Jachut

I can eat whatever I want to - for example, I can eat bread and i can eat Pasta - could i eat both together? Probably not, that's a bit too ambitious for one meal. I think the goal is to eat normally but its a new normal. If you go back to what was normal to you before, well you're not going to maintain your results. Portion size will keep you in control to a large degree, but it isnt everything, you need to make good choices too. You also have to prepared to NOT be able to eat a lot of foods, many people cant.

For me, my band does not work the way it is supposed to without the fibre and bulk of wholegrain foods. tuna and salad vegies for lunch means I'm starving an hour or two later. Tuna, salad vegies and wholegrain bread for lunch and I'm right until dinner. eggs for Breakfast dont fill me unless they come on a piece of wholegrain toast. shakes go right through. Entirely carb meals wont last me either, they fill quickly due to bulk, but the energy rush disappears. But temper it with Protein to slow that blood sugar reaction and give the meal some substance and the combination of protein, vegies or fruit and a carb is what works for me.

I took up running partly because I loved it but also because I knew I dont have time for the gym! I needed something that I could just step out my front door and do and I needed something that I could do at any time of the day, not be dependent on timetables and that if I only had half an hour I could still burn 600 calories. Running was it. I would never ever be succesful with trying to commit to the gym. I like to go to a class occasionally but to me, regular gym going isnt very compatible with jobs and families. I was also able to set goals for running - trainign for different races and i think that was really important in getting the daily running habit established - I think it took about six months before it was a really ingrained habit.

Walking up 21flights of stairs is a pretty good workout! Most people, even those who are fit, would end up out of breath. BUT - walking is a great way to start out when you're very heavy, havent exercised, or want to go gentle on your body and there are a million other health benefits. It is never a waste of time or a "lazy" option, however if you're looking to walking to get you to a superior level of cardiovascular fitness, it just isnt going to happen, unless you're a very dedicated power walker (true POWER walker!) with lots of hills to tackle. Ordinary working the way most people do it is good exercise, will keep you out of the cardiac ward but will not build really great cardiovascular fitness. For that you need more intense activities. Even then its hard, because your body adapts. In short, you need to be feeling that lungs burning, gonna die feeling for at least intervals of your workout to keep advancing your cardio fitness. However, fitness is a subjective concept. You want to be fit enough for YOUR lifestyle, apart from for reasons of basic health. You dont need to be able to run a marathon to be healthy. I tend to call "acceptable" cardio fitness as being able to run 10kms in about an hour. That to me would be a person who can engage in effective weight reducing exercise, tackle any sort of active sport or pursuit that normal life would throw up and do it easily. But that's only defined by the boundaries of MY life. Yours may be different.

I know I use a lot of colloquialisms that confuse people here, the Australian version of English and the American are quite different, and I also use the ur not or form of spelling in words like colour, neighbour, etc. But there's a sub-language that astounds me, the "woa, sista, you don no what ur sayin" kind of sentences that just blow me away - how on earth do people get by in the world with that sort of level of literacy? Its utterly amazing. But I think literacy standards are slipping markedly worldwide. My own children, stickler though I am for the queen's English, cannot spell well, do not read, but instead get their exposure to the language through different mediums than I did as a child - video games, playstation magazines etc. I'm a teacher and I cant fight the cultural change.

It also sounds like you may be lacking iron.

Its really weird how that happens, i mean if the food is supposed to stay in your pouch how on earth can you know you're stuck instantly? But that's how it often happens. It varies for me - a real mistake bite - swallowed unchewed, swallowed hastily, way too big, I'll know that right away. Sometimes however I can pack in four or five more bites before it hits me. For that reason i find waiting between bites even MORE important than chewing. Never take forkful after forkful without pausing.

Weight loss for me was a series of plateaus, I would not lose for 2 or 3 weeks, then 4lb would go, then I'd not lose for 2 or 3 weeks again. I never ever lost consistently every week apart from the first 8 to 10 weeks. I guess my longest plateau though was maintenance. I never got to "goal", I just petered out at about 150lb, thankfully that was a BMI of 21 for me, not 31.... Actually I lie, I'm still losing occasionally, like 1lb every 6 months! but I've lost like 5lb in the last 2 years so I guess you'd call it maintenance.

