Jachut

Yeah, I was liquifying things like veggie soup by day 3. I had to do clear liquids only on the day of surgery, till midday the next day.

It took me a little by surprise the first time I had a drink after banding too. And the trouble is once you've had a bit you lose your judgement and its very easy to make yourself sick. I havent vomited since banding, but we've had at least 5 cases of gastro through the family since I was banded and I think through sheer will I havent caught it. You'll know next time I guess and probably since you're not in any pain or having any problems, no harm done.

I did a boxing circuit this morning - it was AWESOME!!! I absolutely loved it, it was great fun. It feels so good to be able to do something like that as a spur of the moment decision and not only keep up but be able to put 150% into it. Apparently I'd make a good boxer as on the kicking part, I sent to poor girl holding the bag for me flying across the room! Ugh. She actually hurt herself a bit. I'm pretty tall, so I have a lot of power. I think I sprained my wrist a bit though and I KNOW I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I want to make this part of my regular routine, it must burn a ton of calories as its really intense. I also did a very easy 3km on the treadmill, slow and flat.

Argh - well I gave certain people the very same impression a few days back in a thread about the bypass vs the lapband, but meant nothing of the kind, sometimes things come across as condescending or judgemental when they're not meant to.. But sometimes they are meant to and then that's their problem, not yours. Let them think they're the best or that they know best, you're smarter. You picked a course that will made you successful and will keep you successful long term. And of course you're a bigger person than to have a quiet snicker when they regain the 24lb and THEN some. Nobody can truly denigrate what you've achieved Sammee, and anyone with a lapband knows it doesnt come without YOUR hard work and YOUR commitment. Anyone who thinks any different is misinformed.

OK so I'm desperately trying to come up with things to do rather than finish my essay, but this cracked me up. FOLLOW THESE 14 SIMPLE TESTS BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO HAVE CHILDREN... Test 1 Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months remove 5% of the Beans. Men: to prepare for paternity, go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time. Test 2 Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers. Test 3 To discover how the nights will feel: 1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. 2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep. 3. Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am. 4. Set the alarm for 3am. 5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea. 6. Go to bed at 2.45am. 7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off. 8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am. 9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off. 10. Make Breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL. Test 4 Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: 1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag. 2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out. 3. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes. Test 5 Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5 door wagon. And don't think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that. 1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. 2. Leave it there. 3. Get a coin. Insert it into the cd player. 4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat. 5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. Test 6 Get ready to go out 1. Wait 2. Go out the front door 3. Come back in again 4. Go out 5. Come back in again 6. Go out again 7. Walk down the front path 8. Walk back up it 9. Walk down it again 10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes. 11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. 12. Retrace your steps 13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you. 14. Give up and go back into the house. Test 7 Repeat everything you say at least 5 times. Test 8 Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child. A full-grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your weeks groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Test 9 1. Hollow out a melon 2. Make a small hole in the side 3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side 4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane. 5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone. 6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. Test 10 Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years. Test 11 Can you stand the mess children make? To find out: 1. Smear Peanut Butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains 2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. 3. Stick your fingers in the flower beds and then rub them on clean walls. 4. Cover the stains with crayon. Test 12 Make a recording of someone shouting "Mummy" repeatedly. Important: no more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy - occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet if required. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years. Test 13 Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above. Test 14 Put on your finest work attire. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now: 1. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it 2. Stir 3. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt 4. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture 5. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel 6. Do not change, you have no time. 7. Go directly to work You are now ready to have kids!

To me gastric bypass or RNY is something you do when you're so morbidly obese that the health risks presented by your obesity outweigh those presented by the surgery. When it is imperative that you lose weight fast becuase you're a heart attack waiting to happen. Otherwise, comorbidities or not, more average levels of obesity do not present such a huge risk in the very immediate future that you're likely to drop where you stand if you dont get 50lb off in the next two or three months. For someone like me, for whom banding was way more about vanity than health reasons, there's simply no way I'd do it and no way I'd trust a surgeon who would agree to it. Slow and steady is healthier. Losing weight is quite a stressful event for the body, you want to avoid making it more taxing if you can.

I think you just havent reached the right restriction for you yet. I'm a bit the same, I think I have 1.9cc and I can eat less than I used to but if you didnt know I was banded, you'd never guess it from watching me, you'd just think I have nice tablemanners and eat slowly! Still, I have lost weight. You might only need a tiny fill.

