Jachut

The secret is to find things other than the scale that make you feel good about what you've done. For me, its athletic achievement, running further, faster, setting new goals and achieving them. Today I ran AND I did a Body Pump class. That really makes me feel good about myself. The fact that I'm a bees dick away from goal but am just not losing any weight at the moment doesnt really worry me so much in light of what I have achieved. I ran my first 10km race on Sunday and that felt awesome.

Well your band is different at different times of the day and under different circumstances, you can easily tolerate a food once and then not the next time, that's entirely normal. YOu cant get comfortable with your band ever, it always has the potential to act in a way you dont expect. And second time, I've done that once or twice, eaten past my body's warnings to STOP. One bite and its agony. I've never PB'd, I just cant, dont know why, I stand there willing whatever it is to come up but it never does. And I've had to put up with that pain for quite a while before something glugs through and just eases the pressure. Walking helps me with that. But that can always be different too - sometimes the pain is gone in 5 minutes, the next time it may be half an hour. the only constant? Eat very slowly and make sure your band is cooperating before you really commit to the meal, lol. Dont just wolf down four or five forkfuls or you'll be very sorry.

Yeah, agreed. I can tell you now that 10lb would take me from an Australian 16 to a 14, but those 10lb are the last and are taking longer than the previous 65! I'd lost 15kg before people really noticed - that's well over 30lb.

I lost quite fast for the first few weeks and then it settled to 1lb per week or less, with lots of plateaus of a few weeks where I dont lose anything. But when you're less overweight, a couple of pounds makes a noticeable difference, you dont need to be losing faster than that. I also have not had to go on some rigorous diet, and I have not lost my hair or suffered any other ill health.

Well since sizing is NEVER consistent from store to store anyway, i never even try to equate sizes. I just try on what "looks" right and dont really worry about what the label says. XXL in Target and XXL in a big and tall men's store for example for my DH are two ENTIRELY different things.

I had a BMI of 35. I've lost 65lb in a year (its my bandiversary in 3 days), which is about 30kg. I've done it on very meagre restriction, I seem to be totally resistant to fills, lol. I'm now at 3mls in a 4ml band and I can still eat a salad roll for lunch - but that's way less than I once ate. Nonetheless the band has dampened that head hunger that I suffered from so I may eat said salad roll but I dont go looking for more food until dinner time. I eat a very small meal at night, I"m tighter then. I eat carbs, I dont do Protein first and I drink with my meals, I dont see going out to eat as "cheating" and I have a lifestyle that is totally manageable forever. I'm a bad bandster, lol I have also never PB'd, so have been very lucky. But with PBing comes good restriction and faster weight loss I guess. Exercise has been everything to my success. I run four to five times a week or so and am up to distances of 10km now - of course I dont do that every run, I tend to do two 5kms, a 7 km and a 10km, gradually building on that distance over a long period of time - I have a 15.2km race I want to do in April and I just did my first 10km on Sunday. As I've nearly gotten to goal and have hit a really big plateau I've now added in 2 x weekly circuit training - I'll target every muscle group interspersed with 500 metres of fast uphill walking on the treadmill - so maybe 40 squats, 40 lunges each leg, 40 triceps dips, 40 biceps curls, 40 medicine ball sit ups, planks, 40 push ups, and various chest press and shoulder exercises with dumbells, all separated by a 500 metre hike uphill. It lasts an hour and is REALLY hard, but I enjoy it. I agree with Jack though, its time now to focus and really concentrate on what I"m eating. My MIl is giving me a barbell for Christmas, that's what an exercise junkie I am. I always was athletic and sporty though, have never had the patience for something as pedestrian as walking. Its all or nothing with me. Although for the first time since banding I'm really having major problems with hunger - due to all the energy I burn I guess. I eat and feel full due to the restriction of the band but the bottom half of my stomach will still be growling and crying out for food, its weird.

I've looked at those Victoria's Secret bras online, cant buy them here in Australia. I am addicted to foam lined Tshirt bras in gorgeous colours! They are so prevalent in A to D cups here, but nothing larger, it all goes to black, beige and white. So they are a good bra?

