Jachut

I've lost 85lb and am now at goal, its taken me 20 months. I've lost only 20lb in the last year, though, it just stays stable for aaaaaaages now and then suddenly I drop a few pounds and plateau out again. I'm pretty sure I'll get to my ultimate dream goal of 70kg but it may take me a long time to do it! I've actually now lost more than 100% of my excess weight, as I'm below the top of my healthy weight range.

I dont have any problem with them, well no more than usual. I tend to gag at the best of times when taking pills, band or no band.

Yeah, I'm a sweet lover. Not lollies, but sweet carbs - Cookies, etc. But I'm eating chocolate right now. The band has worked brilliantly for me, as I also overate just in general. But mainly becuase I sat down and thought about it prior to banding and I"ve taken responsibility for my actions and although I can eat chocolate by the block still, I choose not to. I also decided to exercise, I run 5 times a week for an hour. I've changed enough habits that I have now got good control of my weight, I'm at goal and plan to stay there. I still turn to chocolate or cookies in times of stress, I still have some bad habits, I dont eat perfectly. To be honest, that's never what I thought the band would achieve, and it wasnt what I was aiming for. I wanted to be NORMAL in that I ate what I wanted when I wanted like normal people do and that the what and when would not always be so horribly inappropriate for me as they had been. Now I have no desire to eat chocolate for Breakfast, nor do I want to eat again at 9 am just because the kids have all been deposited at various schools and kindergartens so why not eat something? So it doenst bother me that I have the occasional chocolate splurge. Overall my diet is healthy and my exercise regime is good and my weight is staying rock steady.

I eat probably half what I used to. I never used to think it was that much but I find myself pretty horrified by other people's plates these days - and I dont *think* its that my perception is skewed. I think people by and large overeat. I virtually never would have had entree main and dessert though, but I would have eaten a main and a dessert. I didnt stop when I was full, I kept going. I could eat a quarter pounder meal - medium fries, but I never really drank softdrink, so I never did the bucket of coke thing. that always horrified me. I used to eat 2 pieces of toast for breakfast, now I can barely eat one. A big bowl of Cereal, now I have about half the amount. I could eat 2 toasted cheese sandwiches at a time, now I cant even finish a half of one. A big salad roll was no problem, followed by a big gooey cake and a coffee if I was out, now I might have a couple of pieces of sushi. But I nibbled constantly between meals - entire packets of chocolate biscuits etc. Now I am still prone to that - today I have a headcold, I am stressed, I have loads of assignmetn work to do, but am still working full time on teaching rounds, I have lived on coffee, the odd cookie, a muffin, and yogurt for about 3 days. Unhealthy, sugary food by and large but in really tiny quantities, I've barely eaten today and there's homemade spaghetti bolognaise simering on the stove for dinner and I doubt I'll bother, not hungry. That's as bad a habit as overeating, nothing of any nutritional value has gone into my body today.

I cut mine too and it is SO much healthier and although I've always been a shedder, I cant really attribute it to weight loss, as such, my bathroom and house has been covered with my hair for as long as I have lived here! But I went for a shorter inverted bob, and I love it, it looks much better on a 40 year old than my longer hair did, my hair is no longer as good as it was back in my 20's, its frizzier, dry and more difficult to look after. Shorter is much easier, and its just as feminine, I still have plenty of length at the front and it looks much thicker and shinier. I was not worried about the hair not growing back when it fell out, but when its mid back length, that's five years of growth there! It might grow back in but somewhere along the line you're going to have to lose all your precious length. Having to go from long hair to very short is as unpalatable to me as going completely bald, short hair does not suit me! But for me, the alarming shedding, whilst I never thinned - lasted only 2 months. I've been a 1500 calories plus a day loser, made up my deficit by exercise and have lost slowly, although I'm at goal now. I wonder if that is what made the difference between just a bit of shedding and scary loss?

