Jachut

Banded 2005, lost 120 lb and have maintained. However was diagnosed with rectal cancer 2010, u filled for treatment and never got back quite the same restriction. Whilst i remain about 5lb lighter than when cancer was diagnosed, i did hit an all time low of 130 ( im five feet ten inches) and am now about 145, so ive had a significant gain which i would say is partly simply me returning to health, closure of my ileostomy ( i swear i barely absorbed ANY food whilst i had it) but also partly due to slacking off. The thing is after seven years banded so many of those dayto day sensations that help you listen to the band become so normal you no longer notice them. Thus i have developed a very slight pouch dilation. So its back on the straightand narrow for me and now im listening, i find i relly only need about half what i ws eating - in fact i may need an unfill because at this rate ill be skeletal again before long. And NO more drinking and eating together!!!

I love just olive oil, salt and pepper on my salads

Anything! I struggle with fresh fruit though, i never particularly liked it begore banding and now its extremely rare that i will eat it. Love the flavour, love having. Big healthy fruit bowl on my bench but just dont enjoy eating it and it blocks me up. I figure the vegies are tho most important nd i eat those, but i think with a band everyone falls short. Having had bowel cancer i relly want to get my fruit and veg i. So i tend to make a lt of green smoothies and soups. The smoothies i tend to make with vanilla optifast, of course you could use protein powder. Theres recipes all over the net.

And you cant really say something so judgemental and offensive and then act offensive when a similar assumption is made of you! Personally I think you're very lucky to have this opportunity as young as you are. When I was 23 and a huge 180, the only things available were Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and Limits (remember those?)

Well, I find the attitude that lower BMI bandsters are less worthy of being banded downright offensive. What if I said to you that you it makes me mad that people are so lazy, self indulgent and stupid to let themselves get to BMI's of 38+ and should have the brains to get themselves banded before they get so fat? What if I said to you that my tax dollars should not pay for your healthcare because you have caused your own health problems (actually they dont because I live in Australia but you know what I mean)? Sheesh. But I do know that sometimes you just feel some way in particular and you know its not logical or right. For example, I'm sorry to offend any 5ft 10ers (my height) that have goal weights of 180 to 200 believing they would look "sick" at my measly 140, but I would be HORRIFIED to be that heavy again. I was desperate about my weight when I was in my 20's and weighed that much and I dieted myself right up to 240. In truth 180 at 5ft 10 is quite healthy, very attainable and maintainable and worlds better than 300 or more.

I didnt answer your main query - i eventually hit a permanent plateau after a couple of months long ones. The last ten pounds took me a year to lose, i wasnt a driven dieter with a weekly weight loss goal. My body just stopped at a bmi of around 21

The thing is if your band is tight enough to restrict you to soft foods you want to be extremely careful to only eat to satisfied, not full or you will end up stretching out your pouch. If youre keeping liquids down but not food, you need an unfill.

Id rather have a very fit and trim body and a few more face wrinkles. I admire truly curvy omen, but to me what most curvy women cll curves i see as rolls of fat. I actually do like that catwalk model look, probably because that actually is more my body type than curvaceous and shapely. As fr men, well, i like them cuddly, with the bulk that comes from muscle with enough fat on top to prevent that I spend all my time in the gym look. Im not into men who look to groomed or sculpted, and i love my hubbies small man boobs and beer belly! See - just ONE opinion, neither right or wrong. Personally, i think youve lost enough when your body pleases you, i wet way past the point where others told me to stop but im happy.

It cant all be fat, youd have needed to eat over 15000 extra calories for that. People who low carb may very well be losing the most effective and fast way but it DOES leave you prone to xtremely fast gainswhen you do eat carbs because carbs bind to water molecules in the body - dont eat carbs, shed a ton of water, eat them, gain it back. Somewhere in between those gratifying (or horrifying) weight changes is a more moderate fat loss or gain.

I did have times when I didnt look too flash,but then I found out I was anaemic, iron has cleared the pallor (even beneath a tan) and dark undereye circles. I got too thin for various reasons, but now i stay at a bmi of 21. My face definitely looks better if Im 20 lb heavier, its a trade off between getting your ass to an acceptable size v looking a bit gaunt, its why all the ceebs have fillers, botoxband so on, best of both worlds. If you like looking like a trout that is. Bottom line, good nutrition means youll look your best, protein to the xclusion of all else gives you that sickly look because a high protein very low carb diet bandster style doesnt generally include vast quantities of vegies duevto lack of stomach space. It can keep you chronically dehydrated no matter how much you drink and can see you short on nutrients.

