Jachut

Any lat exercises if you have access to a machine will help, if not, then yes, the dumbell drop down over the head one. Also pushups and tricep dips on a chair will help that area, and swimming is good for it too.

For sure. I battle this on a daily basis. I think the best thing is to just accept it will be there to some degree for the rest of your life. You dont have to annihilate it, just control it. There is room for slip ups and periods of not being perfect. But I have to remind myself every single day to choose those foods that fill me the most - because they tend to be the difficult ones to eat and I avoid them, steering naturally towards the easier foods. That leads to too much hunger and appetite for me.

Robert, the whole reason why I'm encouraging my husband to get banded is so he'll fart less. Dont you know, that when you make yourself all metrosexual because that's what women want, we'll change our minds and want a "real man" again? Who knows, one day beer guts and bum cracks may be fashionable!

Just do it was my motto in the early days. Just fricking do it. Get on, do the half hour, get it out of the way. I soon discovered its MUCH easier to force yourself to do half an hour on the treadmill than it is to avoid the cheesecake in the fridge all day. Tired or not, busy or not, I just bloody did it. Sooner or later, you get really fit, you start kicking real goals, things you thought you could NEVER do and one magical day, motivation strikes and you're an exerciser. I never have to force myself now, I have to force myself to take REST days! If you want to be one of the "lost only 60% of excess weight" statistics, then sitting on your behind and not exercising is a pretty sure fire way to become just that.

I wouldnt think it would be any easier with a lapband after the initial healing phase than it is without one. Lapbands dont restrict liquids, once you're healed up and not swollen, you'll be starving on this sort of a program. Nor is it a healthy way to lose weight. Those things are designed for urgent, fast weight loss prior to surgery or for other very pressing reasons, not for a lifestyle. Very low calorie diets are not necessary for most people, you will lose a lot of muscle as well as fat, learn absolutely nothing about how you should be eating and fitting that knowledge into your lifestyle, you wont have the energy to exercise properly, theres just a million reasons not to live on Optifast. Plus it tastes like crap, you'll get bored as hell and go on a major binge. Not to mention becoming constipated. Dont do it. Eating with a lapband is just fine, what you're imagining is worse than reality. In reality most people get stuck every now and then but its not a big deal even when its a really BIG stuck, lol.

Good luck Julie, its a difficult situation. A support group is a very good idea.

That's if you even believe you need hundreds of grams of protein a day. Personally, I believe you can get plenty from a vegan diet and that 50 grams a day is perfectly adequate (*hides*). I would think a raw diet would work bloody well, becuase you'd hardly eat anything, lol. Personally raw veges, nuts etc are quite difficult foods, I can eat them but not in a high enough quanity to constite a whole meal. Salad I can do - like tomato, lettuce, cucumber, avocado, capsicum, but raw carrot, raw broccoli, stuff like that, its a tiny amount and that's all I can tolerate. A few nuts at a time.

I do believe that I've changed a lot. I'm a dedicated exerciser now for starters, losing weight is the tiniest reason why I exercise regularly. I love it and I do it for how it makes me feel. That in turn affects my appetite, it regulates it and makes me want healthier foods. So I do believe my behaviours have changed to a large degree and I do not believe that I would regain to my former weight. But - I am now at a stable weight with 3ml in my band. Its loosened off a lot since my last fill 9 months ago and I can eat bread and really anythign I like and in reasonable quanity, not tiny ones. So I see no reason to mess with it, dont fix what aint broke. I find I can overdo it a bit at times, like those times you have dinner out 4 nights in a row, yep, up I go a pound or two and sometimes I do have to be very strict for a week to make sure I dont retain that 1 or 2 lb, so I do suspect that without my band, my appetite would increase again and I would gain weight. But I dont have the horrid habits I did have, so it stands to reason that whilst my body alwasy seemed to like a weight of about 84kg, which puts me at a BMI of about 28 and may return there, I doubt I'd hit 113kg again.

I really admire your outlook on this, I"m big on owning your actions too. Nothing disgusts me more than excuses. However, that's a big part of the journey, isnt it? Coming to really KNOW (not just tell yourself) that your actions are down to nobody but you and your success is dependent upon nobody but you. Where there's a will there's a way in the face of any adversity. Someone who comes on here and posts that they've just eaten half a cheesecake, but oh well, tomorrow is another day, they WILL keep going, they dont disgust me. Someone who whines that its cold out and she already doesnt get enough sleep and she has 3 kids so its not her fault that she cant exercise, that disgusts me. Grow up and smell the coffee. You're either going to find a way to put in the work or you arent. Its such a fat attitude, all this excuse making and it sounds like your parents have it in spades, but hopefully, this will be overcome in time. As far as owning your own actions, well you're awesome becuase if anyone had an excuse to grow up fat, living in that kind of an environment is it.

