Jachut

I eat more like a cup at a sitting and now I've finished losing that's about 1800 calories a day with a snack or two, and milk for coffee, a glass of wine at night etc. When I was losing I ate about 1500 a day.

I was wondering the same thing, I have to have a laparoscopy later this year and forgot to ask my doc recently. I have a feeling that if I"m going to be pumped full of gas again, I will be very tight without an unfill.

I eat carbs. I eat a balanced diet from all the food groups, I eat moderate Protein, but I dont load it, I dont do protein first and I dont low carb. I focus on healthy wholegrain carbs as the most important base food of my diet. That gives me plenty of energy to run for over an hour. I take an isotonic drink with me (I use Endura, not gatorade/powerade/pretend sports drinks like that) and I usually take a gel with me too. That's for my long run of the week which is now at 14kms. For anything under 10, I just take Water. Simple as that. Toast for Breakfast or wholegrain cereal, sandwiches for lunch, rice/pasta or potato with dinner. Lots of fruit and vegies, moderate protein and the right fats. I keep my band a bit looser to allow me to eat enough too. I lost well on 1500 a day and am still loosing very very very slowly on 1800 to 2000 for maintenance.

If breastfeeding is important to you (it was to me), I wouldnt muck around with low carbing whilst breastfeeding personally. It creates ketones in the body. I will argue till I'm blue in the face that being in ketosis is not desirable for us, and many will disagree with me. But it sure isnt desirable to feed out infants our ketones. This is so hard to tackle when the advice given between one doctor and another is so different and here in Australia, we're not always put on a liquid pre op diet at all (I wasnt) and we're certainly not told to low carb it or even do Protein first. You can indeed be safely banded without having done two weeks of Optifast hell and you can indeed lose weight with a lapband whilst eating bread, rice and Pasta as part of your balanced diet. So I would play it that way. I would eat a balanced diet from all the food groups for now. I think having lower calories is less of a problem (you have fat stores afterall) than having a very high protein intake. Just my take on it.

Sadly not all cases of high blood pressure are fixed by weight loss. Some peple *do* have high blood pressure simply because their hearts are struggling to pump the blood through their bodies, but many have high blood pressure becuase they just do. For many there are genetic and physiological causes that are not related to their weight and cannot be fixed by changing their weight. Many thin people have high blood pressure and require medication to control it. The same goes for our cholesterol levels. Some people will always have high cholesterol and need to be medicated for it. So if you need to medicate to keep it at normal levels, then do so. It sucks to have to be on blood pressure meds, but it often cant be fixed simply by weight loss. Look on the bright side. If you have to live with one risk factor (the high bp) at least you will have eliminated another (the obesity). You can still be way healthier and lower risk for heart disease than a lot of other people! It might also be completely transitory and will clear up, fingers crossed for you that this is the case.

If its only 15 calories YOU swallow it, lol.

Any good B supplement will give you some B12

Moderate wine consumption - like one standard unit perhaps five days out of seven is good for your health, that's mainly red wine. White is not quite as good, although it still does have benefits. Its protective of your heart, although that's balanced off against the bad things about alcohol which is why small quantities is a good idea. Its definitely not empty calories though, we've all been told by mum's cardiologist to keep up the habit! Drinking wine "like crazy" is not a good idea! At my information session, Prof. O'Brien stated that my clinic's patients who drink moderately and regularly have better weight loss results than non drinkers, but they dont know exactly why. Personally, I'd have a glass of wine with dinner four or five days a week.

I find if I suddenly get bit picky, if I can distract myself for 20 minutes (there's ALWAYS housework to be done) then it does pass.

Zantac for gas? Isnt it heartburn/reflux medication. It is here, I fairly lived on the stuff during my third pregnancy, that and 500ml of Gaviscon per day!

I'm not a lot of help since I havent had a TT and dont need one, but I have been to see a PS re a breast lift (in Melbourne) and he gave me generalised info which quited $8,000 to $10,000 for a tummy tuck. Of course private health insurance will cover your hospital costs but in general not the costs for your surgery, unless there really is a pressing medical reason why you need to have it done and then, as I understand it, only a panniculectomy might be covered - which means they will cover the cost of lopping off your apron but not necessarily the cost of an aesthetically pleasing tummy tuck with muscle repair. But that depends on your fund. Your surgeon will probably allocate a medicare item to the procedure if you have rashes and such, but its not a lot either. It bites, these guys charge more than double the scheduled fee sometimes, I went to the gynae last week, it cost me $160 for basically five minutes, in which I got a referral for an ultrasound, and then I got a measly $65 back for it from medicare this morning, grrrrrr. You can have it done before you get to goal but you'd want to be pretty close. YOu dont need a person who specialises in banded people necessarily, but the best course of action there woud be to ask your band doctor who they recommend. Good luck!

