Jachut

I call that great weight loss actually. People are so hard on themselves sometimes! that's fantastic, and right on track.

I ran 5km outside, ouchie ouchie - my ankles and knees are sore now. Its why I stick to the treadmill but boredom has been setting in lately. It was also extraordinarily hard - treadmill running and outside running are not the same thing at all!

Its really nobody's business with your own but you can play it either way - set it with him or just be quietly determined to meet your own goals and nobody else's.

Unfortunately that early weight loss cant go on forever. Its entirely normal for it to not only slow down but to plateau out regularly and you can indeed hold the same weight for months. I'm only losing 2 to 4lb per month now, but over time it really adds up.

I know I swell for about four or five days after a fill because I have increased restriction that then tapers off. So your fill might settle, but I'd be onto it in another couple of days if it doesnt.

After 25 years of dieting, I find it impossible not to be aware of the calorie count of whatever I'm eating, but I dont count them on purpose. I know I generally get in around 1500 to 1800 calories a day now I'm banded, and it has worked for me so far, I do a lot of exercise. But I probably should be shooting for 1200 to 1500 and to do that, I'd have to specifically count calories, which I cant really be ars*d doing, I'm too lazy. Sooner or later I will pull my finger out and get to it though.

I had a bit of trouble with fainting during this phase. My regime only demanded one day of clear liquids and then onto regular liquids and anything that could go through a straw was fair game, so at about day 4 or 5 when I could handle slightly thicker stuff, I ditched the optifast, the juice and the like and started on "real" food in liquid form - soups that had meat and carbs in them, even spaghetti bolognaise blended down with a can of tomatoes and some chicken stock. It made all the difference to me.

Hiccups for me are a sure sign I've overeaten. They're really violent ones too!

The thought of cottage cheese and Protein shakes gives me the screaming horrors - eek, I like my food too much. But it is very definitely to each their own. I think I"ve been extremely lucky, my old cast Iron gut handles everything and I've always been that way. I really expected banding to be kind of good in that respect and for me it has been. BUT - I will say I choose to be looser and to exercise like a fiend so that the extra calories I take in over and above people who eat more traditional diet fare dont stop me losing. I lose reasonably fast at first and am losing quite slowly now, but I figure I can live this way the rest of my life very happily.

Yeah, I think you have to decide for yourself once you're in the ballpark. I know for me, despite what size my wrists are or aren't, lol, I am still fat at the high end of my healthy weight range. Technically my BMI may be healthy, but fat pinch tests at the gym showed that I was definitely still too fat, had greater than 25% body fat. I'm 5ft 10 and my body fat levels only slipped into the healthy range at around 154 lb. I could easily be in the 140's and not be too skinny. So for me, it has to be a combination of lower weight, and trying to build more muscle, I tend to be sort of willowy when not overweight, not strong, if you knonw what I mean, despite being an active person. Other people have more muscle on them and can therefore weigh more but be less fat.

pb = productive burp, lol. Noice.

Typically I eat muesli for breakfast, sometimes toast. For lunch it could be anything, sushi, kebab (half a small one), sandwich made at home, salad, Soup, leftovers from dinner. For dinner, its often meat and 3 veg, like a roast lamb or chicken, lots of casseroles (from the slow cooker) rice and vegetables, we eat a lot of lentils in the form of dahl and various lentil dishes, occasionally we have takeaway, we eat Pasta like lasagne or spaghetti bolognaise, home made pizzas etc etc. My point being that I eat exactly like a non-banded person, healthy fresh homemade foods in smaller quantities than I used to. The quantity is key, as long as you eat less calories than you take in you'll lose weight.

As to frame size, idont know. I've often read that wrist test - where you circle your thumb and middle finger round your wrist - it goes that if your thumb and finger dont meet you're a large frame, if they touch, medium and if they almost overlap you're a small frame. Well when I started they didnt meet and now they overlap so who knows?

I can imagine that'd be hard, lol. I often use swim fins if I swim. Unfortunately swimming cant be an everyday occurence here, lol. When you're a woman and you pay good money for your hair colour and your spray tan and your french manicure, hmm, chlorinated pools are EVIL, lol. I also discovered the other day that boxing is a mega workout - I am sore in muscles that have never hurt before - even up the back of my head!!

I now realise I did go through this very mildly, as its slowed down so remarkably in the last month or two. I wasnt losing chunks but the amount of hair in the bathroom was driving me spare, so hard to clean it up. I sort of thought I was being overly sensitive as I"ve always been a shedder but now I know I was losing more than normal. I think its a generalised nutrition thing and perhaps hormonal, I really dont believe there's a magic pill to fix it. But I really think losing weight slow and steady is the way to go, you pay for fast weight loss in many ways.

So far there's been nothing I cant tolerate. There's been a couple of more difficult foods - steak or any other dry meat gives me the golfball feeling, but no pb. Donuts and cake enter my stomach just fine, no golfball but then a few minutes later it feels like pointy stones are passing through my stoma.

We're about to head off for a walk round the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne, its a lovely Sunday morning. I'm still sore sore sore from Friday's boxing.

Who knows - I'm tighter at night, significantly so.

No restrictions here, but being a pretty heavy coffee drinker I took a month or two to cut down substantially becuase I knew I would not be able to fit in the five or six cups a day I normally drink immediately after surgery. I didnt want to be dealing with caffeine withdrawal. I weaned myself down to two cups per day.

I'm going to have a day off today, I am so stiff I can hardly move, lol. Even the muscles on the back of my hands are stiff, and even weirder, the back of my head is stiff. Gotta add boxing as a regular workout!

Muesli for breakfast Malaysian beef salad for lunch small handful of almonds and sultanas in the afternoon chicken breast, broccoli, carrots and half a potato for dinner And I just had a hot Milo (kind of like Activite or similar). Not horribly fattening, but should have had a decaf

It's not so bad when it does though, I've had (I think) 4 fills and I'm not really there yet but have lost well over half of my excess weight, its not as if I'm unrestricted, just not optimally restricted. All it means is that I'm doing heaps of really hard exercise to keep the weight coming off. I dont do starvation well so prefer to burn as many calories as possible so that I can eat.

So true. I am still getting through 1800 calories a day or so and losing - slowly - but losing. Usually 3 - 5lb per month. I need to cut down a bit as I want to lose a touch faster than that, but I'm happy enough.

I can eat calamari no problem and I could eat a 6 inch sub if I liked them no worries. I can eat almost anything, but not a lot of it. I have wondered about oysters though. I'd be scared to eat an oyster the regular way, just swallow it, but I dont know that I'd like to chew an oyster thoroughly!

I was walking the next day, I kept that up for maybe 3 weeks and then I went back to the gym - elliptical and light weight work, I think I held off until 6 weeks to do any ab work. I struggled a bit with the time commitment of getting to the gym and went out to try jogging/walking about 3 months after surgery and have been running regularly ever since. I'm getting back into some heavier toning/weights work now almost 8 months down the track - I've built up enough cardiovascular fitness that a good long run doesnt tire me out for the rest of the day like it used to so now's the time to add the strength component to my workouts. Just take your time, build up as you feel ready and take it easy for the first couple of weeks.