Jachut

Mine hasnt changed.

I dunno, I think it speaks of someone's own insecurity that they would think that you were with them only becuase you were fat and had no better choices. That's something you really cant sort out for someone else. You can reassure, but you cant resolve. Its also a bit weird to think that just because someone changes int eh way they look, they'd change morally and philosophically. I think if it were my DH feeling that way I'd try to be reassuring but eventually, I think we'd be fighting about it. It really is his problem, not yours. But its a serious one that I'd want to sort. I think I'd do my block as I'd see it as pretty needy and childish. I've never given DH one single occasion to even imagine I'd be unfaithful, so I'd be a bit taken aback if he suddenly started acting as if he thought that of me. I get why you're hot under the collar, totally. Just not sure what I'd do about it, other than have "a talk".

There is nothing I cant eat with my lapband. except humble pie, lol.

I get what you mean and I think you're right to a point. I am still here for example despite being at goal for about a year now, because there's people I dont want to lose touch with, I find them fun, interesting and challenging and I still desire contact with them. But I answer way less on this board now becuase more and more of it annoys me, I dont want to talk about this trivial matter or that easy to solve problem. My answer, dont eat it, just get out there and DO the exercise, stop sitting on your bum here on the computer complaining about lack of motivation. In fact it annoys me so much I had a very big typewritten PB (thanks Juli!) over in R&R. But really, if I'm honest, its as much because I've changed and there's really nothing for me to gain from talking about this stuff any more. I've conquered it to the degree that I've found a new balance in my life and I'm hanging on to something that has little relevance to me now. In situations where people never knew the fat me, its funny. I like it and I dont. I enjoy being just "normal" but sometimes I feel an urge to point out that I "was" fat. I dont know, it is a part of me and always will be and in some ways I dont want to let that person go because she will always be part of who I am now. I cant quite bend my mind around people assuming I was always a normal weight because its not how I think of myself. There's a really big discrepancy between what people see and assume now and what I really am.

Good for you, hope you get well underway again. I know I've been banging on left right and centre about taking responsinbility for your choices in the past few days, but I think you make an excellent point. Being responsible doesnt mean you have to be hard on yourself. You dont have to beat yourself up for your actions and choices, just accept that they're not taking you where you want to go and change them.

Thank goodness you're OK, many people WOULD ignore those symptoms. Are obese people at increased risk of DVT? After surgery at the hospital DH and I went to, they make you wear the white stockings that are continually pumped up and down, even for just a day bedridden. And make you get up and walk around etc. They certainly take it more seriously these days.

Yes, Nanook, please understand I'm not talking about serious mental illness in any way or even trying to pretend that depression doesnt exist or is a choice. That's definitely not R&R subject matter,there's a board for that. I'm talking about pains in the asses who whinge a lot.

It will still be stitched to the same bit of your abdominal wall but as you lose all your internal fat, where that bit of your abdominal wall is will change. And yes, sorry to say but my port now sticks out. I dont think I have a low profile one, never asked. You'd only ever see it in a bikini anyway, it doesnt show through clothes, and really, on the beach you're just letting it all hang out anyway. I mean my bum now resides on the back of my knees, I can tie my tits in a knot behind my head, so why worry about a bit of a lump on my stomach?

Personally, I think its better to never ever do it again, just to be on the safe side you know. But unless he's rather severely backed up you should be fine.

I've not drunk a single Protein shake since I was banded 2.5 years ago. Never. Not even in the post op period. I dont count protein and I dont do protein first. I just eat a healthy balanced diet from all five food groups. I'm now at 120% of excess weight lost, I have a BMI of 22, a body fat percentage of 24% and some nice, visible muscles (just there, not huge and bulging) in my arms, back thighs and even my stomach from runnning and light weight/circuit work. I have all my hair, I have not turned into a flabby muscle-less marshmallow, I lost weight, and am perfectly healthy and functioning. Protein schmotein. As long as you get enough of everything in balance, you'll be right, but I can tell you, I probably get about 40 to 60g protein on any given day.

Hey kat, we can talk about anything *I* say we can, lol. This is my thread afterall. Oh, the power! This is rather interesting, its all along the same lines. Libra, I think that "clinical depression" is a more articulate way to describe the distinction I was trying to make. That's really what I mean, there's people who are ill and people who just think they are. And everyone *is* hopping on the depression bandwagon these days. I guess, when you really think about it, people who are not emotionally competent or strong, who are recreating familiar thought and behaviour patterns do deserve patience and sympathy too. I'm just not the person to give it, roflmao! Or rather, I can, but if you show a preference for continuing with the histrionics rather than pulling yourself together, stay away from me. Why does it annoy me so much? What does it say about me that I just cant deal with people like that, I want to punch them? Do I not like having my own fairytale of the world being a good place shattered? I never want to dwell on negatives and it angers me when people do. Shit, I started this thread to reinstate my own (inherently correct, lol) point, now I think *I'm* the one who needs therapy! Doctor... I have this weird feeling of happiness and optimism, lol.