I dont know, I dont have any trouble and I'm a 3 meal a day eater. I might have Cereal with some sliced banana for Breakfast - and generally that means muesli which is higher calorie (and also higher Protein, lower GI, better carbs), so that might be 300 calories for breakfast. lunch will usually be some sort of sandwich (I cant eat the WHOLE thing) and it will usually include fillings like avocado and tuna for the good fats so that adds up, if I eat half of that, its probably 300 calories again. An hour or so later I will have some fruit - maybe 100 calories again. Mid morning I'd usually have a latte or cappucino, a skim milk small size is about 100 calories - so I'm already up to 800 calories. dinner will nearly always include a glass of wine, maybe 150, and if I allow about 400 for dinner, sometimes more depending on what it is and about 150 a day for skim milk for tea and coffee, it really only takes a bite or two of something mid afternoon and I'm up to 1500. I dont know, I'm not that tight. I've had a small unfill recently becuase to me, to be limited to half a cup serving sizes means I"m having discomfort with EVERYTHING I eat. To not have discomfort, to be able to eat mostly everything, means my meal size is more like a cup of food. Which is fine by me, since calorie wise it suits my body and I lost easily and am maintaining easily on that. Yes, I get hungry in between meals, and yes, being able to eat like that means that I can also eat things I'd be better off not eating - like pizza. That's where a bit of self control comes in - I usually just dont eat those things and if I'm a bit hungry, I either eat something small (dont have to worry bout that now I'm maintaining) or I just wait till meal time and have a cuppa instead. So in short, three half cups a day to me means starving yourself and I think its a ridiculously small amount of food. I certainly couldnt live on it. But I've never had to. I've been able to eat quite a bit more and lose weight so I dont even look for that kind of restriction. If your body demands that few calories before you lose, then its another story I guess, and a bit of a trade off between long term nutrition and healthy body weight.

Well, lets just cross fingers for you that hard stomach = no excess stomach skin! Good luck.

Actually a hard stomach rather than a mushy one (like men tend to get) tends to mean that most of your fat is internal. Women tend to be mushier, softer and flabbier because they store more fat underneath their skin. Sorry to say, fat round your organs and internally is more of a health risk so its a VERY good idea to lose it! And a beer belly is not really caused by drinking beer specifically, its caused by too many calories (which may come from beer) and its hard like it is precisely because of the male tendency to store fat internally.

Forgive me, but I really think expecting others around you to not eat things you find tempting is a little unreasonable. Its difficult, yes, but its your journey, not theirs. In the end, you have to learn to live in a world full of temptations and make good choices, it may as well start right now. The basic fact is that if you dont want to be fat then you cant afford to eat the way most people these days do. Sorry if that's harsh, but only your world revolves around you, to everyone else, their life is going on as normal and they are not going to stop eating just because you have. There's many of us who had to do this whole liquid diet thing and still feed a family. I couldnt put them all on a liquid diet along with me! Hang in there, the rewards will be more than worth it in the long run.

This is very true. Normal is only relative after all. But I have a new normal now and my eating habits are very "normal" relative to other people, only I have had a few occasions lately to realise I eat very little. So much so that I was prompted to go and have a slight unfill. I eat everythign. I eat bread, I drink alcohol, I might occasionally have a carbonated drink (but I dont like them much, never have), I eat carbs. I eat 3 meals a day, I enjoy myself when I go out to eat, I'll have a piece of someone's birthday cake. In fact I pretty much did all that whilst I was losing weight too, just very much in moderation, and now that I'm at goal, my habits have not changed one bit. If I've had a glass of wine and a piece of cake in one day, I probably will stay up to midnight if I have to to get my run in for the day. I think exercise is key to be honest, its a very powerful tool for weight maintenance. If you exercise hard and regularly you will be able to eat "normally" again one day - although lots of carbonation is bad for your band! But bread/carbs, well I have no trouble with those foods, they dont make me crave and they dont particularly make me fat, so I eat them.

Its quite a normal phenomenen to find your fill tightens up over a few days or weeks after its actually been done. It sounds like you're simply a bit too tight and need some out. Fancy the doctor saying its your fault, that you've eaten something you shouldnt have! How rude, he needs his butt kicked for that. He ought to know that this is possible after ANY fill! I wouldnt muck around with this if you think you're getting dehydrated, get in as soon as possible for an unfill. By the way, the roof of my mouth always aches if I something gets a bit stuck and its a sure sign of impending PB for me.

