Jachut

I was 38, 5ft 10 and 245lb when I got banded. i am now 150lb at 42. I lost weight quite slowly compared to some, none of this 100lb in 9 months stuff, it took me a good 2 years to lose it, but it was steady and I lost well over 100% of my "excess" taking me well below the top of the normal BMI range. I also ended up with very little loose skin. I've got enough that I feel a bit dejected about it from time to time but really, you cant tell i was ever as fat as I was.

You know, I "only" had a BMI of 35 when I had the surgery and I had to lose 30lb before anyone even noticed - and even then it was just a bit of "oh, have you lost a little weight". The really spectacular changes only really came in the last 50lb, not the first 50. I was still fat and I think to people, they dont necessarily notice that you're "less fat" until you really start to get some of the features of being thin - like a neck and collarbones! Dont be disheartened, you have to get through this stuff to get to the good bits, where your weight loss shows with every 10lb. And I think people do notice too but are often reluctant to say anything until its beyond doubt that you HAVE lost.

It doesnt matter that you're running slower than you can walk, if you notice, its still tougher than walking becuase you have to leave the ground. What you're doing is building the strength to run. I started out so slow I could have walked faster too. But it was important to me that I run and I could feel that it was harder on my body - therefore making me fitter. Over time it DID. Running slow is how you build a good aerobic base. It is absolutely pointless going out too fast as you develop your anaerobic system and dont develop your aerobic capacity -which is your true powerhouse. Many runners believe you have to keep your heart rate down around 65% of its max when running to develop your aerobic system to its fullest and that's actually REALLY hard to do.

I've had mine resized twice, but it needs it again. I was looking at it and thinking i'd like a new one, lol, I no longer wear any yellow gold apart from my wedding and engagement ring and it no longer sits well with my other jewellery which is all of way different style. My taste has changed a lot in the 20 years since I got married. I've decided that as a present to myself when I land my first graduate teaching job, I'm going to get them entirely reset (I already had that done once too) in white gold, something really modern. That way they're still my diamonds, not an entirely new ring.

I think your best bet is to retrain your taste buds and learn to eat sweet foods only in moderation. For day to day eating, you should be focussing on non sweet foods, not replacing all the foods you used to eat with artificially sweetened versions. In some camps it is believed that artificial sweetners have all the same effects on blood sugar and body chemistry that sugar does anyway, so apart from a relatively modest calorie saving there's really no advantage to imbibing what is arguably a product with no health benefits and even dangers. drink plain Water and plain coffee and tea on a daily basis and ENJOY the real thing when you want something sweet! Just have it only every now and then.

In many cases it DOES provide some restriction, just not a lot. But the point at which they place the band on your stomach is actually not that big. I dont think it would be medically sound practice to place a device like that round your stomach that cant be un-restricted! The band is purposely designed so that it can be unfilled when it needs to be and the size of it is part of that. Otherwise there'd be way more emergency surgeries to remove it than there are!

Sheesh, I thought a blood clot was always a medical emergency and that if it wasnt surgically removed post haste, you certainly wouldnt be allowed home to walk around with it! You'd be in bed, being medicated and monitored!

Just try it, you will probably be surprised. I can eat iceberg lettuce very easily, and especially if I slice it like you would cabbage for coleslaw, rather than just pull the leaves off. The darker green lettuces and salad mixes I have a bit more trouble with, they're tougher and dont chew up as well (less Water in them probably) but they're more nutritious of course, so I tend to mix them.

Oh, what an innocent question and what a debate it can cause, lol. Personally, I dont think everything must be sugar free. Firstly, i dont think artificial sweetener is the answer, what you need to do is retrain your taste buds to prefer less sweet things and when you do have something sweet, eat the real thing and keep it as a treat. Think about it, people eat artificial sweetener at EVERY single meal just about and that is not a healthy diet. What is healthy is fresh fruit (naturally sweet), vegies and non processed foods. What is healthy to drink is plain Water. The odd sweet drink is fine, just not everytime you drink something. Get used to natural or greek yogurt, not sweet fruit flavoured ones all the time, have ice cream once a month and eat the real thing, not artificially sweetened low fat ice cream every day etc. But there's loads of people who really do support and follow a low carb lifestyle and of course, sugar is avoided at all costs, as a bad white carb. Personally, I dont subscribe to it, I think there's as many problems with low carb as there are with low fat/high carb and that moderation in all things is probably the safest diet to follow. Which means sugar - occasionally - and non sweet foods most of the time. Dont forget potatoes, white bread, white rice are pretty much just sugar, only not sweet.

