Jachut

I have 3ml in a 4 ml band and I can eat bread. To me it is a good food a) because I eat good quality (often home made) wholegrain bread and because a sandwich is so filling, takes so long to eat that its the most efficient satisfying lunch for me. Its guaranteed I wont eat till dinner whereas if I eat a salad and tuna or similar I'll be picking by 4pm. But slap it inside a bread roll and it will sit with me for hours. It literally takes half an hour to eat it though, I cant eat bread fast at all.

I think any regular degree of PBing is too much. I just had my first experience of it in 13 months of being banded - on crumbed lamb cutlets, the very first bite of my dinner, in public with friends, urgh. There is no way on earth I would tolerate that on a weekly or daily basis, let alone each meal. To me it would mean I would be too tight and I would be having Fluid out. My doc does believe it can cause slippage if it happens too often and too violently.

I found something I love and that fit my lifestyle, that was able to grow with me and would always continue to challenge - running. I can do it anytime, anywhere. I've just come back from holidays where I've run regularly through the bush. I can go early morning, late at night or any time in between. If its cold or hot I can do it on my treadmill. When I master a distance I can work on speed or adding more distance. I can motivate myself with fun runs and other events. I dont have to show up at a particular time at a particular place to do it. I can do it with my husband, with my boys on their bikes or my daughter in the jogger, or with all 4 of them. I can walk out my front door and do it or I can drive somewhere scenic or trendy and do it. All I need is shoes (and a bra, lol). Its the perfect sport for me. I've never had any problem with motivation with the gym but I always run into big problems with time - class timetables never suit me, they never have the class I want to do, it takes too long to do the program and then I have to go home and shower before I can get on with my day, etc etc. Once I faced the fact that I would never be able to commit long term and found something I could do instead I've never looked back, never piked out or had a problem with motivation.

Clear liquids for a whole MONTH!!! Wow, that would be hard. I swallow gum, lol, not usually intentionally but have done it since banding and am OK.

I resolve to be more organised this year. Too much of my life is lived in utter chaos - messy house, cant find anything, running late, chuck stuff out of drawers looking for clean socks, make even more mess kind of chaos. I hate it and I am going to be more on top of keeping the house in order. I also want to cut down on needless spending, coffees and lunches out, buying things I dont want or need. We are going to extend our house this year and I want to make sure it isnt postponed due to not having saved enough. I want to run a half marathon late in 2007 - but that's not a resolution, I WANT to do that so I wont need to "stick" to anything I dont want to do, lol.

I'd just have a bite or two of something I wanted - but I suppose a lot of people would do this in the early stages, that liquid phase was hard! I just eat what I really want to eat in small quantities, works for me. Funnily enough, the foods that really dont agree with me have become totally undesirable anyway, now that I associate pain with them. I wouldnt feel the need to taste them and spit it out because the thought of them is not attractive now anyway. I wouldnt do it to avoid calories, I'd just eat the food, lol.

I started exercising before my surgery - about 3 months before I started going to the gym again, doing what I could, I wasnt too unfit but I had a very bad ankle so I mainly did the elliptical with Cardio Coach on my MP3 and mucked around on the weights machines. When I got home from hospital I walked for the first few weeks, 3kms or so, just gentle, until I felt better, then I went back to the gym. After about 2 months I realised that unless I embraced walking (I hate it, find it so boring) I was not going to get in 4 or more sessions a week. I decided to go out one night when I was about 15kg down from presurgery weight and thought I'd add a few little jogging bouts in, expecting to be able to do very little, I actually jogged 3km that night. The rest is history, I combined this with the gym and jogging 3 x per week for a month or two, then I bought a treadmill, quit the gym and really started focussing on jogging 4kms at a time. I picked an event or two to train for, and by October ran my first 7.5kms, then last December I did 10kms and now I run 10kms twice per week and do a few shorter runs as well.

Yes, me too. All people are valuable, regardless of size. Being fat doesnt make you a non entity. But self acceptance doesnt mean becoming extremist and sticking your head in the sand about the health issues, it means realising your innate value and being proud of yourself, your self esteem not being dependent upon your size.

There's two sides to it - self acceptance and facing reality. You can accept yourself at size 26 or whatever as long as you also accept that you're facing some pretty serious health consequences and will probably die young. Even when it is totally beyond your control, the fact still exists that being morbidly obese has negative consequences. So part of self acceptance has to be coming to terms with that. But when you can control it, part of accepting yourself is admitting that you cant or wont. Self acceptance is not saying "stuff it, I"m happy at that size" because who really can be happy knowing they are cutting their life short as a consequence of their actions? That doesnt mean thought that society as a whole should be more accepting, understanding and just plain practical for larger people.

Whilst generally I'm very anti low carb diets I do agree that for some people, their body chemistry just does not cope well with them. And many people lose weight way more easily and successfully on a low carb diet. It makes sense to avoid them in that case - afterall if it were a specific food allergy you'd avoid that food right? So if they dont agree with you, there's plenty else to eat as long as you eat carefully to make sure you get all the nutrients that wholegrains normally provide.