You will be blown away by how great you feel six months down the track. I cannot believe the energy I have now, nor did I realise at the time how far I'd sunk into inactivity. I can just keep going and going and going these days. I've put a lot of work into getting fitter too and once you get past the point where it tires you out, it just makes you feel on top of the world.

Aerobic 3 program on the treadmill - bursts of very fast running, with mammoth sadistic inclines - like 12 - groan. I was dripping sweat and almost vomiting by the time I finished, lol. Wasnt even the least bit sore from the circuit at the gym yesterday, whereas my Bella Strenght whips my ass so perhaps its better to stick with that. Free weights, boring as they are, seem to do a better job.

The boys' school had a Nutrition evening, they're doing healthy food this term, so we went last night. I had on a lycra camisole sort of top on under a lacy wrap sweater - modest when properly arranged, but a bit chest baring I guess. But then Eliza wanted a piggy back, so I had to walk around without being able to yank up my top and piggy backing tends to make me stick my chest out. Well, that got noticed, more than once. The parents of one of Fraser's friends are quite good friends of ours but I"m a little uncomfortable with the dad, I think he may always have had a bit of a thing about me, but he's gone overboard with the compliments and he asks me things like "so do you notice men looking at you more?". Its a bit icky, he's a really nice fellow, but just somehow a little inappopriate. But then he also could have been a bit of a dufus as a young man, he's kind of goofy and funny looking and I think he just may sort of overcompensate by being the funny, friendly guy kinda thing. I've had loads and loads of compliments but the best ones are when people dont say anything. I saw a friend last night that I havent seen for probably seven or eight months and she's hugely obese, she was looking me up and down out of the side of her vision with a filthy look on her face, roflmao! She never said a thing, but she noticed allright!

I guess I eat this way anyway. I love to enjoy food, to make the effort to cook good food, I dont waste my time shoving down food without appreciating it anymore, no matter what it is. I'm still interested in food and the difference is now, I get the big white plate in a restaurante, with the tiny dab of food in the middle and I can appreciate the artfulness of it, without getting cranky that I'm going to need five courses to fill up, lol. I havent cut anything out of my diet - I even gave in to Australia's Krispy Kremes madness last weekend. It works for me, but I'd have to say, it makes for very slow weightloss becuase I still eat calorie dense foods. But whilst I love fruit and vegetables, I dont want to live on them. I love yogurt but dont even show me that artificually sweetened low fat crap, ick. Good thick greek yogurt, yummy. That type of thing. So I get plenty of calories on a smaller amount of food, but so be it.

Oooh, about 10kg - so 22 lb or so - in the first six weeks, then it slowed down to about 2lb a week for a while (probably 3 months or so), now its about 3lb per month.

For me it feels exactly the same as it did before only on less food. And when I'm really full, its "I can not eat another bite" full, I just cant risk shoving it in there. I know that it would come back up. Whereas before I could just keep on going!

In theory it should work, yes. You eat a lot of foods that will be difficult to enjoy after banding. Fingers crossed for you. Can I just point out as an Australian - there is no such thing as Outback Alice Springs chicken, lol. In Alice Springs you'd be more likely to get witchety grubs or a steak sanga! I've lost the weight I've lost just through eating smaller portions of what I ate before - BUT I did eat a fairly healthy diet, fast food was a once a fortnight treat, not a daily event, I just ate too much food overall and had a few too many cookie binges. I still go out to eat, I still occasionally eat fast food and I will never ever ever torture myself on a low carb diet. Regardless of whether it works better for some people than others, it is not necessary for everyone. But most of the carbs I eat now are wholegrains. I might feel like something carb-y and cheesey for lunch but I'll make myself a toasted pita wrap full of roast pumpkin, capsicum, zucchini, some pesto, some cheese - yummy. Much better than a greasy cheeseburger.

Yes I do notice this and for me it coincides with dinner, which usually happens just following Arsenic Hour in this house. You know that hour of the day when kids get possessed. I sit down to my dinner, and the minute I pick up a fork it starts. "I wanna drink", "I wanna sit on the couch", "I wanna chase the cat". Trying to get Eliza to actually eat anything is impossible, she just wont sit still long enough and she seems to resent me doing so so she starts demanding or she spills something. I can feel steam coming out my ears, honestly. And there goes my dinner, ruined, as by that stage I cant get a bite down without it hurting.

I get hungrier than I used to actually - but only really at mealtime. I have way less general appetite where I think I just want to eat something but I'm not actually physically hungry. But I wake up in the morning starving for breakfast and I generally get very hungry at dinner time as well. I like that. It's much easier to eat appropriately and eat the right amount when you're working with actual hunger than it is if you're just in a vague eating mood. I think its a healthy sign my body is functioning properly.