My doc never said. I averaged around 1500 a day, maybe up to 1800. I still eat around that to maintain now. Perhaps 1800 more often than not.

I'd also say that the biggest benefit for me and why the band has worked is that I take much longer to eat, so that I have time for my stomach to actually tell my head its full, rather than shoving it all in at the speed of lightening and not even tasting it routine I had before. You'll find you enjoy your food MORE this way.

What men dont seem to realise when they get all carried away with manliness and masculinity, lol, is that women LOVE men who care about the way they present to the world. I dont see it as the least bit unmanly caring enough about your health and weight to get banded. Same as I find men who dress well, are clean, smell good and keep up to date with what's fashionable attractive. My DH is considering becoming banded, but the issues he struggles with are things like the "embarrassment" of only eating a tiny meal at a business lunch, not being able to sink 20 beers with his mates, what if he cant eat a hamburger, that sort of thing. Because there's such a code of masculinity isnt there, and lettuce leaves and low fat cheese dont really fit into that - nor does excusing yourself and running to the bathroom to PB, lol. Still, all in all, men seem to adjust quite well, just as women do, that's the thing about a band, its really able to be used the way you want to use it and can fit a variety of lifestyles and habits. I think women in general are way more conscious of how they look and I'd hazard a guess that whilst we all do this for our health, the cosmetic benefits are huge to most of us too. More men than women are overweight but they dont seem to be as concerned about it becuase there's not as much pressure to look a certain way.

I'd have to qualify that by saying if I wasnt a dedicated runner and exercised hard and regularly all the way through, I dont know that it would have worked so well as it did for me. It really was necessary to make up a lot of the calorie deficit by activity. But in the end, its only calories in/calories out, no matter what you eat.

There's no easy way to do it. You need to cut ties with him, just like that. Dont speak to him again. The answer is simple, the actual process isnt, but if you really want to work things out with your husband, then that's what you have to do. I've always felt that if my DH were to have a one night stand, I could forgive that. Sex without emotional involvement is sometimes a temporary lapse of self control and willpower, incredibly selfish, yes, but over and done with. A long standing affair with emotional attachment, including the deceipt and betrayal required to go behind someone's back to that extent, well that I couldnt forgive. So, hard as it is for you, you either want to work things out with your husband or you dont. The way I see it, physical intimacy with the other man is irrelevant, its the emotional connection that's the betrayal (and the hard part to give up) You need to go cold turkey and just do it Julie or you may end up losing them both.

With the huge growth in cosmetic surgery popularity and more and more "average" people wanting procedures done, there's lots of surgical centres attached to cosmetic surgery practices here now. And the eye specialist I see has a surgical facility at his office also. Also, there's tons of day procedure surgical centres around. So you'd assume standard operating procedure - sterility, same sort of staff - anaesthetist, theatre nurses, surgeons etc, same facilities, and a recovery area staffed with professionals, just no overnight stay in a hospital. If it were me, I'd be happy enough with that, but just make sure that IS the situation. There's no way he'll be opening you up in his actual office! But I'd still want to see the facilities. But you have to weigh it up - the point about general anaesthesia is a good one - for me, I was a low risk patient, under 40, BMI of 35, in good health and quite fit. If I had a BMI of 50 and couldnt walk up stairs, had high blood pressure and sleep apnoea, I think I'd want to be in a hospital equipped to handle an emergency and with an intensive care unit for afterwards. Having to access that by ambulance in the middle of a crisis is not a good thought.

Yes, that's true. You're going to look way better, feel way better and be way healthier, hanging skin or not. If its already hanging, then you may as well be realistic and know that its going to continue to hang. But that CAN be fixed.

Calorie readouts on ellipticals are notoriously overstated. You need to use your common sense. If you spend half an hour on one and you're well worked, pleasantly tired and sweaty but not dropping from exhaustion well, you most definitely have NOT burned 500 or 600 calories in that half hour! They are based sort of on leg revolution/distance travelled but dont take into account that you are not actually leaving the ground and moving your body anywhere at all which is most of the actual energy required in a movement. Like anything, an average sized woman of normal weight would probably burn 250 calories or less in half an hour of good cardio - and that includes the elliptical, no matter what the readout says. The only way to get an accurate readout is with a device (like a body bugg or similar) that measures your body, not the machine your body is working on. Even with the treadmill the readout is inaccurate, because like with any cardio, as your body adapts, your calorie usage reduces markedly, which is why its ideal to add interval training and weight training and do lots of different activities for the afterburn to keep the weight coming off.

