Jachut

Re the guilt and the wasting food thing - You are not a garbage bin!! It is just as wasted if you shove it in your mouth when you dont want or need it as it is if you throw it in the bin. You cant put it in an envelope and feed the starving children in Africa either. Its wasted whatever way you look at it.

Nah, it wasnt hard here becuase I dont know anyone in the flesh and am never likely to, being right across the other side of the world as most of you (apart from the one or two Melbourne girls that is). Plus this was the final time in my life I"m ever ever going to have to be ashamed of my weight. If you notice though, I nearly always say "but I'm very tall" in any thread to do with weight. I go to great pains to clarify that I wasnt morbidly obese or "that big". Which is stupid, I was fat fat fat just like everyone else here. I belong to a very close knit forum of mums, we all got together via a public site during early stages of pregnancy and its Australia wide and has spilled over into very dear real life friendships too. We have a little weightloss side bar on our MSN site and I've visited several times over the years and gone on another blinking diet, I always always always felt compelled to understate my weight by a couple of kilograms. This time I was honest and that was quite difficult. In the scheme of things I am much taller than normal and most normal weight women tend to weigh in the 50 to 70 kilogram weigh range, and here was my weight at well over 100! Even at 80 I'd be normal sized but most people would still think I weighed a huge amount.

Its hard to find consensus here and you can find scientific backup for both ways but I really believe that to push yourself, to add in some higher exercise so that eventually you can jog for 45 minutes is the way to go. That way, in six months time, you would have twice the calorie and fat burn in your 45 minute session that you have now. Jogging for me is no longer a "high intensity" activity in that sense, in that I can literally run for an hour and burn close to 1000 calories, without my heart rate moving out of my fat burning range. If you just continue to walk, you will get fitter for a while, but you wont progress beyond that and eventually you wont have your heart rate high enough to benefit from it much. No matter how much fitter I have gotten, my top walking pace hasnt changed (believe me, I'll always be an endurance athlete, not a speed one) - I can run at a faster and faster pace but I still cannot walk faster than about 6 km an hour without needing to break into a jog, it seems to just be a physical limitation of my stride. And 6km an hour is not a fast enough pace for me (unless I'm doing an incline of like 10 on the treadmill) to even break a sweat. Does that make sense? In a nutshell, if over time and as you feel able you start to add jogging spurts in your walk and build up to a level where you can comfortably jog for long periods, you will get far more benefit from your exercise session than just walking. But in the short term, you're better to walk for a longer period than just do a 10 minute jog. Your walking to you is probably just as intense as jogging is for me at this stage, but it will change over time.

Nooooo, here I was all smug about my flat tummy, and I'm getting a freaking turkey neck :omg: Its not even as if I had four chins! But its definitely there, a little pouchy bit under my chin that I can pinch and it stays pinched for a minute or two. It even wobbles :phanvan Cross fingers it firms up! Its only a little bit and nobody would probably even notice it but I'm really finding that losing weight is doing great things for my body but not for my face. From looking a very young 38, I'm now definitely looking 38, lets hope I dont end up looking older than I am. Boo hoo.

Ok, well I already do my pelvic floor at the traffic lights, roflmao!!! I guess I"m going to be a busy girl, just dont stare if you pull up next to me, tee hee. Actually I think I pull that face anyway when I do my pelvic floor muscles!

You've lost a ton of Water and your body is now stabilising. The fat loss is probably still continuing. If you do the right things over the long term you will lose plenty of fat, but you cant get to obsessed with day to day fluctuations. Really, we all want to lose fast and steadily but if you look at yourself in six months time and you're well down, then you're going great!

Its not the best weight loss anyway, the quick weight you drop on a liquid diet comprises of an awful lot of water and lean body tissue and less fat than is desirable over the long term. You just do not lose pounds and pounds of fat in the space of a week or two. There's NO reason to put yourself through it if you dont have to. You'd be doing your metabolism a favour to just diet moderately.

Dody, I'm relatively young and dont have arthritis and wasnt even very much overweight in the scheme of things, but I cant tell you how much better I feel in terms of my feet and legs, and just not having niggling back pains etc. It WILL make a world of difference to you. I used to get up in the morning and barely be able to walk and once I sat down at night after dinner I could only hobble if I got up, it was awful. That's entirely disappeared.

And where you carry your weight too. Some people who are an apple shape can have pretty big tummies without being all that much overweight. I sit on mine, lol. My stomach has shrunk back to flat. Its flabby and there will be a bit of wrinkly skin due to 3 pregnancies with big babies, but I'm nearly 40 and not looking to wear a bikini again, but it wont be so bad that I couldnt if I didnt want to. Of course I have lap band scars now! There's nothing wrong with looking 53! I look at it like I would fix any major problem, if I had an apron for example, I would like to have a breast lift but probably would not spend that money on myself when it could pay for a year of my kids' education. I will probably never do anything to my face because no matter what, one day I will be 73 and I will look 73. Its entirely possible to look beautiful at 73 in an age appropriate way. My worse nightmare would be to end up looking like Joan Collins or Melanie Griffiths. And for me, the huge scar from a tummy tuck or an arm lift would be way worse than whatever small amount of flab I may have there.