Well, for starters, you look like an entirely normal, healthy man to me and you look great. Not too thin at all. But I know what you mean sort of, DH is a bit the same. He's 6ft 3 and currently 94kg so what's that, probably a tad under 200lb. He's still quite definitely overweight - becuase his family are all quite gifted runners and tend towards the very thin, he is very very fine boned (his wrists are smaller than mine, he has these incredibly long, unmanly fingers, lol) and he really is probably meant to be somewhere around 170lb to get rid of all his excess fat. He doesnt want to be that skinny and I have to confess, he has been when he was young and its less attractive than he is now. BUT - its unarguably healthier. The only real answer in this sort of case is if you want the bulk but your natural body type is thin, you have to build it it in the form of muscle - keeping unhealthy fat on you is really not the answer. BMI is confusing, i mean yes, 24.2 is healthy but how much fat do you have? Is it healthy for YOU? I spent my entire teens and twenties at a BMI of about 25 and I was most definitely FAT. Fatter than was healthy. It was just not a good body composition for my body, which is tall, thin and lightly muscled. I am a person who has a more appropriate body composition with a BMI probably a bit less than I have now. Yet, I'm also the same. I've now got a BMI of 21, and I've still got plenty of coverage on my lower half, enough that I want to lose it, but I know if I lose more weight, then I'm going to just be entirely scrawny up top - there's an easy answer, lol, lipo, the ultimate way to lose fat, not muscle. Because women with chest bones sticking out and rib cages that are bigger than their bustlines are not that attractive either.... I think overall though, your body is what decides. You have to stay true to your natural body type, and if that's very thin, then that's what it is. And it really gets down to focussing on your body composition rather than actual weight.

I guess we're all individuals becuase I find carb foods like bread and Pasta are what make my band work like it should, meaning they stay in my pouch inducing a sense of satisfaction on fewer calories than lots of Protein - not that I dont eat protein too, I just focus equally on all food groups. If I eat salad vegies and tuna for lunch, I'll be hungry in an hour. If I eat that between 2 slice of bread I wont get quite all of it in, so I eat slightly less tuna and slightly less vegies but with the addition of (wholegrain) bread, it all stays with me for hours and hours and hours. The thing is the carbs you eat must be low GI ones, ones that dont give you a massive rise in blood sugar. Also, if you eat such carbs with slow digesting foods that are high in protein, that also slows down the absorbtion of the entire meal. Eating a potato by itself is an entirely different matter than eating a bit of potato, some vegies and some steak. The key to not stretching your pouch is not overeating, period. And not drinking when you're eating. Perhaps what your boyfriend means is that certain foods, like rice and pasta - particularly the white versions - can swell even more with the liquid in your stomach and that's why they can be such hard foods to eat.

No, those sorts of things dont fill me at ALL. I can still eat five or six of them like I always could which is why i said I avoid them. They're slider foods for me.

Oh, I'm very unrestricted in bandster terms and I just cant do big Vitamin pills - I take chewable ones. And these things called Iron melts that are similar (coz I tend to be chronically low on iron). I add ground flaxseed into things that are appropriate or take a tablespoon full of flaxseed oil every day. That way I can avoid the horrid experience of having the pill stick in my throat, making me gag and vomit it back up - I swear its not a pb, its just my ultra babyish reaction to swallowing - anything :-) - but its not fun when your coffee follows it via your nose. I've not needed anitbiotics at all in the 4 years since banding, not sure how I'll cope when I do. Smaller capsules like painkillers are fine for me though. Wasa - you're on! I just saw a divine recipe for duck in a port and orange sauce surrounded by pitted cherries on the Tour de France - any chance? But a bowl of lentils would be fine....

