Jachut

Seriously, I didnt find it hard at all. Its only a few weeks. I made separate meals for myself for the most part, I ate from memory a fair bit of lentil dahl, lots of mashed veges with gravy, but I did also feed the family spaghetti bolognaise and blended up the sauce with some extra tomatoes, and a few bits of spaghetti for myself, plus I made a huge batch of lentil and vegetable Soup which I froze in portions. Mushie meals are so simple, its really easy just to put on extra vegetables with the family meal and add some cheese for Protein kind of thing. Nothing to stress over at all. And its over in two short weeks or so.

See its not really true that if you were taller and 150 was a healthy weight you'd have a much better chance of achieving that. If you were taller you'd probably naturally have a bigger appetite (and calorie burn too of course). So for a 5ft 10 150lb person, maintaining it is usually just as hard as for a shorter 120lb person. We dont all have the same appetite and calorie output with different "ideal" weights to achieve! Nature works in more complex ways than that. I set a low goal weight. I've gotten to a BMI of 23, want to go a bit lower. Why? Well I didnt have weight loss surgery to achieve a so-so weight. I want to be slender, not just "not fat". My build has a lot to do with it, at the high end of my healthy range, I still look porky. Is my weight hard to maintain? With a lapband, that's a resounding NO. I dont even have to think about it and compared to people on here, I seem to eat a helluva lot. I have a completely normal lifestyle. I run five times a week or so, something I do because I really love it. I'm active in my everyday life too. As a younger adult, pre babies, I tended to maintain at a BMI of 25, only about 5 or 6 kg heavier than now. Still a healthy weight, but a size or two bigger and I was never happy with it. And also, setting this weight or that, wont affect where your body rebounds to either. It will rebound to a level that you influence by what you eat, and how much exercise you do, whether you initially said your goal was 130 or 140! The weight you want to be is well within your grasp, and it doesnt take superhuman effort to maintain or achieve it with a lap band. I think exercise is the most influential factor when it comes to how low you can get and how easy that is to maintain. Learn to love hard cardio and a bit of strength training and its all in your hands. If you dont want to do that, cant do that, dont want to bother doing that, then you own that result to and many people are more than happy being having a good lot of their excess weight gone and have no interest in looking thin. Me personally, its all about vanity, lol. Thin is what I want to be and I'm prepared to do what I'm doing to keep it that way.

My doc says that if you can eat right away, then lucky for you. He doesnt see any need for liquids to mushies to solids OTHER than you dont know how the fill is going to sit and you may have a painful episode. Personally, I dont need to do liquids or mushies, I can eat fine. But I go VERY cautiously, really slow, tiny bites, lots and lots of chewing and I know I'm going to be tight for a few days so I choose easy foods. If the sandwich went down fine, then there's no need to give it another thought. But it could have been very different, lol, so caution is required and that's really why the liquids - it gives you a bit of insurance and avoids a PBing episode.

Well, I think my avatar tells my story, lol. But you're right, its harder now to buy a suit than it was before. Before I knew I'd look disgusting, and of porridge like consistency, lol. Now its just possible I can look nice in the right suit. But boy, the variety you get. The top has to be just so to accommodate my ah, "mature" boobies, I need bottoms that arent up to my darn navel like nanna pants because I'm nobody's nanna for many years yet, but arent too low either, like I dont want to have a Brazillian to wear the things. Definitely no ring trims or tie sides becuase the bulges they create are not a good look. No grabbing off the rack in young surf type shops. Good lining, good quality fabric, the right pattern to minimise, the right colour to flatter the skin tone, check it wont ride up, does it come in separates becuase my bottom half is larger than my top, and having ANY breasts makes buying a bikini top hard, triangle styles, ugh, look out below! Boy short pants, contrary to popular belief do NOT hide saddlebag thighs, rather they advertise them to the ENTIRE world and make you look, at a conserative guess, a metre wide across the hips. Briefer pants and putting it all on show actually works better for some unfathomable reason. I'm too tall for most one pieces, they head right up my bum and are almost irretrievable becuase of the length of my body and strangely, I've actually found that shy as I am about my less than firm tummy, overall I look better and more balanced if I wear a two piece that shows it, rather than a tankini style thing. Phew. I bought one, the one in my avatar. Not planning on another for a while, lol.