How do you really separate PND from situational depression? There's a very big grey area there. But really, I guess I mean situational depression. It can be bad enough, without needing to classify it as PND. I mean the people who you could have picked a mile off would have trouble coping with a young baby. You can just TELL about some people, if you know what I mean? So yeah, that probably doesnt mean true post natal depression.

I think its true Kat but I'm going to say something else outrageous here. Firstly I'll preface it by saying I understand totally that depression is an illness, people cannot just "snap out of it" and to treat them that way is not in the least bit helpful. Some people are PHYSIOLOGICALLY prone to depression and will have to manage it all their lives. People become depressed even when their seems no reason for it, and some people need to be on medication always to control that. Other people, I'm positive they do it to themselves. DH is one such person. Its their basic personality type, exactly the same as I believe some people's basic personality and outlook lead them to obesity. I'm thinking of several people I've known online and in real life for years, through a baby and parenting forum. They are just that type, baby WILL be born, it WILL be a home Water birth/natural delivery in birthing centre/happen upside down on a beanbag with Bon Jovi in the background, you know what I mean. They WILL breastfeed said child for 7 years. Come home, child WILL adapt to the routine immediately, feed on schedule, sleep through the night. Child WILL first sit at 5.2567 months old, WILL crawl at exactly 7.54 pm on the 4th of March, WILL walk on his first birthday. Then they bring this little scrap of humanity home, he screams blue murder all the first night after sleeping through an entire week in hospital after his caesarean delivery, yelling for his bottles. He will proceed to need feeding during the night for the first nine months of his life, sleep through for a month and then proceed waking at night again. And bless his cotton socks, he'll give up a day sleep at one year old and HOW is mummy supposed to cope without that hour of peace at 3pm? so they descend into miserable anxiety and depression (I'm talking medicated levels) and wonder how it all went so horribly wrong. Its their expectations! They are such control freaks with unrealistic expectations of how things would be and they have NO skills to cope with a change in plans. I went into motherhood with a bit of that, I found my first baby hard, a really big shock, but I figured I'd better bloody well adapt because what choice did I have? The second and third, I could have dropped them in a rice paddy, slung them across my front and kept working kind of thing. If you go in with no expectation and no delusions that you are in control, parenting a young baby aint rocket science. If you go to bed accepting that you will be up twice, and you know that your days arent your own, and that if you grab half an hour on the couch in peace, you will enjoy it greatly, then getting up at night isnt that difficult. So definitely, outlook and personality, assuming you can use parenthood as a metaphor for life in general, the way you approach things affects your experience of them and your experience of life can lead you into depression if you feel out of control and helpless. Depression can be a mental illness with physiological causes, but for some, if they could change their outlook and the way they approach things, could avoid the negative approaches, they could avoid it altogether. And you know, its STILL depression, however it came on, so its deserving of being treated seriously and with compassion. But the thing is you'll find with these people, they are getting *something* out of their illness. They love the drama of it. They come online (the baby people, I'm talking about) ten thousand times a day crying that they've just tried to put thier child down for a sleep and he WONT go. You gently suggest perhaps he's not tired and you're done for, you cop a tirade of abuse when all you meant is that surely getting him up and going shopping would be more pleasant than both of you than fighting for two hours to get a baby to sleep? But they dont want to hear it, they're thriving on the drama and their old negative thought patterns give them some sort of warped comfort - I mean if you think that way its a guaranteed outcome, right? So you become the bad guy. That's where my sympathy goes out the window, I'm afraid, lol.

I got subtle heartburn for a week or two after each fill. Mainly at night, but not through the night, just after dinner (which is when I'm naturally the tightest). It worried me a little, I kept a close eye on whether I might be too tight, but it did settle as the fill settled. If its keeping you awake at night, that's probably not good to let it go, I'd be contacting the doc within a day or two if it doesnt settle down. otherwise, I'd give it maybe a week or two and see how it goes.

I'd just put it behind me and move on. Dont just have Water, get back on your proper diet. Its really better not to cheat of course, but realistically very very few patients have livers so large that the operation cannot be performed. My doc's literature says its less than 1% of surgeries that he cant do. You've done the diet and ARE going to continue on the diet, your liver will have shrunk. What you've done is probably not significant, certainly not as significant as eating that AFTER the surgery. It is REALLY hard to do that liquid diet pre surg, really hard. And it will probably be really hard to get back on the wagon now because you've just tanked your glycogen up again and set your insulin racing, lol. But stick with it, you're nearly there.