Good on you Kygal! I dont know where people get off even having an opinion on how many children people have. Its nobody's business but the people involved.

Fayreform make really good bras too.

Being very newly banded didnt ruin my Christmas at all. And bully for your family anyway, its not about them, its about you. How rude!

I dont consider it cheating. I dont diet. I eat all foods in moderation. Its worked for me, carbs dont make me want more carbs, everyone is different I guess. However I will say that now, close to goal, I'm going to have to get stricter to get the rest of the weight off. Sigh.

A bigger cup size should fix that, it pushes that flesh forward and into the cup. I need to buy a bra with a reasonably wide side too, I have those bits of flab as well. But no matter what the bra - if the cup size is too small you dont just get that fetching lump out the top at the front, it also spills out the sides. You may even need a smaller back size in conjuction with the bigger cup size. Try it and see - you wont believe how small you can go in the back if you accommodated for it in the cup. I never would have believed I could fill an E cup after having lost 30kg.

Oooh - off to google this!

Ergh, no. They arent food, they're chemical concoctions. I'd rather eat fresh healthy stuff, not something that comes out of a tin that you mix with Water. As you can tell, I aint no fan of Protein shakes, lol.

I buy organic fruit and vegetables. They taste soooooo much better, they last better and I am not poisoning my family with pesticides, waxes and other muck. It is much much healthier for the environment, its sustainable and natural. I would buy totally organic as much as possible but it is just too expensive. I cant afford organic meat and organic packaged foods and organic cleaning products as well as the fruit and veg. As it is it costs an arm and a leg and means we have to do without other things. As to healthier - I do think they are slightly healthier but not as much as they are touted to be. Its more the environmental aspect to it and what they dont contain. We have an organic supermarket chain here called Macro Wholefoods and I've bought there before only to have the produce go rotten within days -it may be organically grown but its treated like standard produce and cold stored and is not fresh off the tree when you get it. I dont support that, organic should be supporting the small farmers and helping them to make a living and become stronger, not some huge superprofit supermarket chain. So I order and have home delivered from a small supplier.

I've lost really really really slowly for the last 8 weeks or so. Like only 1.5 kg in that whole time, despite having increased my running distances to 10km at a time (for a race I was training for). That's 1000 calories burned per session - and nope, not losing!

I've had improvements yes - but I never had a really bad back problem. I do have a touch of piriformis syndrome - my sciatic nerve runs through the piriformis muscle, not under it, and if I get tight in that lower back, I get sciatic pain. However, after my pregnancies I couldnt even walk for exercise, once I cooled down I'd be in agony. It took years to improve, I put on a lot of weight in that time. Nowadays it hardly bothers me, I run up to 10km at a time and I stretch really well - stretching is the key for me, I cannot let myself get tight. At the the height of my weight problem I was sleeping really poorly - it was like being heavily pregnant - I tend to sleep on my side, and the weight on my front of belly and boobs would pull me over so I'd twist and I'd wake up with horrible lower back pain, as well as an aching through the hips and shoulder girdle from the weight. I cant remember the last time I felt that now, I sleep like a baby. And I had a terrible inflammatory ankle problem that almost had me unable to walk at times and its all but gone.

It depends on your history, skin type so many things. For what its worth I'm 39, I have had 3 10lb babies, but the most I ever gained in a pregnancy was 25lb, well within the normal range. With the other two it was about 10lb and nothing at all with the third. I am tall (5ft 10) so I never got a huge belly with pregnancy, didnt need maternity clothes till 24weeks or so, I've got plenty of room in there between ribs and pelvis. So no stretch marks at all. I also think perhaps I just have good skin, no wrinkles or anything vaguely like that visible yet either. All up I guess I'd like to lose 80lb (of which I've lost 65 or so) so again not the hugest of weight problems and I tend to carry it pretty evenly, more pear shaped than anything else, so again I didnt have a big belly. So far, my skin has shrunk back well, i have nothing "hanging" and my stomach looks perfectly flat clothed. However, its far from perfect, it is blobby and doughy underneath, the skin is definitely not what it once was but I did gain a lot after each pregnancy (breastfeeding makes me get very fat very fast) and I never really got a chance to tell what damage it had done, so whether its from being overweight or pregnant or both I dont know. I've exercised a LOT - running burns a lot of body fat. If I wanted to wear a bikini on the beach, I'd definitely need to be fronting up for a bit of lipo, but there's not enough for a tummy tuck or a mini tuck. So would I do it? No, because who is ever going to see it. I think the scar would be way uglier than my stomach is. But that's maybe different from how you feel about it? Do you want to show your stomach? Are you going to want to wear a bikini? I think all you can really do is see how it goes, and if towards the end you're not happy with how it looks in whatever you personally like to wear then its a fantastic thing to do for yourself after all your hard work.