I got a case of it less than a week after I got banded, I took the anti nausea medication - what happened was whilst the rest of the family was heaving everywhere, I got the sweats and chills, the fevers, felt crap, felt nauseous but had no vomiting or diarrhoea. It passed in a normal time frame. I think its a bit different if you get food poisoning and your body really needs to evacuate the offending food. But yes, I believe violent vomiting can cause slippage - its best avoided by far. But it doesnt always cause slippage, so chances are you're fine. Hope you feel a lot better though.

Jari Love has some good ones - they're Body Pump style. I like that sort of thing, dont like aerobics videos.

I think too that you have to stop and smell the roses along the way, appreciate and enjoy just how MUCH you have accomplished. There is nothing magical about goal weight - I want to get to mine and its soooo close now but life wont miraculously change overnight when I get there. I'll still have a flabby butt and post breastfeeding boobs and my hair will still be giving me the sh*ts and the house will still be a mess kind of thing. Most of what you have to Celebrate, you're already achieved so enjoy it and dont kill yourself trying to be perfect! Hope you're feeling a little clearer and better on the issue now.

There's so many options if you cant run or walk due to pain issues. I've had severe achilles tendons issues too but so far they're holding up to lots of running without the weight on me. There's swimming, Water aerobics, circuit training, spin classes, elliptical machines or exercise bikes, etc. And you wont believe what a load it takes off your body when the weight is gone and how much more you'll be able to do as a result.

Short term it wont hurt you but long term its not very good for your kidneys etc, which is why Atkins is not a great lifestyle to follow. You need the balance of proteins, carbs and fats. But 7 days is not a worry.

If it were me I'd ditch the Protein shakes alltogether and start eating some real food, a few more calories and a much more varied diet. I know we all follow what we're told to do by our surgeons, but honestly in Australia we dont do this protein first thing at ALL and the band is very successful here. Its not necessarily a healthy way to eat and you may be getting plenty of protein but you're missing out on a whole host of other nutrients as a result. Even if you want to do a higher protein diet, getting it from animal sources in conjunction with fresh vegetables, fruit and wholegrains is a much better way to go.

Everyone's different and one of the sad things about menopause is women tend to lose their natural protection against heart disease and the like and at the same time begin to gain weight in a more male pattern - around the middle and the internal organs. Menopause is a time when women do tend to suddenly get heavier and I do think it could be causing you problems. As you age, its so very important to exercise to maintain your muscle mass and protect yourself against getting fatter due to your body composition changing, even if your weight doesnt.

Im totally in agreement with Jack, I tend to think this is the "secret" of the band's success, and its why I'm glad I have a band and not any other type of WLS. I actually WANT to make those decisions, I WANT to feel as if I"m learning and its my conscious actions that are getting me the results I've enjoyed. If I were to lose my band I would want to think that I have made some quite significant lifestyle changes that would stand me in good stead for a lifetime of good health. I really feel that I have. But, lol, if I could turn a dial and select perfect restriction to the point where I would just lose but not PB, then I would do so in an instant. I dont have much left to lose but I just want to lose it quickly! Wheezy we're all different in what we will or wont tolerate but I personally would call that too tight. It would alarm me greatly not to be able to eat 3 healthy squares a day, and I wouldnt tolerate it, I'd be having fill removed. In the same vein as what Jack is saying, I do think that to have that balance, where you can eat well, you have to also have that leeway where you can eat badly or overeat if you choose, its just the way it works.

Only in America, lol. We dont even have that pretend butter spray here. I think it came on the market for about a month back in the 80's but it didnt last.

Well I was lucky I was driven to the hospital by my DH as it was only in another suburb. I can tell you though, I could quite easily have gotten myself to an airport and onto a plane, but no way could I have handled my luggage. I was quite mobile but not up to lugging a suitcase the next day. Emotionally its nice to have the support but I'm sure people are thinking of ALL of us when we're under, so hopefully it'll be happy times when you get back home.

I dont know how true it is about eating light pre op and gas pain, but I'd NEVER go into surgery having had a big big meal the night before. When they say fast from 12am they dont mean eat a bucket of Kentucky Fried until you're bursting and then stop at 12 am. A light meal the night before is a good idea, if you eat too much it wont be digested and clear for the surgery which can place your life at risk.

Ergh, I hope never to go through this. I hope you're feeling better. Yet another lesson that we cannot rely on our bands to be so tight that we simply cannot eat very much. You just have to leave enough space to eat real food and call in some self control, sensibility and willpower to use the band wisely, its the biggest (and most difficult) lesson we all have to learn. Its a tool, not a total fix (dammit). At the very least I bet you would have liked to see a bit more weight off for all that suffering.

Its like "bluejeans". Well, duh, what other colour is denim? They're just jeans! We call coke and the like softdrink. A beer can also be a stubbie - it used to be a tinnie back in the days when beer didnt come in stubbies (glass bottles). Biscuits are Cookies - we dont even have what you call biscuits over there. Or bikkies for short. A sandwich is a sanga. Tomato Ketchup is sauce or dead horse. Thongs are something you wear on your feet and if you tried to open a drugstore here you'd get arrested. Its a chemist or a pharmacy. And you have a fringe, not bangs. I love these posts, lol.

That's true - it DOESNT make me feel good to overindulge in food and end up half cut from too much wine. I just feel bloated and tired and awful afterwards - so I dont do it anymore.

I sure would. I didnt even see a surgeon or really think about this UNTIL I was ready for some big life changes, so basically once I'd made the decision, the sooner we got the show on the road the better.