Jachut

You can go on a diet (or a whole new lifestyle, courtesy of your band). He will always be a dickhead.

You just cant do this sort of thing until you're 100% ready, so you've made a sensible decision. I made 3 surgeon's appointments and cancelled them all before I felt ready to do it too. I gave it one last ditch effort and I did OK but couldnt sustain the momentum so for me banding was the right path to take. But you have to really KNOW that, so very best of luck with it all and this is still a great place to be for support.

I click on New Posts when I visit so I never have any flipping idea what forum I'm in, lol.

It really is true too that if you build up some muscle, tone up, you may not even need to lose the weight. I have had an honest look at myself in the last week and a good think about my desire to get to my goal weight. I went to the gym, got a full assessment and a new program done. My exercise program to date has consisted of running, I'm absolutely and utterly addicted to my new love. I'd been kind of looking at myself and thinking "hmm, huge improvement, in fact looking pretty good but I dont think losing just 8kg more is going to give me the body of my dreams, I really need to lose 15 or more". What my assessment at the gym showed is that I am a healthy person, my cardiovascular fitness is excellent, but I still have too much body fat. I cant keep dropping weight forever and ever in order to get the bulgy bits to go away, I have to tackle it from the other end, putting muscle there. So as of this week, I really have no goal weight anymore. Its now more of a matter of fine tuning until I'm happy with the balance between how I look and how much work I'm prepared to do to achieve my goals. food for thought. A number on the scale doesnt mean awfully much really.

I've never been told to do liquids or mushies after a fill, but of course I do take it cautiously and easily for a few days. Give it a few days to settle. I always have fantastic restriction and marked lack of appetite for a few days and then it settles down a bit.

So true. You've a bigger heart than I have, I just get mad. I think its distracting and really discouraging for new people but you're right, its probably indicative of a feeling of dissatisfaction and sadness in general.

I'm not young, nearly 40, but I didnt have any stretch marks and my skin has shrunk down fine. I didnt gain heaps of weight in my pregnancies and stretch it out, I carried most of my fat in by backside and thighs and I havent lost and gained repeatedly over the years either, just steadily gotten larger, lol. I had gotten to about 80lb overweight when I had surgery, so not morbidly obese, and I think probably genetically I have resilient skin. so its all just a combination of factors as to whether you'll be lucky or not. And dont get me wrong, I dont look like I've been shrinkwrapped, lol. I have a 40 year old skin, a tiny bit poochy under the arms, and my belly is far from perfect, its not a washboard, that's for sure, but if anything, lipo would probably take care of that. Unfortunately, being 40 we're also right in the midst of school fees, children coming into adolescence, needing a bigger house blah blah blah so plastic surgery wont be happening for me.

I've got the small 4cc Inamed band too.

Not sure, I'll have to see. At the moment I'm 8kg from goal and really stalled, my weight is just not moving. It dropped a little after a fill last Friday but its not going to all fall off unfortunately, lol. I'm really planning on ramping it up and starting some serious weight training as well as my running, and starting to actually "diet" instead of just eating less than I used to. But as it stands at the moment, I have not really ever achieved restriction in the way others talk about it, in that even at 3 ml in a 4ml band and with reasonably good food choices, I can still eat more than I can get away with to lose weight. Not heaps, but I can go out and enjoy a meal in a restaurant, I never PB, never have problems, so life forever at this level would be more than manageable for me. I like when I say I'm stalled, my weight is coming off but its like 2lb a month now, not anything noticeable. I suspect I acually need to really attack the body fat and build muscle more than actually drop pounds. But overall I suspect I'm going to have to find that within myself, not from any fill and that therefore I probably would not need to be unfilled to maintain.

Good Lord, have you been reading my mind? That is EXACTLY my feelings on the band and exactly where I'm at at the moment too. I never went into this expecting it to be a miracle. I knew there were risks and problems and that I would have to work with it for it to be successful. I knew there was a high chance I'd not get right down to my goal weight. I've done the work, I can now run 10kms at a time, I'm extremely fit, but there's more I can do - I can now tackle the issue of decreasing body fat and increasing lean muscle rather than just lose weight. I can stop eating just "less" overall and start to really analyse my diet and eat in a very disciplined manner, but I have to decide whether I want to and whether its worth it when I can already shop in normal stores, I look completely normal, my BMI is 26 and I feel utterly fantastic about myself. That to me is a successful outcome and I dont care what anybody says to the contrary, if I think I'm successful then I am. Maybe I can achieve more, maybe I wont, but I have no weight related health issues at all, I can run rings around most 25 year olds and nobody can change that fact with their sulky and nasty outlook on other people's happiness. I have no problem with people talking about their regrets and problems they've experienced. But coming here as somebody said "with an axe to grind" insisting that the band is just problem fraught and unsuccessful on the whole, well that's just totally stupid and such people should just go and whinge elsewhere if you ask me. We're here to tackle real problems and to try to offer support to those who are experiencing them, and its valuable for doing headwork on ourselves to discuss these issues. But people with with NOTHING positive to say help nobody at all. Its not healthy to only focus on worst case scenarios, its not realistic, its just not how normal people think. And when it comes down to tin tacks, this is a lap band forum and if anybody feels so badly about the lapband and has put it behind her it beats me why on earth they'd hang around. Just to take out their disillusionment and bad take on life in general on everybody else is my guess.

Take a rest, you deserve it. And with strength training, you actually get better results if you have rest days between sessions, it gives you muscles time to recover, which is when the actual growth occurs. Lifting weights or using machines like you do at Curves causes tiny tears and damage to the muscle fibres and when the body repairs that, you get increased size and strength. On the in between days go for a walk or a swim or do something else active that doesnt involve lifting weight.