I love that feeling - when I cant sit on the toilet but have to fall back grimacing in agony, then I know I havent been lazy, lol. I ran in a 10km race yesterday, so today I have all the strenght of a wet noodle. Thankfully not stiff though, as I trained for it over a long period of time and my running muscles are well used to it. If I were to play volleyball again after 20 years though - ouch!

Hmmm, I dont know about you but I'd kind of like there to be some taxpayers keeping things together when I'm old. I've already come to terms with the fact that there's not going to be any pension for me, I'm going to have to fund my own retirement, but the whole economy is going to be very different because overall people arent having enough children. Its easy to think they are when you see families with a huge number, but we're overall having them much later and in much smaller quantities.

The only thing that got through to my nearest and dearest was impressing on them that obesity was a disease, a disorder like any other, not a "failing" of my strenght as a person. I told them to look around them and see what society looks like, everybody is getting fatter and fatter! That said, I argued that if I were to have surgery on my ankle (the thing that prompted me to look into banding) NOBODY would question my decision. Nor would they worry about me dying under the anaesthetic. My husband had experimental surgery for compartment syndrome on his legs, there was no guarantee of success but the risk was worth it becuase his legs were in terrible shape. Nobody questioned that. Nobody would questioin me needing my gall bladder out, nobody questioned my decision to have an elective caesarean for my daughter's birth and two lives were at stake there. And, therefore, if obesity was fixable by means of surgery, why on earth wouldnt I take it. I was getting fatter and fatter, although I hadnt become morbidly obese at the time I had surgery. I feel I would have been by now. Ok, so its more of a lifelong management tool, not a fix, but you get my drift. When people thought about this rationally, what I was saying made sense to them. Why on earth would you wait - and then have MORE surgeries down the track, gall bladder, etc, or end up on a host of medications, or die young? We have to stop judging obesity as a moral failing and realising it is a disease.

Hi Matt, there's a few Aussies on this board. I live in Melbourne, actually quite a few of us do. Glad to hear you're going well with it a year down the track. My one year anniversary is coming up December 9.

I've never been on any online dating site, but I did get involved with an online mothers group - it started on ninemonths.com.au when we were all pregnant and then that was hijacked by trolls and we set up a private MSN group and now I have lifelong friends. It took a good deal of courage to meet up with people for the first time and it didnt happen for a few years, but now, the internet is merely the way we keep in touch, our actual relationships are real life. We have members all over Australia and in New Zealand too and we have a National Meet every year and its just marvellous. It just takes trust and courage for it to happen but meeting people online, despite the loonies you come across, is a valid and great way to meet people. And its been great for me too because these are people that if I met in real life I maybe wouldnt connect with - due to the huge range of socioeconomic, ethnic, professional, political differences. People that on the surface I would have nothing in common with. But making friends with people so different from me has really helped me to grow as a person.

Wow, what a difference a year makes! I'm coming up for a year too (December 9) and I am a totally changed person from what I was a year ago. I didnt really think I had a lot of emotional issues attached to being overweight, and I didnt really but my outlook and plans for the future, well lets just say they involve STILL running half marathons when I'm 70! You look so different and I bet you feel it too.

Have fun, sorry I cant make it. At the moment I have to be in St Kilda by 6.30 am, back out to Narre Warren after the race to shower, change etc and then back into Malvern for another picnic. Eek. And out to a work picnic for Doug Saturday afternoon, AND 5 11 year old boys sleeping out my house tonight for Fraser's birthday. And Ewan complaining that he's going to miss basketball tomorrow! Sheesh.