You know, I've found the transition to maintenance the hardest thing about the whole weightloss journey by a LONG shot. I cannot seem to give myself permission to not be trying to lose weight. Its not that I find the middle ground hard to find, its more that I consider that normal eating (and thus not having the feeling of deprivation that you get when trying to cut back, however mild) "naughty". I cant seem to feel comfortable with being satified, eating what I want and trusting my body to not lie to me about what it needs, I have been just doing what I'd call 'maintenance exercise' meaning a 7km run most days and I feel guilty for being "slack". Where does this need to punish myself come from? I'm at the stage with my body image where overall, I have come to terms with the new me, I have a realistic vision of myself, I know that I'm not fat, in fact I'm pretty slim and I can see my problem areas, as always are my buttocks, hips and upper thighs. I know that I'm a PERFECT candidate for some lipo there, I just need an artistic touch to smooth me out a bit and I would have a really nice figure as I'm lucky to be well proportioned, tall and slim. We've earmarked some money in about september for that because realistically, I cant control where the weight comes off and a) I find my current 150lb VERY easy to maintain and :biggrin0: I know I'll lose my boobs, get gaunt in the fact and STILL have saddlebags if I lost more weight anyway. So why not just relax, enjoy not having to diet, run my easy runs that I enjoy so much and not push myself to run myself into the ground? I dont know. I feel like I'll lose control or something, its so weird. Maintenance is really really hard. Keeping the weight off isnt, but adjusting to not needing to lose weight is!

I've had my band almost 4 years now. Life now is pretty good, I feel better both physically and mentally not having a BMI of 35 anymore, in fact I feel downright attractive most days :-). I have plenty of confidence in my appearance which has translated into a lot more confidence to tackle other areas of life where I gave the impression of confidence but in fact felt out of my depth, work, job interviews, that sort of thing. I feel better than I did at 20, because I'm way fitter than even when I was a healthy 20 year old! I took up running and I would never give up this level of super-fitness that I have achieved, I will be running when I'm 70! Managing my weight by eating and exercise is a day to day thing, I still think about it every day, I still have to make good decisions and am not always successful at it and of course, I have the day to day reminders that I have a lapband - nearly ever meal will include a "discomfort" or two meaning one or two bites may go down too fast, not be chewed enough or be too big and you have to stop and let it just pass through a bit and every time you eat out with others you have the pressure to eat carefully so that no embarrassing incidents occur. Every now and then I will vomit up something, in fact I've done it twice this week from taking a Vitamin pill with a swallow of coffee, I'm just tight this week for some reason and cant swallow the big pill. That's annoying, not painful, awful or scary and its not nauseous acidy vomiting like when you're sick, its simply regurgitation. It comes with unmistakeable stomach feelings which again, i wouldnt classify as pain, more a warning. Bands are fickle, your retriction varies from day to day and especially for women over the month, so really you can never ever be completely confident that you know your band, your body and how it will react in any given situation. I say that not to scare you but to be honest, you dont get a lapband and then forget forever more that its there, with the only change that you eat less. You are aware of it every single time you eat, but its not a bad thing. Every day, I try to eat well, and like normal thin people. some days I dont! I eat more on holidays, I can enjoy special occasions but most days I also run about 8kms. that's my life in a nutshell, I would never regret or change the fact that I had this done, for me it was the absolute best decision for my health - and to be honest, my satisfication with my appearance - that i could ever have made. but I strongly think you need to be the right candidate for a band, you MUST be prepared to work hard at it or the weight loss will be disappointing, good eating choices and exercise are key.

Well, in Australia, really they cant refuse to refer you, I dont know what its like wherever you are. I would do one of two things a) do your block completely and insist that she refer you because its YOUR body and YOUR decision and you're perfectly capable at 23 years old of making those sorts of decisions, just as you are capable of deciding to get married, buy a house etc. or :confused: doctor shop until you find one that WILL refer you.