I dont believe that being fat is a moral failing. But I believe it happens often to certain personality types. Its a chicken or egg thing for sure, too, but I think some people just have personality types, which when combined with certain metabolic types = obesity. My son, and my DH for example. DH's entire family are honestly the laziest people I have ever known. They just dont move. They are not lazy in the moral sense - hard workers, they all exercise, but their natural inclination is to sit, so if Doug goes out for a run with me, I will come home and keep moving all day, he comes home and sits down. He doesnt overeat greatly yet is overweight, so is his mother. His father and his sister are both terribly inactive too but very skinny. My two sons couldnt be more different, one is like Doug's side of the family, he enjoys his basketball and volleyball, runs around at school but at every time in between will be found doing something inactive like playing his gameboy. He's approaching puberty and getting alarmingly heavy. Ewan on the other hand does all that plus runs around outside from dawn till dusk and is skinny as a rake. You can see a mile off that Fraser is going to be heavy like both Doug and I. But I also notice here, and again its chicken and egg, but over the course of the two years I've been here, you see SO many people who are such victims. People who you can tell just have not taken responsibility for what they put in their mouths, and for what exercise they do. You can hear it in every sentence, this isnt their fault, that isnt their fault, they cant HELP that they're stuffing themselves silly before the op, I mean, that's last supper syndrome right? So that excuses it. People who are having troubles with PBing due to overeating, eating the wrong things, people who arent losing becuase they're eating the wrong things, people who dont exercise, there are just a lot of people you find in an overweight community who just refuse to take the bull by the horns and take responsibility for what they've done to themselves. I think there very definitely is a set of personality traits that make you prone to getting fat. And that's not a judgement becuase I suffered from it as much as anyone else. I'm naturally quite a lazy person and dont have a lot of willpower. I like to treat myself, give myself little rewards, etc. I'm still like it to a large degree, which is why I needed a band. And its certainly a generalisation, there's loads of absolute go getters who get fat for different reasons - lack of time to spend on themselves when they have high powered careers for example.

Unfortunately I dont, I have the model before these came out and my treadmill can be controlled directly by the computer - if it were anywhere in the vicinity of the computer to be hooked up that is. I think they look like a fantastic idea, I have to use programs on a treadmill or I get too bored.

Quite honestly I'm a human dynamo these days. I'm studying, mother to three, the house is clean, I've just done 3 weeks of full time teaching rounds and sat up late into the night doing assignment work as well. I've coped fine with that, previously I used to get stressed and have melt downs. I just couldnt do it all, now I can. Physical energy too - yesterday we had a picnic in the park for fathers' day (in Australia). The kids wanted a game of cricket. We had a 2 hour game of cricket during which I did some really hard running - I never would have done that previously. I wasnt even embarrassed to be running, chasing a ball with many other families around. We spent the whole afternoon there, I still came home and went out for a run.

I've lost 20lb maybe three or four times. That's all I needed to lose at that stage. But it didnt stay off. Once I began to really gain in earnest after my second baby, I never really lost significant weight.

Five times a week for about an hour each time. Its sufficient - I lost all my weight and am maintaining it easily. Although I lie a little - for the last 3 weeks i"ve been on teaching rounds, my routine is completely arse about and I've done very little.

My doc came in, I was first on his list for the day and I'd been prepped. He said how do you feel and I said "f.ck..g terrified". The next thing I said to him when he came in the next morning to see me before I went home was "I'm starving".

Yes, you will lose lean body mass as you lose fat. Your job is to minimise it but at the end of your journey, you will not have 131lb of lean body mass. YOu cannot work out your goal weight that way. You may always be bigger framed meaning you may always have more lean body mass than the next person. That gives you permission to weigh more than them! But you just have to see how you go as you go along. I'm the opposite. I'm 5ft 10, 168lb, and a BMI of 24. I'm normal, healthy weight. I'm still too fat - my body fat percentage is 30%. Despite being a runner and doing strenght training 3 x a week all the way through. My hands are skinny, my wrists are bony, my shoulders jut and my collarbones stick out but on the lower half of my body is too much fat! I need to weigh much lower in my healthy weight range and have a much lower BMI becuase I do not ahve a frame that is muscular, has big bones or lots of lean mass. I have weighed probably as litte as 154lb in my adult life at this height and THAT was not skinny for me either. I still had thighs, a belly roll at that weight. I need to be in the 140's really to be what you'd call slender, not sure I could be bothered losing that much though, I dont think I'd be able to maintain it.