This is such a touchy issue - even people who are obese themselves bicker over this one. There's been so many debates on here about whether someone is fat enough for surgery, lol. Fat is fat is fat, I dont see the point in waiting till your ginormously massive, barely mobile and in serious poor health before doing something about a weight problem. but like cosmetic surgery, this is very much a personal decision and its not for anyone else to decide what is acceptable for you.

Good luck with your journey. I started mine from a reasonable place in that at BMI of 35 I was a relative lightweight but I had the musculoskeletal problems starting to set in with a bad ankle that stopped me being able to walk for exercise.I'd had it for 2 years and piled on weight in that time due to the lack of activity. You would know just how much easier it is to move your body around when the weight is gone, as you've lost it before. I run for an hour a day now and i would never have dreamed my body could cope with that, but not only do you have this weak part - in your case your knee - but all the muscles and connective tissue around it weaken and make exercise even more difficult and pain even more likely. Slowly and steadily I added to my walking/jogging regime and it took a long time but my body has gradually strengthened itself remarkably. so the band will take care of initial weight loss and you can work slowly and steadily towards getting back to a higher level of exercise going by what your knee can handle. And of course, it might not be high impact weight bearing - there's always elliptical, spinning, swimming or circuit stuff that doesnt give you the pounding that running (and even walking) does.

It is NOT easy to learn to eat slow!!! I think its more of a deep rooted instinct in us to bolt our food than we realise. It took me a good 12 months for it to really settle as a habit and what I love love love about being banded is that I eat like a lady. I was always embarrassed about how I inhaled my food but when I tried not to, it was such hard work and took such concentration that I didnt enjoy anything I ate! Now I eat nicely, slowly and am never the first to finish.

Gallbladder would come to mind for me and unfortunately, with the diets people eat and the shape they are in these days, 24 isnt too young.

True - lol. I do "aerobic housework" when I dont feel like running. Put on the ipod, get dressed for my run and do some housework at TOP SPEED - things that dont usually get done like cleaning windows, vacuuming the entire house at once or cleaning the floor on hands and knees. I scrub really hard and jump around. By itself its pretty good exercise, but just getting the blood pumping will usually get me more in the mood to then go out and run.

Healthy fats,some fruit, and plenty of vegies, and for Breakfast every morning I eat a couple of prunes - I like them canned in syrup, they're soft and I just drain the syrup away and rinse them before storing in a container. Drink plenty of Water and I go for a nice long run every day. All in all, that keeps me once a day in the morning regular. However, we dont get told to focus on Protein here, so it doesnt worry me in the slightest to eat vegetable protein sources - like chickpeas, or lentils and skip meat all together for various meals, i eat plenty of grain foods - breakfast is usually a couple of prunes, a few tablespoons of organic muesli and half a piece of wholegrain toast - so I still get a lot of fibre. Eating like that, and not focussing on protein, I still have hair, I lost all my weight without losing my muscles, I have good skin and nails, a very healthy metabolism (I eat about 1800 a day to maintain my weight) etc. So you really can afford to swap some of that protein for foods that are good for your bowels!

WTF? Weight loss surgery is for OBESE people - surely a good percentage of them are going to have a waist hip ration above 0.85? That's insane!

You have to start with what you can do and build from there, dont try to kill yourself with really hard exercise right way. Being active and on your feet in a job is an advantage, you burn more energy than a sedentary person and it all helps. But its not the right kind of exercise for real weight loss, you need to just be active AND do something hard that makes you sweat. Its one of those things - you dont have a choice. If you want to lose steadily and lose all your weight, you have to do some exercise and if you're not willing to spend lots of time at it, then it has to be cardio, or cardio/strength combined (as in circuit training or body pump etc). You need to eventually be moving at the pace of a jog, or its equivalent on a bike or elliptical, do something like fast lap swimming, spinning etc to keep weight coming off. It takes time to get there though. It needs to be almost daily. People lose without exercise, but I dont think you'll find many who lose ALL their weight and keep it off. Things like Pilates are really good for you, they tone you, they strenghten important parts of your body. But they burn hardly any calories at all and do not burn lots of fat. You need cardio for that. Doing both is is great! If you dont like it, just do it anyway. it only takes half an hour, 45 minutes. How hard is that really?