Had soup for dinner, lol. Bought some Optifast when I went to pick up some prescriptions - asopposed to protein shakes i actually like Optifast and do make smoothies with it from time to time. Wine is a liquid, as is coffee. And afterall, this isnt about weight loss per se, no need to really starve. This wont be so bad....

Hey Lellow, would you believe that I've just gotten home from seeing my surgeon and I too have a small prolapse/pouch dilation. He wasnt too worried, but told me to take it VERY easy and we could probably baby the band along for a very long time that way. He said it was up to me if I want to go the whole hog and do liquids for a while. Personally I think I will. I'm still weighing less than I did when diagnosed with cancer, but 10lb more than I did a year ago and I'm not liking it much, methinks a liquid diet and a little weight loss would work wonders. Do you think you let go of those really stringent eating habits at all? I know I did. First nine months unfilled, I got used to eating what I liked and eating normally again and I never really went back to bandster habits. I just took a monster gulp of coffee, I drink while I"m eating all the time, I often eat past satisfied to full (even though that's not much food). anyway, I know we can both do it. Its not such a big deal. It only becomes a real problem if you let it. And if an unfill needs to happen for either one of us, then so be it, I know we can handle it.

See, I'm way too impatient. I got a Pandora bracelet for my 40th birthday four years ago. My birthday is in August. By Christmas the bracelet was full, lol. And Im pedantic, no random mix of beads for me, my bracelet has a definite theme!

Maybe things work differently over there, of course, but I've actually never called a surgeon or specialst doctor outside of an actual emergency. If I need to see them to discuss something I make an appointment and go in, and that's what would be expected here. They're not going to talk to you on the phone for free, that's not how they make money. It just seems to me to be a really strange thing to do, but like I said, that may be a cultural thing? Its certainly not the norm here. I guess if you rang with a medical question, you'd get a call back when they'd finished seeing patients that are paying $150 for their 15 minute consultation. The PA is another matter. All administrative enquiries you have every right to expect to be dealt with at their earliest convenience just as you expect all correspondence to be timely and accounts to be up to date.

Here in Melbourne, which I guess is a small city by world standards, I think its pretty well known who the good surgeons are - and some of them become quasi celebrities anyway. There's word of mouth which works well anywhere in the world. I asked for a referral a few years ago to a well known guy but never went ahead with any surgery. This time, since I was also looking to have inguinal hernias repaired, I asked my colorectal surgeon to refer me on for that and to revise the scar from my bowel resection. Given that my colorectal surgeon i very well respected and a leader in his field, I trust that his referral will be to a respectable, well qualified plastic surgeon. I met the guy and liked him and the word of my colorectal surgeon is good enough for me, so I went with it. Perhaps your lapband surgeon can recommend people who work with bariatric patients or you know other people who have had successful surgeries.

Having never been a tattoo kinda person, I've looked at Lellow's many times too. I"m about to have a tummy tuck and I'll see how the scar goes, and where it has to be put but if it's high enough to show in a bikini, I think I'll be indulging in a little artwork myself!

Personally i would starve to death as a raw foodie with a band, raw vegies and fruits are the hardest things for me.

Great news lellow. I was seeing Gary Crossthwaite at the Centre for Batiatric Surgery at Windsor and theyve moved now to Glen Iris Private. In Warrigal Rd, its a great clinic if youre looking on the south east side of town. elcee, thought of you when we were at Sovereign Hill fr school camp last week!

You sound just like me - turning what should be a natural process (eating when you're hungry, duh) into a complicated mathematical endeavour. Personally, I think its insane and its one severe downside of giving bandsters such specific diets pre and post op (although we know they're for a reason). So what if you dont make your calories or Protein on a given day, really? You'll probably make it up on another day when you're hungrier. The whole point of the pre op diet is that you will have an extremely low calorie intake, and the fact is that its not a healthy way to eat for the long term. On that small variety of food and such a small intake, over time, you would develop nutritional deficiencies - and as an adult in a society that eats utter rubbish, you probably have them already. This is NOT adequate for your body long term, that's the entire point of it. That's why you lose weight and your liver shrinks, your body is forced to meet its needs by basically eating itself up. there's no gentle way of saying this, lol. You are obese enough to be having weight loss surgery. Therefore you have plenty of stores to get you through this. You wont keel over and die in the space of a month or two. Just do your best to get the protein in, and remember that after surgery, you will be back to a more varied diet and may well be on here asking how to keep your calorie intake DOWN until you get restriction.