When I got pregant the first time I was a healthy weight and only gained a small amount and had preeclampsia - its not only obesity that causes problems. I actually had a healthier pregnancy third time round when I was well and truly obese. But its such a risk. To lose a baby would be one of the worst things that could happen to you. Obesity doesnt mean it WILL happen, but its a risk factor, and it can be serious, you could be endangering both your lives. Then again it may be perfectly and absolutely fine. I'd wait personally, you'll enjoy it a lot more if you can do things like breath and digest your food and bend over without vomiting. At 300 lb you are liable to be mighty uncomfortable with a baby sharing your abdominal space. The third time I became pregnant I was a BMI of about 33 and I literally could not bend over without regurgitating my lunch. It was very different to being normal weight and pregnant.

All this time later since this thread began and I"m still working out at home. Tried the gym twice, as I really do like it, but the time factor got me again. It just works for me to be able to work out when I have half an hour, be it 6 am or 11 pm. And running is what I really love. The MINUTE we can afford to move house we're buying one with a huge rumpus room, and we're having a complete home gym.

Yep to both, lol. I am prone to having cramps in my feet if I point my toes, ONLY if I point my toes though.Its a bit weird. I've never had leg or feet cramps before aside from my first pregnancy.

It took a long time but when I popped, I did get that gratifying pregnant look - but definitely not the cute I just ate a basketball look. But not till 3rd trimester all 3 times. I'm 5ft 10 and have lots of room to carry an average sized baby, I dont get huge. But that's good coz I also dont get stretchmarks! And my stomach has recovered from weight loss etc OK. So I'd rather put up with looking thick rather than pregnant for most of the pregnancy and not deal with the aftermath of looking like a deflated balloon, lol.

Look, it so depends on what you define need as. I lost about 95lb and got really fit, so have the muscular "shape" that I need to give my body a nice shape. But my skin is about half a size too big all over and given I'm 40 and had that natural pear shape, with a bit of cellulite on the bottom half, I dont look like a bikini model. I wear a bikini and I feel damn proud in it. In my avatar, you cannot see any of my problem bits, that's a damn lucky picture to be honest. And I may as well wear the stupid thing since its my bum that's the real problem and there's no suit in the world other than neck to knee that will hide it, lol. But - if I had gajillions of dollars, I could have the 360 degree body lift and I'd look fricking fantastic. As it is, the worst I have to deal with is looking slightly like I've melted. I guess I'm 40, I've had 3 kids and lost a fair bit of weight and I'm not too unhappy for my body to tell that story. Except for my boobs. My reckoning is that if I buy myself a stupendous pair of tits, nobody will be looking at my bum anyway. That's next year's goal.

forgive me for the birthday cake and cat analogies, I really did not want to trivialise serious issues like assault or rape, there's no sensitive way to talk about those and I really am referring to people who use their dysfunctional relationship with their mother during their teens (I mean what womano DOESNT have that?) as an excuse, not people who are seriously ill or have really terrible issues to deal with. I mean people who use things we've all gone through to excuse their behaviour now. And Laurend has hit the nail right on the head. Help may not come in the form you want to hear it in. That's what angered me about BII, here she is asking for help, bemoaning her bad luck and then ever so politely rebuffing the wellmeaners. I am really not meaning people who truly need professional help, more having a bitch about the bandwagon so many jump on these days "oh, yes, I have issues, I'm in therapy". Yaaaawn. I could have issues too if I wanted to make some up out of my perfectly normal past. Its personality driven for sure, and it can be changed. My DH is an example. How he and I ever ended up together given the spectacular intolerance I have clearly demonstrated is beyond me. His whole family are a pack of whiners, much as I love them. They are just serial pessimists, everythign is going to turn out the worst possible way and dont they love it? Oh, the drama, keeps em going for days. DH was exactly like that. Five years ago, if you'd asked him he'd say our life was a disaster. He'd cite 17 years of marriage with no money, stuck in an awful outer suburban area, failing to achieve the career highs, the spectacular renovated inner city home and children in natty private school uniforms. He'd say all our friends surpassed us, we're the poor cousins. Ask me and I'd say "thank god I had those pretensions knocked out of me, I've got 3 great kids even though one wasnt even planned, we have our own home that we own outright, our area is so family friendly, I'm so happy with the small school we chose and we're healthy and happily married to boot. And we're describing the same life. He realised I was happy and he was miserable. So he vowed to change. It took a lot of work, he was fighting his whole upbringing and personality type. But he's learned to stop the negative self talk and to approach things postively and he's no longer medicated for anxiety AND what do you know, when you do that suddenly the career breaks come because people dont think your a big moaning pain in the ass. I'm talking about that sort of level of things, not really serious issues, and I really dont think I'd have anything valid to help someone who really did need that sort of help.