The thing about poverty and eating poorly is so NOT true. Its lack of education and lack of energy to bother that is the problem, not lack of money or access to food. You can go to Prahran market or South Melbourne Market or Queen victorian Market here in Melbourne - any of the big markets and I"m sure every major city in the world has them and if you go at close to closing time you can buy an enormous bag - like 20lb worth of mixed vegetables for $20. Beans and pulses are cheap as dirt. Our local supermarket which I rarely shop at becuase I am a fresh market shopper in general does market saturday every week at 5pm where the meat and poultry is absolutely rock bottom prices. The trouble is people dont know how to cook! Buying food this way is FAR cheaper than buying rubbish but people just have no idea what to do with it. It is not hard to learn to be a good basic cook but people are plain lazy and sometimes intimidated. Being poor has nothing to do with not knowing how to cook lentils and vegies into a healthy satisifying meal, the information on what is a healthy diet is everywhere for people to know, cooking oatmeal for Breakfast - from scratch not that packaged rubbish everyone seems to love - is as cheap as it gets and very healthy. Poverty is no impediment to eating well if people were educated about it - probably the responsibility of each individual themselves but also as a policy thing. I have the modern day version of the mega pot over the fire - a slow cooker and I regularly DO fill it with every vegetable and pulse I can find in the house and simmer it all day! I think the thing with the Protein first and why we seem to argue about it and why it is not pushed so much here is that in general our "band culture" in Australia is not to be so tight that getting 60 to 80 grams a day would be any issue whatsoever so there's no need to make it the focus. My doctor would say that if you need Protein shakes, then you're too tight and that you should be able to eat a balanced meal of protein, wholegrain carb and vegetables. I dont know where this 1/2 serving ideal came from but it is to my mind the most problematic misconception of the band ever. It makes it so that you have to be overtight to remain satisfied, and leads to you not being able to eat enough of what you need, and of course, being that tight leads to all the problems that the band seems to bring on. Gram for gram, protein and carbs are the same calorie value - 9 cal (I think). The thing is protein comes as solid, and dense, so small. Wholegrain bread comes with loads of fibre and air and fruit and veg come with fibre and Water, so it is much more filling for a smaller amount. So you can eat way more BULK for not a lot of extra calories. Loosen off your band, eat a cup worth instead and fill it out with healthy fibre giving wholegrain foods and suddenly you could be just as satisfied, on only a few more calories with, I'm betting, MUCH less discomfort associated with an overtight band. Make up the difference by moving more if you need to. But having your band tight enough to limit you to half a cup of protein and very little vegetables and then adding back in Vitamin pills, protein shakes and fibre is to my mind absolutely insane. That simply CANT be the route to a healthy long life.

We call it soft drink down under. My doctor - who was a band pioneer - thinks the no carbonated drinks thing is rubbish. Where it started I dont know, but he likens it to the theory that suddenly becuase you're banded your body needs ten times more Protein than it did before. So carbonated drinks are not forbidden BUT no doctor would advocate a regular intake of soft drinks - they're HORRIBLE for you diet or regular. They do terrible things to your body and are well and truly "sometimes" drinks, not everyday things. I thankfully dont like soft drinks much but I do like soda Water (club soda I think? just plain carbonated water) and mineral water but those are things I might drink out if I'm not having a glass of wine. Occasionally I like a beer too, but not often. But what you'll find is the bubbles really fill you up and you just cant down four diet cokes in a sitting. i would also never say no to champagne, but those bubbles dont seem to have any effect on me.

Real hunger to me since being banded 4 years ago has always been painful. I mean, i can get a little peckish and have a rumble or two and that just feels like hunger always has done to me. But if I go say from lunch at midday till dinner at 7.30 I will get a painful hunger. For me, the pangs turn into something more crampy and I will get acidy too. Then when I do eat and hit my stomach, it burns, like wine or coffee does when you've got a bit of heartburn. The answer to me is easy, I eat regularly and small rather than go long times without eating. I do basically follow a 3 meals a day plan as I just dont seem to handle five small meals well, I need it to be 3 main meals and a definite 'snack' rather than a small meal, meaning just a nibble of something.

I've had my wedding and engagement rings resized twice and they're too big again - not wearing them at the moment. I actually dont wear them that often anyway, as my tastes have changed a LOT since I got married 20 years ago and I tend to wear very different style of jewellery now, not really big on traditional feminine pretty jewellery and much more likely to go for something much more modern/funkier. So at the moment I've got a sterling silver dome ring on my wedding finger. DH isnt fussed, he'd rather I do that than shell out AGAIN for resizing, and I think I'll wait and remodel the rings entirely. They're yellow gold which I no longer wear at all.