It hits everyone differently. I cant say I felt sad, but deciding to have the surgery was the first time in my life I actually admitted I had a problem. I could see I was fat, but I always thought that psychobabble about using food to fill other needs was crap. Suddenly, it hit me that I did NOT want to give up the overeating. I still to this day dont know why I do it, or what I get from it. I'm not bored, lonely, sad, angry or frustrated. I have a wonderful life. But the thought of giving up that coping mechanism was utterly terrifying. It was exactly that feeling that decided me. I thought well, now we know. I know I have to face this if I EVER want to lose weight, surgery or not. And I didnt have to give up all pleasure in eating, as it turns out. I can still eat inappropriately when I decided to, eat out of reasons other than hunger. But once you see results, the pleasure in that evaporates and you do it less. So I'd say acknowledge the feelings, even if you dont understand them and push ahead, its nowhere near as scary on the other side as it feels from where you are now.

And you'll have to do some Tim Tam Slams! Tim Tam Slam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia although I have grown up referring to this practice as a tim tam orgasm. Better than the really thing because you can do five or six in a row! Of course the irony is Arnotts (who make Tim Tams) is now owned by an American company as is our iconic Vegemite.

I get a really sweet tooth a few days before my period and I still indulge it somewhat with a band. Like everything, my body behaves the way it did before and I respond the way I did before, only with moderation. Before - I may have eaten the entire packet of tim tams (an iconic Australian choccie biscuit) in a sitting and gone back for more that afternoon. Now - I'll probably have a minor pig out on tim tams - I might eat four or even five over an hour or two, and give the rest to the kids or throw them in the outside bin. A couple of chocolate biscuits once a month doesnt do any damage.

You said it aubrie. He's a sanctimonious pain in the behind!

Yes, I can get quite severe stomach pain when hungry. But even a drink will quell them.

I've only just seen this, have had a long break from here. Congratulations lovely, you deserve this so much. All that hard work, you're inspirational!

I could eat that quite easily. It sounds fine to me.

I'm in about the middle of my healthy weight range at 72kg (about 158, 160lb). I really really want to drop another 14lb. I'm tall and finely boned, thin is what I should be. I'm not one of those people who can weigh 180 at my height and look my best. And I love my running and really, for a runner, the lighter the better. I've been at this weight for 6 months now. But I've done jack sh$t about it, lol. I run, I eat well but I am not dieting, which is what I really need to do to lose weight when I have so little left to lose. I really need to get strict, count calories, etc. For me, maintenance is absolutely effortless, I simply dont think much about food anymore, but I'm sure running has a lot to do with that. Since I got to about 180, weight loss was no longer steady or easy, I'd plateau out and maintain for a few months, then have a few weeks where I ate much less (like on holidays when I was busy) then 10 more lb would suddenly come off, then I'd maintain again for months.

Further to what I said above, several times in my life I have been very fit and exercising intensely regularly for long periods of time, like 2 or 3 years. When I'm in that zone, I absolutely do not put on weight. It wont make me actually lose weight without dieting but it makes weight maintenance something you dont even have to think about. You can get through Easter, Christmas, holidays, and periods of bad eating without gaining a gram.

Treadmoves DVD's are great. They're not scenery ones, theyre actual circuit style workouts with some basic weights work and interval training.

To be totally honest, I"m not sure I believe all the hype about strength training. I know having muscle on your body is important and means you'll burn more calories even at rest. The thing is I've found that running HAS built lots of muscle on me. My thighs are rock hard, my abdominals are super strong and flat and I even have muscle definition on my arms from the upper body motion. I do very minimal amounts of strength training, preferring body weighted movements such as pushups and tricep dips (I really believe in functional fitness as opposed to just making specific muscles big). Its honestly been enough for me to this point. Really though, , you need both and now I'm down to fine tuning, I definitely need more strenght work. I no longer need to shed lots of pounds so I could probably afford to cut back on cardio and take up that strength with weight work. I"m going to join the gym at uni when the semester starts back in March. I think you'd find, no matter what science and the experts say taht if you do only cardio, you'll get thinner, and significantly harder but maybe not spectacularly so, but if you do only strenght training and not good amounts of cardio, you'll struggle to lose a lot of weight. I think overall I'll stick with my focus on cardio whilst trying to increase the strenght work. Because really, it comes down to what you like to do and have time to do as well and actually DOING whatever it is you've chosen is the most important factor. Its the same with the "you need to mix it up" message. It may be true, but you do get to a point where you dont need to keep shocking your body and keep losing weight, where the body you have is the one you want to keep. Running keeps me fit, healthy, energetic and slim. I do it consistently becuase it takes little time in the scheme of things and its fun. So I see very little reason to change it around.