OK, now this is motivated by a desire to understand this, not a desire to start up another argument. Look, I think you CANT equate obese people with those suffering drug dependencies, even though I myself did it in another thread. perhaps you're right Tommaney and people have to get to a certain place before they can face themselves. At least now we're on the same page. So maybe I'm wrong and working out the why's is really critical. But I still dont think its the right why - the real why you need to tackle is "why do I choose to eat too much in response"? I still think you have the choice to say "I need to sort that, it needs resolution but right now today I'm going to go to the gym and bypass the KFC for lunch". And I've never ever ever understood why having some awful happening in your past means you cant go out for a run or go to the gym. Of course people relapse. We all do. But some people keep on going despite that, some fall in a heap. I guess Juli you're right, some people are just "like that". They're probably the people I either actively avoid, just somehow dont click with or even dislike when I come across them in real life because patently, I'm not "like that" in my outlook. Which is probably why the people I've really enjoyed and connected to on here generally echo my thoughts, becuase they do have the same sort of approach. The thing is people say "my cat died when I was four and that made me fat", they DONT say "my cat died when I was four and the way I chose to respond has made me fat". Its important to acknowledge that responsibility, even if it takes you years to deal with it, I dont think you can until you can acknowledge that you are responsible for your own behaviour. I think there's at least LITTLE room for that no matter where in your journey you are.

Yeah, I feed the happy wolf too, its not about complete self denial. And I'm selfish as hell with my time so that I get to do what I need to to keep me healthy. You know, I'd like to add, that for me, its never been about "boasting" or "throwing my success in people's faces" as BJean said above. Far from it. It makes me nasty when people say it, just as I get nasty when people say "oh, but its different for you, you're x, y or z". The passion behind my words has ALWAYS come from a sense of amazement. My message is very definitely "If I can do this, ANYBODY can". Its so true. I'm nothing special. I dont have superior strength, courage, Iron willpower, none of it. I was very much a fat person. You dont need ANY of that stuff that we all fear we're fundamentally lacking. Just a good ol dose of self honesty. It really is so very simple. I know all our journey's are different, but still, after all of this debate, I still believe that I am just plain right on this one. It really is the key. It may need to be approached from different angles, but its what you have to do to beat a weight problem. When you really "get it" its like a miraculous discovery. So some people get annoyed to log on and find normal weight people who have somehow defected and let the side down banging on round every forum about how fantastic they are. Personally, when I was a newbie, I hung onto every word that those who had lost well had to say. I really *WANTED* the bikini pictures, I was hungry for befores and afters. I didnt think they were boasting, I found it encouraging, uplifting and gave me a sense of yeah, I can really DO this.

I love that analogy Juli, that's exactly what happened! A huge typewritten PB, lol. I'm over my little tantrum now, I'm a grown up and fighting with others you dont even know online is kinda pathetic. I'm not gonna apologise, I feel well within my rights to say what I did, but yeah, I'm over it. BJ, Dr Phil you sure aint. I overspent way before I got fat. And I aint talking about financial ruin here my dear, just not sticking to the budget. I'm not talking about my life in tatters. Jack, great post. So true. I'm all for BEHAVIOUR and looking at our own choices. I'm not going to drop that line of thought, I believe it passionately and I think its the key to success not only with your weight but with your life. Do you know, I went running last night, only 4 kms but that's coz I did it with my MOTHER!!!! She's 67 years old, she had a mild heart attack last year and is just on the tail end of healing a broken collar bone. She was never particularly unhealthy, she and Dad walked daily and carry no more extra weight than most 67 year olds do these days. But she's lost 12 kg, walked harder and further than EVER and felt she's feeling so fit she'd try a little run, since my sister and I (and now my youngest sister too) are getting so much from it. So she tried it and she could do it. That's admirable. I'm sorry but I just cant find it within me to really empathise with the "plight" of a lot of people. That is within everyone's power if they want it. No excuses. It is. It need not be running of course, I'm speaking metaphorically, but its just there for the taking and if some decide not to take, then there's nothing I can do about that.

Yep, then as a start, the program is "10000 steps" and if you google it you'll get lots of hits. Its a fantastic place to start.