Kim, if you're looking at the band as portion control and portion control only, then its done a GREAT job - 40lb in 9 months without 'diet' or 'exercise' is fabulous! however, you absolutely cannot keep getting tighter and tighter waiting for the band to kick in and automatically make you lose weight. It wont happen, you're already experiencing problems and if you go on like this you risk losing your band through problems you've caused yourself. Isnt it easier to put in a little effort on the diet front and do some exercise? You'd get to eat MORE than you can now, and not be tight and pbing after every meal. I simply cannot understand what people choose to go through rather than go out their front door and move a little. Honestly, exercise is not that bad, and its certainly a better option than strangling your stomach and becoming malnourished!

Yeah, I think we're basically arguing the same thing here, but coming at it from different directions. I get frustrated because people simplify it to carbs and nothing else - when you look back to the 50's and 60's people ate carbs in their diets then and people werent fat like they are now - it's all snowballed with the combination of carbs and fat into processed foods that just used to not exist. I think you just have to define it so that people include in their mental picture of junk foods white bread, flour and sugar along with McDonalds, KFC and pizza. I can remember back in the 80's being on a low fat diet and being hungry an hour after a lunch that consisted of a banana in a white bread roll so I ate jelly babies because they had no fat. Argh. Not exactly a constructive way to tackle a weight problem! I certainly dont advocate that or do it now! But I also dont believe fat people all lack the ability to be moderate and I personally dont really believe in "trigger foods" either - but maybe that's because I dont have any particular ones. I guess really why I'm so pedantic on this is that I very strongly dont believe in rules and diets and I dont think there's success down the road if you just ban whole good groups forever. I think realistically everyone IS going to eat McDonalds or cake or Pasta once in a while and that its more sensible to find ways to fit that into an overall healthy diet rather than just ban them. But that's personality I guess.

Lol, I think we can safely assume that the OP's tummy has settled down by now. It either went down or came up :-)

I agree, it's unlikely to be calorie related as you're doing great there. Exercise does make you more tired, and I sometimes feel like its counterproductive, but its more just my busy life that makes me weary in the late arvo. but you could be low on Iron or B Vitamins or something.

Group strength classes like PUMP are fantastic general exercise, but if you really want to build triceps, low weight high rep isnt the way to do it. YOu need to lift a weight so heavy that you can literally only do a few reps. A great triceps exercise is dips. Pull up a dining chair or find a waist high fence to lean on, anything will do (I use the side of our trampoline). Put your feet straight out in front of you and lean back, hands on the bar or chair, and taking ALL your weight through your arms (no cheating and using your legs) bend your elbows and drop your body, then raise again by straightening your arms. You will progressively take more and more weight through your arms and less and less through your legs but you should exhaust the muscle completely, so that 8 or 10 reps is it. Then do some full body pushups to attack from a different angle. Even then, as a woman, you'll struggle to truly build a bigger muscle, but that will be a lot more effective than body pump, which really is only a toning, aerobic activity - definitely NOT a waste of time but it generally wont build big muscles either.

But Wasa, the whole obesity thing is not as simple as white carbs - although of course, cutting those is a great place to start. People eat a LOAD of other poison - trans fats, saturated fat, additives, colours and flavours, loads of salt, pesticides and other chemicals. I know that basically you and I do agree about what a healthy diet is too. Personally I believe if people actually learned to shop, cook and plan and stopped living out of boxes and cans, there'd be a lot less fat people around. And even the thin ones would live longer and have less disease. People also dont move - I mean read here about how people drive to work, spend their day at a desk, and drive home, then go for half an hour on the elliptical and call THAT a good exercise day. Its not their pwn personal fault, I'm not saying anyone is slack, but that is just SO far removed from what the human body is designed for that its ridiculous. Half an hour on a cardio machine will never ever make up for the fact that we're supposed to be moving all day. Put all those factors together and THEN you've got a nation in obesity crisis, and that's a crisis that wont be fixed simply from giving up flour and sugar. Its way way more complex than that. that's where I agree with you - thinking you're doing fine just by eating smaller amounts of crap food is dangerous. Cutting out starchy, white carbs is a great first step, but that's all it is - a step in the right direction, not the whole answer.