I'm a wholehearted advocate of just what you're suggesting. There is no way I got banded to spend my life on a diet, living on diet food. I eat natural, whole foods, plenty of them healthy and some of them more treat foods. I eat fibre because I eat grains, bread and plenty of fruit and vegetables. I make up my calorie deficit with exercise rather than being ultra tight so that I can fit those foods in. I've also been lucky becuase sometimes what your band lets you do and what you plan to do are two different things. Many people simply CANT eat some of the foods I do. But I eat the whole fat version of most things (except milk, cant stand full cream milk). I dont eat artificial sweeteners, if I want something sweet then I have it. I just eat much less than I used to eat - although I was quite a healthy eater pre band, I had way too MANY treats, and I've had to work to avoid those. I take a Multivitamin because lets face it, we dont eat a hell of a lot once we're banded. Its insurance. But I find no need to supplement with Protein, have never had a Protein shake, probably eat around 50 to 60 grams of protein a day which is no doubt "not enough" for my 160lb frame and activity levels, but hey, I"m healthy, I have energy, I have not wasted away all my muscles and I didnt lose my hair. Nobody will ever convince me that Protein shakes, avoiding carbs etc is necessary. Just eat less and move more, it works.

We can all only be the best we can be too and we all have figure problems. When I look at picturs of people's bums (lol) in the PS before and after ads, I have the BEFORE butt, even after all those months of running, squatting, lunging and dieting. I will always have saddlebags and cellulite. But really, people dont look at you as parts. Only you look at you like that. Its the whole package, not one bit of you that makes you attractive or unattractive and you CAN fix it to a large degree anyway, but learning to come to terms with yourself is important. What I found though, is that I had NO idea of my final shape until I hit a normal BMI and I Have changed more in the 6 or 7kg since I hit "normal" than the entire 30kg before that. Losing weight at the end of the journey is VERY rewarding.

I've always gotten a sore throat a day or two after surgery - 3 days maybe. And if its not that, you're probably getting a cold or something. Its unlikely to be a complication, I wouldnt worry too much about it if you dont feel feverish or sick.

Lol, yes, shouldnt judge because I'll be in her shoes one day. Honestly though, there's a fine line between remaining youthful in your presentation and looking cheap. I hope I come down on the right side of it because I'm afraid of looking old, getting old in my outlook, starting to dress sensibly, losing my youth. But push up bras and lycra isnt the way to get it back! I hate make up personally, I dont wear ANY. And I could probably use a little, lol.

I cant eat a LOT of bread, but I can eat it. I stick with wholegrain, I usually have a slice a day, I also eat oatmeal and other high fibre cereals, probably 2pieces of fresh fruit a day and a couple of different coloured vegetables. I'm not that tight so I eat reasonable quantities of food. I make up the calorie deficit with exercise and drink plenty of fluids. All in all, I've never had a problem with constipation.

I can eat pizza. Like most take away food though, its hard work, slow going and done with extreme caution. It blocks me up easily. Over time, I've come to really not want it any more, not that I ever liked pizza all that much. A thin crust gourmet woodfired pizza is much easier to handle than a disgusting fat slice of cheese crust pizza hut garbage, trust me, you'll look at stuff like that one day and just think "that is revolting". You will go into McDonalds and look at the menu and think "I just cannot be bothered". But it happens over time and you get to give up these things gradually, so that it really doesnt hurt like you thought it would and you dont even miss them.

Exercise creates more energy, but it takes a long time to get to that point. I worry about how I will fit it in when I go back to work too, I know that I've just gotten up at 5.30 to run before going out on teaching rounds. If you can involve your kids then that's good for both of you, you DO have 2 days at the weekend where you've got more time, and personally, I'd buy equipment for home if I could, a treadmill or something and just get on there and DO it. Yes, its hard, yes you're exhausted but what is your ultimate goal? I found I just had to push through that kind of stuff and now that I'm really fit, its something I really WANT to do, really WANT to prioritise and I virtually never have that feeling any more. At least if you're exercising at home, you're with your kids. As you lose and get fitter you wont be so exhausted. Really, most of us should be able to work and get up to get kids to school without finding it too challenging, you just dont realise how utterly crappy and exhaused you feel when you're very overweight. I promise that horrid inertia will disappear as you get closer to your goal - in fact its probably my biggest NSV. I care more about how much more energetic, efficient and in control I am than I do about what size I'm wearing. Truly, you'll get there. In the meantime, its horrid but you just have to force yourself. There's no need to do more than four times a week, more is good, but four is more than adequate.

Whilst I cant elegantly PB silently into a zip loc bag like others seem to be able to do, its not that bad honestly. For me its a big loud cough. I think you can be certain it WILL happen at some stage. However its happened to me less than five times in over two years, and three of those five were in the privacy of my own home, so no big deal. It hurts when food gets stuck, but not generally in an excruciating way, its just uncomfortable and dealing with the secretions your body makes to shift the food is something you dont want to have to do in public. But its not nauseating at all and its not at all like vomiting. It can be VERY loud though, lol. Twice its happened in public but generally you are more careful in public. What you do risk when you decide to be banded is not knowing if you're going to be one of the sensitive ones that gets stuck and PB's often, or if you're going to be lucky like me and suffer it rarely.