I tend to use mine for interval type training, not only do I get bored otherwise, but really, I dont find slow plodding at constant incline with my mind on the television very good exercise these days although it is what I did at first and it was challenging then. I swear by Cardio Coach (Cardio Power Fitness Music | Download Workout | Cardio Music Workouts | Cardio MP3 Downloads for iPods), its really GREAT fun and you can use it with any cardio equipment, on the treadmill you can do your intervals with hills or speed, and my treadmill has a design your own workout feature so I've recorded my inclines and speeds (I like a bit of both) to coincide with each of the cardio coach volumes I have. This gets me working really HARD which can be difficult on a treadmill as compared to running outside. My treadmill also has a couple of good programs, one or two of which I havent mastered yet, but really must try, I could probably get through them now. the other thing I use it for is circuit training. I loathe strength training, circuit is the only way I can tolerate it. So I mix intervals of running or very high incline walking with push ups, tricep dips, weighted squats and lunges, a kilometre or two of hard walking with handweights for bicep and shoulder exercises, spread over about 40 minutes and finishing up with abdominals and a good stretch. And last but not least, I have a lot of reading to do for uni, I walk very slowly (its not exercise but its better than sitting on my bum) or I do a moderate walk whilst watching something on TV. I consider that a day off rather than actual exercise, its just active leisure. I love my treadmill althought I really do run outside most days now. For anyone that wants to become a runner, I found my treadmill invaluable. The thing I find is that people run too darn fast and say they're not fit. They run for a few minutes and are pooped when all they need to do is slow down and they'll go for longer. The treadmill helped this, I started out at 4.5 miles an hour! That's very very slow, but just the act of a jog rather than a walk sped up the improvement and got me fitter than walking and definitely strengthened my legs for running more than walking would have. Even now I'm not fast, I run at about 7 to 8 miles an hour and have no real desire to improve on that.

It worked for me to eat 1500 to 1800. I guess I was a slow loser, I took 18 months to lose 85lb, but then again, I did start out with a BMI of 35 so I thought that was more than reasonable. I run an hour a day and have a pretty active daily life, and am 5ft 10, so not ever designed to be 100lb and run on miniscle portions. Really, I think its individual, its YOUR body and only you can decide what's best. Personally, I think the more you can eat and still lose the healthier you'll be, and the easier you'll adapt to a healthier lifestyle. The weight is more likely to stay off too when you're not having to live on air to sustain it. But some people just dont lose unless they really restrict their diet.

Exactly. Restriction doesnt have to mean you can barely eat anything. If you eat like that, and its less than what you've previously eaten, you'll lose weight. When you stop losing, you need a bit more restriction. But I can eat a sandwich! Do I have restriction? Well, yes, because I've lost over 100% of my excess weight. Yes becuase that sandwich fills me to VERY satisfied (in fact overfull if I eat the entire thing) and I have that great satisfied feeling right through till dinner which is NOT how I was preband!. If I eat less, like a few crackers and cheese, I will be hungry again. So easy - the answer is not more fill, its choose foods that work well to fill you and keep you satisfied. Really, why would you ever want more restriction than you need at any one point in time to keep you losing? How much food that is is really irrelevant.

I can eat it, toasted, untoasted, I can eat a good part of a sandwich, but it IS a hard food to eat, and it does fill me very fast. The good thing about it is I say full for HOURS. So although I really dont like sandwiches much as a meal (yawn) I eat them becuase they keep me full and I eat way less overall. It helps of course if you're not a believer in the high Protein theories. I like my carbs and always will.