I was exactly the same as you - I didnt have to do a pre-op diet and I thought I'd do the Optifast anyway for a good kick start. I felt crap for 3 days, I expected that, everyone said it would happen, got through it to day 4 and I passed out in the morning. Had some orange juice and was OK and then passed out again that afternoon. Rang my doc, he said "i said you didnt have to do it, eat something for crying out loud". So on his advice, I came off it, he said its only done when the alternative is worse than the actual diet, failed surgery due to a big liver, which I didnt have in the first place. Its not exactly a healthful or gentle diet in any other circumstances. Then after surgery on the liquid diet I was just doing juice, V8, Optifast, some milk and again after a few days I started fainting. So again on the advice of my doc I started liquidising up some more hearty Soups, things with meat and Pasta in them and I was right from that point on. I made them more liquid at first and then gradually thickened them up. But you more than likely will not be hungry after surgery.

Left side, under the ribcage. I've only hurt it once - that was last night. I was trying to show the kids things I could do when I was young - remember that move where you lie on your stomach, push up on your arms, bend your head back and your feet up and touch them to the back of your head? I think its acutally a yoga move. Anyway OUCH! I could also do the splits and jump to standing from kneeling without using my hands. Oh to be 8 again!

I went on one kiddy ride at Movieworld when we were on the Gold Coast that I really shouldnt have been on, I dont know whether it was actually "locked" properly becuase it was just about cutting me in half. What gets me was I was about a size 20 then (a US 18) so not ridiculously huge, any number of tall well built men would have been bigger around the middle than me. So the rides were not built to accommodate adults but you had to of course take your children on them.

Good luck to both of you. I really wish my DH would consider it. He's not hugely obese, has a BMI of about 33 which is fine in Australia, he'd be approved easily, especially since he has high blood pressure. He's about 115 kg at the moment, was 125. Over a year he got down to 110 but its going back on again. Poor thing, he spends hours in the car and sitting at a desk, and is really not that big an eater for a big 6ft 3 male. He's too afraid though. He says if anyone is going to PB all the time, have slippage, erosion and not be able to eat a million foods it will be him. He's always been the bilious one in the family, gets every stomach bug going around, and his mother has an ulcer and terrible reflux/heartburn issues which I suspect he will develop too. Not even seeing me and the success I've had will entice him, I dont want to push it but am gently encouraging. I think he also fears its not a "masculine" thing to do - I mean how can you go to the football and not be able to have a meat pie and a few beers with your mates, kinda thng. I keep telling him he WILL be able to do that on occasion but he doesnt believe me. I want him to nip his problem in the bud now. He has a high pressure corporate job and I dont want the father of my children to become a heart attack waiting to happen. As he's about to turn 40, this is playing on my mind a lot. So good for your hubby!

I read somewhere about models being banded just simply to stay thin. Who knows if its true? I had no idea who Heart was - I was only a kid in the 70's and they werent big in Australia anyway - I kept googling lap band and getting annoyed that this Anne Wilson nobody kept coming up, lol.

Second thoughts are healthy and normal, so are nerves on the day of surgery. I've only ever had elective surgery before, but for some reason this felt much different, much less medical surgery and more about vanity, which really it was for me. So I really had very bad nerves on the day, I've also not had surgery with 3 kids waiting at home for me too. But I cant tell you how glad I am I did this and how much it has changed my life. Its hard here, when you hear the problems people have etc, but I for one have never had pain, have never PB'd, can eat any food and am still losing weight. I hit the 80's yesterday (I work in kilograms) and now weigh less than I did than at the height of my first pregnancy 11 years ago - and I wasnt even overweight then. Its nothing short of miraculous. I felt very scared about giving up comfort food - but to be honest, I have never enjoyed my food like I do now that it has no sinister power over me. I am able to enjoy good food without being scared that I will lose control and eat too much.

That's just the BEST feeling isnt it?

Until my ankle recovered, I found the elliptical great, the stationary bike too. I guess it depends where your pain is. Swimming laps is helpful and there are great Water based classes too. The rebounders that Jack's talking about are still around and easily obtainable - try googling Urban Rebounding.

I always worried about my head looking too small in my teens. I was about 5kg less than I am now, but I thought I was enormous of course, and I had short hair. I do have a relatively small head too. My son has the Hutchinson head, my god is ENORMOUS. My MIL has it too - my husband to a lesser degree. I look at Fraser next to his friends and his head is quite literally 1/3 as big again. You dont notice it much unless you compare, but head sizes really can vary.