It is sooooo easy. Take some pumpkin Soup - we made ours, but we've done this with Campbell's Velish and any good canned/carton pumpkin soup will work. All we do to make pumpkin soup is take a butternut pumpkin (which I think you guys call butternut squash) and cube it. In a pan in some olive oil fry off an onion and a couple of rashers of lean bacon, then add the cubed pumpkin and about a litre of stock/broth (we use Vegeta, you can use chicken stock though), simmer till the pumpkin is mushy, then drain off and reserve the liquid and puree the pumpkin adding in liquid if needed. Best do your own fave pumpkin soup recipe though since we've got completely different pumpkins in Australia - have had this dicussion in depth on another board, lol. So whatever is the sweetest best tasting pumpkin in your neck of the woods. We freeze the soup. Then when we want to eat it, you just heat in a saucepan and add a REALLY big spoonful of crunchy Peanut Butter, a good shake of all purpose curry powder (to taste) and a couple of good dollops of sour cream - good greek yogurt works too. That's it. Its delish!

What I'm eating at 2 and a half years out is not dissimilar to what I was eating at about six months, I just dont worry quite so much about a few extras here or there now I'm at goal. I stick to 3 meals a day most of the time, and dont snack. Snacking is a problem for me, once I start, I keep going. Today I had Breakfast: 2 weetbix (wholegrain wheat cereal) with sliced banana and skim milk. lunch Small mixed sushi pack (6 pieces) fresh strawberries with some cream (just a dollop, lol) - this was about half an hour later. Dinner: curried peanut pumpkin Soup - a good bowful It was an easy dinner tonight, the kids had basketball, didnt get in till 7. Usually its a meat and 3 veg type meal. The soup was homemade though, out of the freezer. I can and do eat bread, most days.

I would make a piece of toast and stack it on top of that, like an open sandwich, I'd eat it with a knife and fork and mainly eat the filling, then a little bit of the bread if I had room/could get it down. I do eat bread regularly but I often do this becuase I realise what I want is the filling (mine is chicken, avocado, sprouts and salt and pepper, yum!).

I've lost 120% of my excess weight and kept it off - its staying off easily. In fact I am still losing at like 1lb a month!

That's what I find is great about doing lots of exercise though - exercise really comes to the fore when you're on maintenance. I've experienced this before in my life when I was very active, albeit heavier, that you can have quite significant dalliances from your normal eating plan (like Christmas for example) and you just dont gain weight. My weight stays absolutely steady all the time and I'm positive its due to running, because my eating is not as steady. I have days where I'm hungrier, days where I eat chocolate etc.

Wow, I dont think I've ever heard from another person who's tighter at night like I am! We're in the minority it seems. I find banded life to be very much like unbanded life, in that I might not be actually hungry, but I still feel like eating, and really there's no answer to that other than to just not do it. I stick with 3 meals a day, most of the time. I make those good meals. I eat more than 1/2 a cup I can tell you, it suits me better to have my band looser and to eat solid meals - like a sandwich for lunch - than to be tighter and eat tiny amounts, becuase when I eat tiny amounts, I am wanting to eat one or two hours later, REALLY wanting to eat. When I've had a bigger meal, I may think about Cookies but I can resist them. So much so that I just had a small unfill on Monday to be able to eat more. I'd had a tiny fill back in February and since then, my eating patterns have taken a bit of a nose dive, I felt I was picking and nibbling more and not eating properly, and the unfill has fixed that. So getting it just right does help, but basically, whatever diet you like, whether your'e a calorie counter, low carber or like me, just eat sensibly dieter, what it basically comes down to is the band makes it easier to diet and you have to do a lot of it yourself. What I find it REALLY helps me with is if I used to be really good all afternoon, eat nothing between lunch and dinner, I'd feel I could relax at dinner. I'd be hungrier for sure, and I'd eat a BIG dinner, as a reward for not having nibbled all afternoon. Then I'd figure I could afford desert. The band stops that. If I can do my part in between meals, and not eat anything, then the band keeps my meals sensibly sized and I dont get overly physically hungry in between. I'm just as susceptible to eating something simply because its there as I ever was (like if someone brings out cookies with the coffee) and sometimes I still do that, most of the time I dont.

Oooh, awkward. I dont think its reasonable for her to expect you to pay for all of that, I mean really if you were having a meal bought for you, you'd be sensible with what you ordered wouldnt you? But its a very hard thing to say on your part. I think its more than fair though to suggest that you're happy to treat her but not for an unlimited amount. But I agree, do it before you go out, not when you're there. Other things like this, like when you're all contributing a set amount to a group meal, I think as a bandster you'd just lump the fact that you eat less than everyone else, but in a one on one situation like this, she ought to be more mindful of the fact that its not her money and not order the entire menu.

I guess its different for everyone but I had no particular difficulty. A few hours after surgery I was able to get out of bed by myself using the thingie above the bed to pull on and hospital toilets have rails anyway, you can use that to get up and down. I never had any problems wiping my butt either. So you wont necessarily have any trouble, everyones experience is different. But its a few little cuts, you get your mobility back very quickly. You havent had organs removed or been opened up from neck to pelvis, its really not that big a deal. You may not be running a marathon but you'll be fine to perform daily activities.