Jachut

Oh, swoooooooon. Who needs frilly lingerie when you have haggis?

Oh, Fitday drove me freaking INSANE. All the foods on it are American of course so I couldnt find anything that I eat. I'd have to enter every single item of food as a custom food, I gave that up after five minutes, lol.

I dont count anything, its not my dieting personality. But if I had to, I'd count calories. I'd keep away from white processed carbs though. I guess I've crept back up to about 1800 calorie a day now, I'm maintaining easily on that, but I really do need to cut right down if I want to lose anymore weight, once you're in your healthy weight range like I am, with a big weight loss behind you, it gets diabolically hard to lose anything. I have avoided counting calories till now but I think I need to psyche myself up to do it.

I've not lost hair, but the condition of my hair has suffered. I've always had very changeable hair, total changes in colour and texture between teens and adulthood, changes after pregnancies, etc. I'm not sure whether it would have happened anyway but my hair is so frizzy now its almost uncontrollable. Five years ago I could blow dry it straight and it would look OK, nowadays I require a 220 degrees celcius hair straightener to tame it - and its fine and frizzy not thick and frizzy so it straightens down to nothing and it doesnt hold the style overnight, so I have to do it every day. Sigh. I'm sure it has something to do with the change in diet/hormones/etc in my body, its much more fragile and prone to breakage now. Then again, I'm getting old, almost a whole 4 decades old now, perhaps its all downhill from here?

That's a fantastic effort Edie! Between July 06 and June 07, I lost wait for it, drum roll please....................... 17 whole pounds, lol!!!! Hehehe, I got most of my weight off in the first 8 months and its been extremely slow since then. At least I got to a normal weight though, I guess. I'd love to have just a few weeks of 4 or 5lb a week again though.

I dont know, I think there's more to it than a simple lack of self discipline, but then again, when I look at my friends who have never ever been overweight, they do simply HAVE self discipline that I lacked. I've developed a lot of that. But I really truly believe that I am just simply "more interested" in food than the next person. For me not being hungry is no reason not to eat. I've struggled with that even banded. There's definitely something wrong in there. I mean there's an ad on telly at the moment one of Australia's Biggest Losers is now the face of Jenny Craig here and she's regained quite quickly virtually all the weight she lost. When you think about it, with a whole country watching you, why on earth would you allow that to happen to yourself? It simply cannot have been completely in her control, there's got to be more to it. But I'd probably participate in good healthy debate on a subject like that - its interesting. I do think too though that people who have never been obese simply cannot understand it.

I'm an all things in moderation girl myself, and its worked well for me. I really truly believe its healthier, I think the Protein levels talked about here are way extreme and possibly dangerous and that there's absolutely no need to cut good carbs from the diet. In fact carbs like wholegrain bread are what make my band work well, they're what stay in my pouch and fill me up for hours, protein just doesnt do it for me. It moves through very quickly.

*giggle* Maybe if you changed the accent?

I think that's a wise decision. Vacations arent all about eating, but they're not all about denial either. Eat some good things and ENJOY them! Just use your band to keep it in moderation and enjoy the wonderful feeling of coming home in good shape.

But could you fake one? Please...?

I would never do it. Once you've done it once, I fear you'd be back before every Christmas dinner, birthdays etc or you might not get back for a refill etc and you'd be on a losing/gaining cycle all the time, so not good for you. And I just think you have to break that mentality where you think that just becuase its vacation you have permission to pig out a bit. Last vacation I went on was the best I'd had in my life precisely because we ate out, yes, we drank, yes, but we kept it in proportion, ate healthy for the rest of the time, I ran every day and I got home and had lost another 2kg. That feeling beats the hell out of stuffing my face for 2 weeks and coming home fat, bloated and having to diet for weeks to undo the damage.

Huh? I'm Australian and I dont have an accent, lol. No, I know what you mean. Scottish men, drooooooool.

Yes, picking up jeans from the rack and just buying them without trying them on is so weird. Buying a dress for a formal event we have coming up, I saw it in the window, walked in, tried it on. I was expecting that horrible moment where you cant get it over your hips, where you struggle, almost ripping the dress only to squeeze yourself into it, feel crap and buy it anyway becuase you dont want to admit to the sales lady that it didnt fit you and vowing to diet like mad for six weeks to get into it, only having to go out and buy something ugly and huge anyway. Buying that dress was probably my sweetest victory yet, since the only time I really had crises of desperation about my weight was when I had to buy something like that.