I've never even PB'd (and I've been banded a year) so everyone's experience is totally different. Dont get freaked out by what you read becuase a) it may never happen to you and when the negative stuff like sliming does happen, you do take it in stride, its never as bad as you imagine. And just due to the nature of a support board like this, the problems get discussed and this can make them look more numerous and common than they actually are.

Hehehe, I've lost my 9 year old son.

Late afternoon is my danger time too. I've also been starving all day. Like really hungry, and only 4 days after a fill. But I ran 9kms last night and have done good distances the other days too so I figure its kind of natural to be hungry.

Hi Chris, here's to a long and healthy relationship with your band. You're blessed to have this opportunity at such a young age, I'd love to have my 30's back again and not waste them being unhappy with myself.

This was ages ago that I voted but a year down the track now and I've still not PB'd. Like Drewslou I can get stuck if I eat too fast but I've learned to slow down and stop when I've had enough and so far its served me well.

Yay Cindy. So right. I think there's a slight risk that a lapband can turn you into a bitter and twisted old sourpuss, but statistically that's very rare, less than one patient per lap band forum. For most people, they just lose weight.

Yet BMI in and of itself means very little. If you're very muscular and fit with lots of weight training, then you are probably going to have a higher BMI because you will weigh more. Just as you can have a low BMI and still be too fat. What you weigh is less important than your body composition.

Eeek. I"m not sure how you are with the private health insurance situation, I mean its not something everyone can afford but you dont have to have family cover either, you could take it out for just yourself. I wouldnt be without it with a lapband for precisely these reasons, if you ever have a complication, yes Medicare will cover most of the medical attention and surgery but you'll be up for the hospital bed and that can be VERY expensive. Glad its sorted for you, and it does make me mad when doctors are overcommitted like that. Its so fantastic though that you can get it done without insurance through the public system, even if its self pay, he's providing a very valuable service as most surgeons wont take self pay patients and dont offer public lists. Otherwise, fixing their obesity related health concerns is something that can only be enjoyed by those on the wealthier end of the spectrum and that's just wrong.

I love pita bread. Like other bread you can get it wholemeal or white, its the same as any bread really, part of a healthy balanced diet, but it depends what you put on it. I either roll salad fillings in it, or we make ones with roast lamb, pesto, roast vegetables and freeze them to put in the sandwich press for lunch or an easy dinner with Soup. I use whole pitas for pizza bases and I also cook them in the oven and break them into "chips" for dipping. The kids love them.

True - they dont do the bypass in Australia, probably you could get it done if the lapband failed, but its not the first choice for most bariatric surgeons. Too risky, too complicated, not good enough long term results. Longer term stats are showing that you lose more slowly with the lapband and its more dependent on personal habits (which is a good thing in my opinion) but you get greater weight maintenance at the end of the journey, compared to GBP where there's a significant proportion of people who lose fast and then begin to regain. So easy choice for me as I wouldnt have been able to find a surgeon to do a bypass but I would never have considered it given the size of my weight problem - simply not worth the risk of malnutrition and the surgical risks.

I've got 3 ml in a 4ml band and I can STILL eat a cheeseburger from McDonalds pretty easily (albeit slowly). Some foods that go down for you may really surprise you just as how you may not be able to work out why you cant eat others. But its early days for you, it can take ages to find a good restriction level, and everybody has a different ability to work with what they have too. Its not gluttony to eat when you're hungry. Just try to make better choices than fast food most of the time, personally I think its way more important in terms of long term maintenance to learn how to listen to your body - therefore eat until you're satiated, no matter how much that is - rather than count calories and relinquish control over your intake to a calculator or pen and paper. And if you were eating too much, to the point where you may stretch out your pouch, you'd probably know it - pain, sliming and PBs would probably follow.

That was my instruction too - if it went through a straw, or if I could make it go through a straw by blending it, watering it down with stock or tinned tomatoes or whatever, then it was fair game. In that way I ate spaghetti bolognaise, roast beef, even my Christmas dinner during the liquids and mushies phases. I made Soups with lentils and Pasta in it. Much more nourishing and balanced than weeks of yogurt and juice, although I had those too. And it didnt affect weight loss, it was only tiny portions afterall, but I didnt suffer ANY hunger during these stages as the food I did eat was filling and nutritious.

I'm nearly at goal weight now, so I've enjoyed lots and lots of NSV's. But really from hereon in, weight is actually pretty irrelevant to me, its NSV's I'm after. 1. I want to get rid of those annoying poochy bits - the muffin top, the jiggly bits on the sides of my butt and that last stubbourn pocket of fat on my belly. I'm realistic about not looking like a supermodel though. 2. I want more MUSCLE. I really want to still change my body composition quite substantially although this may not involve a lot of actual weight loss 3. I want to be in an Australian size 14. 4. I want all this by next week. Sigh. I know it will probably realistically take me another year to hone my body to what I want it to be. I've done the big weight loss bit, now's the time for the sculpting and toning. 5. Next October I want to run my first half marathon.

I really put off my most recent fill becuase its taken me to 3ml in my 4ml band and I just thought I shouldnt need it, I dont know why. But what I found is that self control is a very important factor in making the band work because I can always eat stuff that goes through easily like cookies and chocolate, but when I'm needing a fill, that self control just isnt there to the same degree. I had still lost between this visit and my last and in the whole of the past year, I've never regained any weight at all, I'm usually pretty good on the self control but I had stopped losing reliably and steadily, I'd only lost 2lb in 6 weeks.