Ah, ok, didnt know about any mobility issues, so hope I dont come across as a insensitive! Still.... can you think outside the square in that regard?

If you are stuck with the larger stomach, unable to move forward to the DS just yet and not losing on the amount you are eating, then I think the most obvious answer is to try to burn those calories instead of trying not to eat them. Honestly, it IS possible to lose weight and live a very normal life on a very normal amount of food if you are fit and active. I am a shocking dieter, I could not do that five day pouch test ridiculous thing for love nor money and wouldnt even try. I dont do deprivation. The only way I have EVER been able to lose weight is to eat a bit less of everything, but not deny any foods or cut out groups, I cannot feel like I cant have anything I want. But it WORKS, if you can get the calorie balance right. I run an hour a day and people think I'm very dedicated to do that but really, the motivator before the running bug bit me big time was that if I didnt do that, I would have to eat some horribly small number of calories like under 1000. Food and certain foods in particular CAN be an addiction that you are powerless to control to some degree. But you can ALWAYS choose to go out and be active, no matter what your circumstances, where there is a will there is a way. To me, I may not feel like running and sweating but it is over and done with in 45 minutes, it cant be "undone", and as long as I do it day in day out, I stay thin, no matter what I eat. Its MUCH easier than ignoring the cheescake in the fridge. What about something like that combined with a bit of soul searching and a moderate diet that you can have a hope of sticking to, in order to try to balance the ledger back on the side of losing again? Could you BURN 500 calories a day extra rather than trying to eat less?

No. My literature says to eat however much satisfies you and that when you're not losing on that much anylonger, its time for a fill.

For me the good behaviour came quickly, but for it to become automatic? I think at least a year. It was at about 15 months that I realised I was finally not serving myself four times too much food at every meal! There's a bit of "relearning" with every fill, but I found by about a year I could really say my eating habits had changed. I found the same with exercise - it took about 9 to 12 months for running to be somethign that is just a part of my day and not a 'chore'. My body had adapted, it no longer tired me, it no longer felt "hard" but I've continued to have the good effects of fitness and weight control with what feels quite natural and easy. but this "it takes six weeks to form a habit" - what a load of bollocks. Honestly. Nobody loves runniing and is good at it and finds it a natural thing to do in six short weeks. Nor does anybody change their eating habits that quickly.

I actually focussed more on vegies than Protein and ate a lot of protein plant foods - chick peas, lentils etc. reason being, we're not told to focus on protein here in Australia like you guys are and tend to consider our fresh fruit and vegies at least as important, and generally more so than the protein, which we all seem to get enough of anyway. and going a bit low on protein and such for a few weeks while you're recovering is not going to hurt you anyway. Not with the way most Americans and Australians have eaten, our bodies have plenty of stores for a rainy day.

Hmmmm, its very annoying when people cant handle your success and have to console themselves with feeling certain you will fail. Why cant people just be happy for others? But we've all felt the same way at times. I feel it everytime one of our friends or families buys a new house or car. We seem to be surrounded by very wealthy friends and relatives, we do OK, certainly above average but we dont have the financial freedom that say, my sister does, who bought herself a BMW on a whim last week. But as to the habits etc, after 4 years, I definitely eat more "normally" than I did at first. But you know, I really believe its the commitment to exercise that makes all the difference there. Keep up the hard core exercise and you will stay thin.

I didnt, I was passing out by day 3 and extremely weak (and addled mentally too) by day 5. My doctor told me to stop doing it, given I had a BMI of 35 and had recently had a liver ultrasound and blood tests due to my very thorough GP sending me for a barrage of tests (saved the surgeon having to do it). So I knew I didnt have a particularly fatty or enlarged liver and all liver enzymes etc normal. Given that, he said there was no real need for it. I wouldnt have coped, it made me really ill. I would not have had the willpower to stick to it, feeling like that. I was even having trouble talking, the words were on the tip of my tongue but wouldnt come to me.

Lol, well we eat a bit differently here in Australia. No low carbing and no focus on Protein. I eat fruit and vegeatables, Cereal, bread, Pasta, rice as well as protein foods, pretty much in that order. My eating philosophy veers more towards organic and unprocessed than towards more or less of one food group. I eat stoneground, wholegrain breads, not white bread. I wont eat packaged, freezer meals, I cook from scratch etc. At the end its really calories in v calories out.