I truly believe too that artificial sweeteners only encourage people to eat foods every day that should be saved for a very occasional treat - like soft drinks. Diet coke may not make you fat but its still truly awful for you. Artificially sweetened low fat yogurts are pretty worthless foods too since without the animal fat your body just doenst make optimum use of the fat soluble Vitamins and Calcium in dairy anyway. Full fat natural yogurt isnt sugary and is healthy for you! I think if you use real sugar, then you consider more carefully what you should be eating on a daily basis - and sweet foods are not really suitable to eat daily. As to coffee and tea - giving up sugar in those is one of the easier dietary challenges - honestly, it takes 2 weeks, tops.

I managed to avoid it by not being really tight or going below about 1500 calories a day - so I could eat from all food groups. I'm not sure there's any real consensus on whether its certain nutrients that cause hairloss - Protein is widely believed but low Iron can also cause hairloss. Then there's Biotin and zinc - personally if you're worried I'd take a specific hair, skin and nails supplement and try not to lose too fast or too drastically.

Dont you just wish you could impart that feeling to those that really struggle with exercise. People think I"m mad, but to grind myself into a sweating wreck is my idea of fun, lol. I love to exercise HARD. I've come to rely on it as my form of relaxation and head time, I need that endorphin rush. And it truly is the secret not only to losing weight but more importantly to maintaining it.

Lately, probably as a result of the weights I have been doing, my body feels so firm! I am at a healthy weight, but still have a reasonable cushion of fat on my lower half and the normal flab you'd associate with being almost 40 and having had 3 babies. So I'm not supermodel. But I can feel Iron hard muscles in there, I can feel a strength in my torso beneath the skin in the same way you can feel that springy strenght in a young child's body, its just weird, have never felt it before. My wrists and forearms if I touch them are so bony, they look so fragile to me, lol. My rings swing round my fingers. My shoulders, collarbones are so elegant and I can see a hint of ribs on my chese (note to self, instruct body to only lose from below the waist now!). I just feel "different" all over, even different to when I was this weight in my 20's, I'm sure I have a lower body fat/higher muscle ratio than I did back then becuase my body is entirely different and smaller than last time I was 78kg.

I didnt want to be fat and forty either. Contemplating what middle and old age would be like if I just continued to get fatter were simply too awful, my body had started complaining about the weight it was carrying and I didnt feel happy or healthy. Bypass wasnt an option for me. I never ever would have considered it at a BMI of 35 and its rarely done in Australia these days anyway.

Early on a good fill make me not hungry so I could easily avoid those bad fills. But that appetite/headhunger has returned for me, only I can control it better now, but its there. I'm really not sure if another fill would help or not, but I'm thinking about it.

Personally I dont think its a problem at all, I dont restrict carbs at all and I dont count them, but I do stick with low glycaemic, wholegrain ones. I do believe what research says about insulin levels, metabolic disorders and processed carbs but I truly dont believe that means a high Protein diet is the answer, I really think in another five years they'll be telling everyone they've ruined their kidneys, filled their arteries with plaque and given themselves bowel cancer etc. I think we need carbs in our diet in good proportions, but we dont need loads of poisonous white sugary ones. There's a lot of very promising reserch on the glycaemic index and what it can do to aid weight loss, diabetes and PCOS in the very same way that research into high protein suggests, I just think its a healthier more moderate way to do so. So I wouldnt restrict good carbs at all. But that's just me, I know not everyone is going to agree with what I've just said.

You can certainly exercise pretty vigorously in a pool! There's plenty, swimming laps, doing deep water running, etc. You'll do fine with your limitations Aubrie - good luck!

I go out and do something, I usually only get cravings when I'm sitting around doing not much.

I think you have to find the right balance for you - although PBing all the time isnt OK, its not good for you or your band. But as to avoiding PBing, that depends on what lengths you will go to - how much you are prepared to restrict your diet and your lifestyle which dictates how tight you can be. What others call a sweet spot I call WAY too tight. I like my band so that there is virtually no chance of a PB unless I really break the rules and stuff something down without chewing, and I can eat any food. But I've had to rely more on exercise for weight loss and have not quite gotten to where I wanted to weight wise yet as a result, and I think if I want to get those last few kilos off I'd have to venture into that territory. So you're not "supposed" to feel anyway, its up to you to find the manageable balance.

I wont eat anything artificially sweetened, if I want something sweet, then I realise that I am going to be eating sugar. Sugar isnt that highly calorific anyway if its kept to a reasonable proportion of your diet - ie. not a huge feature in your everyday eating. Artificial sweeteners taste awful to me and I fear what they will do to my health.

I cant imagine why crackers and such would not be OK during pregnancy, but then they dont do high protein/low carb in Australia for banded patients. You're not likely to be physically unable to eat them. I had MS with my third pregnancy and sea bands really helped me. But I also did the crackers before getting out of bed in the morning thing and it really helped.