Its so deceptive in before/afters too isnt it? I mean Tricia, you look seriously GREAT in that photo - and I know in clothes and in photos I look perfectly normal too. I'm lucky not to have a pannis, I didnt get morbidly obese and I also escaped 3 pregnancies without a stretchmark - obviously mother nature was just kind to me. But my thighs and butt, I need a buttock lift - in fact despite the fact that my stomach is flat, its very doughy, there *is* loose skin there, just not what some experience - and the state of my thighs and butt is exactly what it was in my teens, not excess skin, just a big figure problem - I could use that belt lipectomy that Puddin had, truly. I may not be dripping with excess skin, but I have a smaller version of the same problem. My thighs didnt get worse with gaining weight and they didnt get better with losing it. My mum is the same. So is one of my sisters. Its genetics. If we're after a really good result, PS is really going to be a part of it for nearly everyone. Whether or not we all choose to do it is another matter, I'm not sure that at 40, I want to. Looking good dressed is pretty OK to me, but if I come by a bit of money, I'd be in in a shot!

If I could decide that I needed just ONE of those procedures I'd go for it, lol, I would spend $8,000 on myself. But I cant prioritise one over the other and I dont have an obvious just lost 40kg look either. So I'd want all three, and $20,000 is another kettle of fish entirely. But I dont think its a thing to feel "guilty" about. Its just for us, we need a new house, we're about to start paying private school fees, and its not just an issue of DH and I, there's the kids - family holidays are more important just now than whether or not I have a bit of a fat bum. But who's to say - you will enjoy the benefits of PS many years from now if you decide to wait - there's no time limit on it. Once I'm through my teaching degree, working and we have some spare cash again for the first time since we started our family, I'll be having some serious rejuventation I think!

I thought it was standard practice for any general anaesthetic- it is here anyway!

The problem I have with plastic surgery is thinking I wouldnt know where to stop. My DH wants me to get a breast lift. I kind of want to - I would never have something done becuase someone else wanted me to. But I'd also like a mini tummy tuck. I dont need muscular reconstruction as my stomach is perfectly flat I just have a very small pocket down the middle of my abdomen that needs to come off becuase it hangs over the waistband of everything. I would feel great with that gone, seriously perfect. Until I think about my thighs. Sigh. They are a disaster. My bum and my thighs are very very flabby, always have been. I'm pear shaped and they're not my best feature. I will never ever feel comfortable in a bathing suit, ever, no matter how thin I get. Why on EARTH would I pay for a breast lift and a tummy tuck and leave my thighs as they are? Which do I care about more? Would I want a beast lift, a tummy tuck AND extensive thigh and buttock lipo - in fact I suspect I'd be recommended a full buttock lift? Probably not. I care about my family's finances way too much to spend such a huge amount of money on my looks, and that's the truth. Not that that's a judgement about ANYONE else's decision to spend money on themselves because its totally an individual choice, but I care about houses more than thighs. And I dont care to totally surgically reinvent myself. I'm contenting myself with the fact that I have great shoulders neck and collarbones and well tressed up, my boobs arent too shabby either, lol! All those great waist slimmers, body slimmers, etc that are around now really do make a difference under certain clothes too. For the record though Susannah - Keith Mutimer in Brighton comes highly recommended to me from several friends who have worked with him and two on whom he has done some beatiful work (breast reductions). Initial enquiries resulted in a quote for - tummy tuck $8,000 out of pocket - breast lift $6,900 out of pocket, hip and thigh lipo - starting at $5,000.

We put so much pressure on ourselves too I think, this ideal Leave it to Beaver style existence is still what we intrinsically value, yet so many of us simply cannot afford to live on one income anymore. And I think both partners working can sometimes make for better relationships between fathers and children - being the sole breadwinner may appear to be making a sacrifice to give the best to your kids - their mother at home - but in many ways it takes away from them too. Many happy families have both parents working more moderately instead of one gone all the time and one at home. But when people say "Just give up the luxuries" as if working mothers are selfishly amassing money to spend on themselves they deserve a punch in the face, honestly. Lucky them! For many people, they dont have the luxuries to give up in the first place. And to be honest, I think peer acceptance, fitting in, having what other kids have is important. Lots of kids would grow up remembering THEY didnt have the game boys, the playstations, the birthday parties and the $150 skate shoes, not remembering warm and fuzzy memories of home baked cakes. There's got to be a happy medium there. Although being on full time teaching rounds at the moment and with ongoing course work to keep up with too, its given me pause to consider how lucky my kids have been to have me basically at home these last 12 years. They absolutely couldnt have the lives they do - the sport, the activities, the friends, if I werent around to drive them to it all, provide it all, etc etc. If I had this much pressure on my full time, I wouldnt be able to do it all. I'd also still be obese and unfit - I havent been for a run in a week and we've eaten convenient crappy food all week too!