Beer wise, you'd have to have some VB's!! (Victoria Bitter). Four X, um, Fosters, though I dont know I've seen anyone drink Fosters in a long long time, Carlton Draught, we have some great boutique beers too but I'm way back in the 80's with Redbacks, I'm no beer connoisseur so someone else will have to suggest what boutique beers are around these days. Cascades and Boags are Australian too I think.

Classic Pavlova recipe - Best recipes Pavlova or "pav" is just meringue base topped with loads and loads of whipped cream and fresh fruit. I actually cant stand it, lol.

In my 2 and a bit years round the traps, its become really obvious to me that the people who achieve that statistical average of 60% of weight lost are by and large people who dont commit themselves to exercise. Or they might but its very moderate exercise, a bit of walking maybe, or some Water aerobics 3 times a week. That's fair enough, if that's the effort you want to put in, and I'm not goign to knock it. But you get out of this what you put into it and you have to own that. Many people are so thrilled to have lost that 60%. We had a big debate (well fight really) over this not so long ago but really its up to the individual. But if you WANT to be one that loses 100% or more of your excess weight, the secret is exercise and getting REALLY fit. I eat quite a lot still, enough so that people would never guess I"m banded if I didnt tell them. But I run for an hour most days of the week. That's quite a manageable time committment around kids and study for me, if I"m short on time, I run for half an hour. But I could have walked, not run and then I'd only burn half the calories because I'd only cover half the distance right? I had so many knockers when I started, all that hoohaa about how running burns less fat than walking. Rubbish. Get fit enough to run and you can burn 1000 calories in an hour becuase of the distance you cover. That's honestly all it took to lose than 100%. Diet wise, I'm no star bandster. I just decided that what time I'd spend exercising I'd make REALLY count. Slim was my goal too. I had no real health problems, and truly, this surgery for me was 80% cosmetic, I hated the way I looked. I had "future" health problems developing, for sure and was very motivated by my future health. But I wanted to become slim, I would have been VERY disappointed not to lose all my weight. And I want to lose a bit more. I want to be at the bottom of my healthy weight range, I just have that kind of build.

I listen to myself. I eat what I want, when I feel like it and that's not always virtuous choices. I figure I'm living with this band for the rest of my life, I want a lifestyle that I can sustain for the rest of my life. To me, that does not mean shakes, cutting carbs, counting calories or Protein grounds. It means making healthy choices most of the time, enjoying a treat now and then and getting lots of exercise. It might be 1500 calories one day, 1000 the next and 1800 the day after that. Depending on what I'm doing, how hungry I am and what I choose to eat. It gives people the horrors "oh, you CANT do that" etc etc Guess what? It worked. And now I'm maintaining effortlessly. I do NOT believe getting and staying thin is a complicated process that borders on obsession. Shut your gob and move your ass works well for me. So if you dont like hearing all that conflicting advice, I think you are eminently sensible to stay away from it and follow your own instincts.

Pavlova! That's probably the quintessential Australian dessert. Favourite wines - personally any Western Australian Margaret River Region Sav Blanc or chardonnay (Evans and Tate is a great label), the Rutherglen region for fortifieds such as port and muscat (Campbells), I'm not really much of a red drinker, nor do I like sweeter whites like Rieslings and moselles - Brown Brothers are good for those. Just dont make it Coolabah casks! We have some great cheeses too - King Island is great for those. Shorts and vests and hats? Groan. But I guess that's probably the most obvious, internationally recognizeable kind of look, but believe me, Australia is really the same as the UK or America, most of the population lives in coastal cities and we dont get around looking or talking like Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee. We're almost civilised. A beach theme, where the waiters dressed as surf lifesavers in speedos, zinc cream and hats could be good! For a name, you'd have to have a play on the words Downunder or Great Southern Land (there's a great Icehouse song from way back when that ought to be our national anthem), Waltzing Matilda, other sort of Aussie words such as Billabong, Tuckerbox, Swagman, etc etc.

You dont need a high BMI or a lot of fat on your body to be a fat person anyway. There's something different between people who will fight their weight their whole lives and people who are naturally thin or normalish. They will never ever ever understand it. I may be thin and fit now, but I"m still a fat person. I always will be.