Hmmm, perhaps the goal while losing lots of fat should be to "maintain" muscle - try to avoid losing as much of it as possible. No doubt about it, when you lose a lot of weight, there'll be some muscle tissue loss in there as well. Its why I've resisted this Soup diet that everyone's having so much fun on and why I've settled for my moderately slow weight loss. Cardio will maintain some muscle to a degree. The change in my legs and backside is testimony to that - the running (and I never run on an incline of less than 3) has really toned them up majorly - I dont believe that cardio just wastes your muscle away - well not at the level of an average casual jogger - marathon runners are a different story. When your body is repairing itself from cardio it is in fact repairing a lot of minor muscle damange, making them bigger and stronger, exactly the same way it does after weight training. I think I might just start with some body resistance stuff - abdominals, pushups, tricep dips, squats and lunges and my running for now. I just dont have the time or mental energy to switch focus to serious weight training - but for the first time in my life its my upper body that looks like it needs more work than my lower.

It happens to anyone who becomes too thin - as in underweight.

It gives me brain meltdown too - so much so that I'm paralysed, I cant even start. I dont have a lot of time for weight training, I now cant justify a gym membership because I"m paying off my mega expensive treadmill and you just find so much conflicting information that it's too hard to even start. High weight, low reps? Light weights, high reps? Upper body one day, lower on another? What about abdominal work? Are we really wasting our time like so much of the stuff on the internet says - and is the secret really contained in that e-book? AAARGH. It does seem like a very good idea to not worry about it until I'm nearly at goal weight. Just focus on running, maybe just some push ups, tricep dips and crunches a few times a week. See where I'm at when I dont have a lot more fat to lose.

She only looked muscular for the Tombraider movies didnt she? And that was all digitally enhanced too. She's just a walking rake usually. I saw The Break Up on the weekend. Man Jennifer Aniston is thin! But she's got a great body, she doesnt look anorexic the way Angelina does.

Well firstly, the level you're working out at is not strictly anaerobic or else you wouldnt be able to keep going for more than a few minutes. Dont fret, you'll be burning fat - becuase you're still working at an aerobic level just not at your body's greatest efficiency. The whole long slow intensity thing is kind of inaccurate. Its true that at a lower intensity you burn a greater proportion of your fuel from fat - but work a bit harder and you burn MORE calories and MORE fat in the same time, even if the proportion of fat in your body's fuel changes. Its not as big a difference as people tend to believe. Also, if you start out working at a level of say 140 and always work at that level, you're not going to get significantly fitter. It will become easier as your body gets used to it, but having short bursts of much harder, even anaerobic, activity will push your fitness to that next level. Once upon a time, I could walk at a speed of 6.4 kms/hr and get my heart rate up to 140, now I can run for the entire time (45 minutes to an hour) at 8.2 kms an hour. I got to this level by doing some sessions per week where I pushed my heart rate up in intervals - will incline or speed on the treadmill or on the elliptical. Now when I do my 45 minute workout, my pulse does not go above about 150, so I'm well within my fatburning zone only I burn much more calories and fat than what I used to. Its just a big myth that you'll get the best results by taking it relatively easy. Harder exercise is also proven to have a far greater afterburn - your metabolism is revved for hours afterwards in a way that it is not from lower intensity exercise. Of course everyone has to start somewhere, and you're better going for longer at a lower intensity than collapsing after 10 minutes. YOu want to make at least 30 minutes, 40 or more preferably. Keep it up, you're doing a great job. You should include a longer slower session in your week though, a recovery walk or run or whatever.

Heather, what you need to do is introduce spurts of jogging now. There's so many elements to fitness, but the main thing is if you do the same thing all the time, you wont continue to improve. If you introduce intervals of jogging now - say 1 minute for starters - your fitness will increase to the next level. Gradually add to those intervals, and make sure you dont slack right off in the recovery walking stages, and soon enough, you'll be able to string them together and jog the whole way. www.coolrunning.com has a great Couch to 5K program to start people off with running.

I strongly believe too that if you hang onto "rules" and count count count or measure etc you are not getting to know your body and truly learning to recognise what it needs when. Some days you are hungrier than others and should eat more. There's also days in your monthly cycle where you have cravings, there are actually phsyiological/hormonal reasons for this and it doesnt not hurt to give in in moderation. Your body is a dynamic, changing thing and I think you need to learn to work with it, not beat it into submission. The goal is to get to the stage where you eat what you feel like when you feel like it - and that will basically add up to a nutritionally and calorie appropriate diet for your body. Of course, many of us are so out of touch that it will take more than a simple decision to change to get there.