That's outrageously expensive! But I think if you're doing home delivered, one prescribed for bariatric patients is a good idea - we've been doing Lite n Easy which is an Australian calorie controlled diet, and I cannot get through the food. Its become apparent to me that a) I've been eating around the band a bit and if you want to have any hope of getting in enough calories you have to eat around the band to a degree, lol. I try to eat "difficult" foods to make the band work well but if I only eat difficult foods, I simply cannot eat enough. Soup and a few bites of a piece of toast works way better for me than 2 pieces of toast - more varied nutrients, less carbs etc.

I finally reached my goal of 75kg ON my birthday last week, how freaky, lol, considering my goal was to reach 75kg by my fortieth birthday and the day before I was 76.1kg! Anyway, here's me on Saturday night with my family, that's me in the black and grey stripes. Sorry I have no real befores, we had a computer meltdown and lost a lot of photos.

Here's me these days! I really keep meaning to take proper full body pics, but I'm just so bad at remembering. This was at my 40th birthday party on Sat night - that's me in black/grey stripes

Not having been overweight ALL my life, I could pick a healthy weight I know I've held for long times, 154lb at 5ft 10. I also perhaps dont have that weird "but I'll be skeletal" at that weight idea. You really most probably WONT. Its a healthy weight for your height for a reason. But everyone has different body types - that's why our healthy weight range is a range, for me its 63 to 79kg. That's a big range. I know that I'm pudgy at 79kg and I've never weighed 63 as an adult, but I know from experience that 70 (154lb) is about right, not too fat, not too skinny. Some people have more muscle than others and can weigh a lot more without becoming "fat", whereas I tend to have a leaner body type and have way too much fat at the high end of my healthy weight range. I'd say pick a goal that seems achievable, that may be higher, and get there first, when your head catches up with your body, you will no doubt realise that you really wont be skeletal when you're at a healthy weight for your height. But really weight is irrelevant, its a healthy body composition you're aiming for.

Race you to Christmas Meredith! My goal exactly, 70kg by Christmas. I'm down to 75, suddenly had another bit of weight loss. I think at five foot 10, 70 will be fantastic! Gorgeous Susannah! Lol Chickie, journalists! Its still an inspiring article. But you make me glad that I changed my mind about participating in the marathon team event in the Melb. Marathon last year. Today Tonight was covering it, I could just imagine the shite they'd come out with and decided I'd rather go it alone. I didnt want old work colleagues and obscure relatives hearing I'd once weighed 300kg or that I'd been a size 56.

I think its personal choice - and I dont believe childcare harms children. I was pretty much a SAHM when I had jsut the two boys, I did have some very part time jobs here and there, but nothing really significant. However, Eliza came along five years later, totally unplanned, and honestly, I just didnt have it in me to give that much one more time. I was ready for my own career and my own goals again so she does indeed go to family daycare 2 days a week so that I could return to uni to do a Bachelor of Primary Ed. She's none the worse for it, she's every bit as happy, well adjusted and secure as the boys were. I just think its a different world now, and its a choice people have to make.

I just had this sudden moment of utter clarity. Its gone again now, lol. For a split second, I really saw myself. I liked what I saw, it wasnt perfect, I'm still me, not Cindy Crawford (god that shows my age, lol), but it was OK. I just think perhaps if I can do it once, it will become easier?

I have had a similar revelation recently. I suddenly realised I'm a tall skinny person. My brain suddenly caught up. It started when the teachers at the school I am doing practicum at were talkng diets, and somone said to me, you dont need to worry, you're so tall and thin. Moi? Then I saw myself in the shop window, and failed to realise it was me. Holy crap, I got such a shock. I really AM thin. I only ever really look in changing rooms and of course everyone looks awful in changing room mirrors. I focus on the slightly too big skin and the flabby bits. But overall, yeah, I'm very tall and I'm THIN. Far from thinking OK, I dont need to lose anymore, its really really motivated me to just get that final 10lb off. I just hope that every now and again I can continue to have these sudden glimpses of reality to make me appreciate just what it is I've achieved. Becuase normally I see some sort of weightless, ageless, neverchanging "me" that really bears little reality to how I am - the same me I saw nearly 100lb ago. Its bizarre. But its made me realise that picking a "realistic" goal and sitting there for a while before you keep going really CAN help your head to catch up. I really needed the breather I got at 79kg.