I'd really like to do Pilates, after three babies I think there's no doubt my core could use some strengthening, although overall I"m not in bad shape strengthwise. But I'm hesitant to use a video, I actually find them too easy, but my DH has had individual Pilates instruction and its way different, those video's are often dumbed down versions, the real thing with the reformers and other pilates equipment is very different and extremely effective. But it was costing him $45 each session (with a rebate from our health insurance) and we could justify it because of his back (which it really helped). And he was doing it near work, its too hard with a 3 year old in tow, sadly.

Me too. I cannot bear the thought of a life thinking so deeply about everything I eat. If I've had a fair bit to eat that day, I dont eat the cheesecake, if I want the cheesecake I figure I'll do a couple of extra long runs and cut down on food intake the next day. Still works, only because its guesswork, my weight comes off in fits and starts, a few good days and it drops, but it stays the same for long periods. I think I"ll have to count calories at some point to get the last bit off but I think its quite dysfunctional behaviour in a way too. YOu have to learn to listen to your body and what it wants if you want to have any hope of maintaining weight loss - you cant artificially impose limits on your body forever by way of a little book.

You're just full by the sounds of it and your pouch is staying that way for a nice long time. If anything, perhaps you need to learn to stop just before that feeling hits? But you'll get used to the new sensations and learn the way your body and the band work together quite quickly.

Fantastic news, huge congratulations. And you know, its those last pounds that make the biggest difference, so you'll really get the reward for this last little bit of effort.

I've never PB'd but I've come close once or twice and believe me, its nowhere near as bad as a horrible nauseated gastro vomit, THAT's what I'm terrified of. Everytime one of my kids gets sick (it happens often with three) I spend days virtually having panic attacks over it, its the only thing I'm completely irrational and silly over. I was bad before banding but now I'm a hundred times worse. As to the coping without food - well that was me posting that exact question twelve months ago now. Its never ever even bothered me, honestly. I am so so excited by the changes to my life, so much happier and I'm just not that person anymore. I dont need it, I dont do it - except in times of severe boredom, lol - and as to that sometimes I give in, sometimes I dont, with boredom its easy to find other things to do, but sometimes I just want to be the old me for half an hour and I believe that's fine to do - certainly hasnt stopped me losing weight. I do sit down to eat though sometimes and just wish I could hoe in like a normal person. It gets vaguely tiresome sometimes picking through a meal slowly and carefully. I can only eat the old way with certain foods, none of which are particularly good ones.

This may sound corny but I am so proud of myself and how I have done with the band. I made the changes, I do the exercise, I feel as if it is me doing the work and I have a helper. The amount of satisfaction I feel to have finally beaten my problem is the biggest high I can imagine. I just cannot think that I would feel the same way after a bypass, after I'd done something so drastic to my body. I believe I'd be sad and depressed that I let myself sink to such a terrible low that I had to resort to that. Please dont anyone be offended by that. My logical rational mind knows that no weight loss surgery is an easy way out and I have nothing but respect for people who do choose the bypass.

It wasnt an option for me to do anything else since its pretty much lap band or nothing in Australia, most bariatric surgeons would very rarely do a bypass, as lapband is considered the healthiest option. You're young and healthy, I cant see why you'd want to do something so drastic when its not imperative that you lose a lot of weight very fast. I like that my lifestyle post banding is normal, with smaller amounts of ALL foods, no major changes, it makes it liveable and permanent for me.

Oh wow, I havent seen you round here lately, so had no idea you'd had any problems. Sounds like you've got it sorted out quickly and yay, no PB's still. If it were me, I'd plan one or two treats but that's it. In fact I'd probably be on the phone ordering Lite N Easy (a home delivered diet program) to ensure I stayed on track. We've all done stuff like that for a few weeks at a time, you can do it! Wine only counts if you can remember drinking it!

I've just been to the gym - a change is as good as a holiday. Having a treadmill at home has made ALL the difference to exercising regularly but its nice to have a change of environment. I did a 4km run on their treadmill chatting to the girl next to me, the time flew. Then I went into the new circuit room - one of those ones with the flashing light and the hydraulic equipment and did a solid 30 minutes in there. It was great, I think I'm going to go back to being a regular at the gym - I wont cancel my membership afterall. I love circuit, I find lifting weights pretty boring and mundane, and it makes it fun. I guess you're stuck with a high repetitions low weight routine though.