Well, it stands to reason tht i you could eat (say) 3000 a day pre surgery that if you eat about at or less you arent going to gain. Your nody still a the same metabolism and orks the same way afterall. Over time though if you ls your calorie needs will drop.

Love it. But not more than Cookies. Horrible, processed, full of trans fats and artificial ingredients supermarket cookies. We have a brand here called Scotch Finger, kind of a shortbread sort of thing. Dipped in coffee. Morning, noon, night. Six or seven of them at a time (almost 100 calories each). Anytime is the right time for a coffee and a bikkie. Sigh. Its just a blanket ban for me. I will never be able to eat cookies one or two a day. If I'm going to have them, I've accepted I'm in for a major calorie blow out and planned accordingly around it.

These things NEVER work. But its just so enticing. Seriously, why not try it if you want to? If you can afford to spend the money whatever the outcome, then why not? I'm very intrigued by a product here called Slimstix, lol. I just want to lose 5lb. And...... this is on a whole nother scale, but I've recently been prescribed testosterone cream - I have very low blood testosterone levels (way below normal) and am having all sorts of problems because of it, but the main thing I've noticed is very obvious loss of muscle and strenght and a very obvious (albeing small, not registering on the scale) gain of belly fat. Of course I want my libido back, my bone density to improve, my mood to be better and all that, but what I'm really hoping to see is a flatter belly, lol.

In truth, I didnt try that hard. I did try though. My successful banded dieting was very similar to my unsuccessful non banded dieting. I improved my meals - chose healthier foods, and altered the carb/protein ratio (a recent trip on a school camp where we were fed mountains of cheap white stodgy food reminded me just how much of that sh*t I used to get through thinking it was healthy) a little. But I am and have always been a hopeless dieter - there was plenty of cheating - lots of treats in the form of Cookies, a muffin, a nice coffee etc. With the band, the only difference was that the portion sizes of everything were a lot smaller and for a long while there, I simply couldnt eat muffins, cake and things like that. I cheated less, as I always did when dieting too, but I still weakened and caved quite regularly. So all in all, it wasnt that hard. What I changed the most was my exercise habits. I took up running and was (and am) absolutely dedicated to it. I will move heaven and earth to get my run in despite any obstacles. Perhaps I was very lucky, but with the running and with being 5ft 10, I didnt need to drop calories to anything below about 1500, I lost well on that. I've NEVER had the sort of restriction from my band that could keep me at the 800 to 1000 calories others talk about and I never found the need to eat that little anyway.

I like mine plain with walnuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, some chia seeds and a drizzle of honey. Grain free "muesli". Really yummy and it gets me through the morning. Sometimes I defrost berries overnight and add those in too.

I am and always have been a perfectionist - but I can be very all or nothing. I was either going to sit around stuffing my face and getting fatter or I was going to lose a spectacular amount of weight. Not for me this "normal BMI" stuff. I was always aiming for the very bottom of my healthy weight range, to get as thin as I could. Not for me walking and moderate gym work. I was always going to try to run a marathon. I dont always achieve my goals, but luckily, that doesnt bother me that much. I havent run a marathon and accept now that I never will. My main problem with having such ambitious goals is never getting started, once I'm on the path, I'm quite capable of adjusting to a more reasonable goal. As it was, I did get right down to a BMI of 19 at one stage (looked horrible, have regained to about 20). It was actually quite easy despite being an "i eat what I want in smaller quantities" type of bandster. I think due to the all the running I do. I will go to my grave protesting that cardio IS king when it comes to weight loss. Well, it worked for me, anyway. But would I do "whatever it takes" to get there? No. I just hate strength training, if that was really necessary, I would have settled at a higher weight. Would I do strict low carb?. Not a snowflake's chance in hell of that happening. Would I give up wine or chocolate completely? Never. And would I have a full body lift, breast work, brachioplasty and thigh lift, spending 50 grand on my body? Nope, not even if I had 50 grand to spend.