or somwhere around 220lb when I fell pregnant and I was worried about getting fatter. My doc said that as long as I ate really WELL, the the calories werent an issue, that it was fine to diet moderately and lose body fat, just not starve my body of nutrition. A healthy, normal pregnancy only requires about 200 calories a day extra and only in the third trimester anyway, and it does not require your body to lay down fat. Especially when you've already got plenty. You can expect to gain about 6kg at the minimum for baby, Fluid, extra blood etc, but if you're losing fat at the same time, you can negate that gain. I managed to not gain any for the pregnancy by following weight watchers and allowing about 30 points a day. I got home from hospital 25lb lighter than I'd been when I conceived and I had a gorgeous 8lb baby girl to boot. I ate really well for that 9 months and have often since wondered why i coudlnt just do it all the time, but as usual for me, it all went way wrong during breastfeeding and over the years my eating habits got worse until I ended up deciding to be banded. But that pregnancy was like being banded anyway. Eliza was very very high and very very breech the whole time I had the most revolting heartburn and reflux and couldnt eat more than a half a cup of food at a time before feeling stuffed - in fact I truly had better restriction than I do with a band. when I got banded, I secretly hoped and prayed it would be like being pregnant with Eliza and for me, it actually is - without the reflux of course. So I cant really claim to be made of sterner stuff than the next person or gloat about how easy it was not to gain weight during pregnancy becuase it was kind of a special case. during my first 2 pregnancies I only gained the recommended 8-12 kg (20-30lb) and that disappeared by the time I left hospital so I'm also not a pregnancy gainer, my body seems to handle it well. Dont even ASK me about breastfeeding though, that's when I piled most of my excess weight on.

lol at "wogging". My DH kindly called it joggling. Not that he managed to get off his ass and do any. Pretty easy to be an armchair critic, hey?