Jachut

If only i could get back there! I only get this sporadically, and can think of only a few months within my six banded years where this was the norm - my band is almost full!

there's some great products out there isnt there? I feel so guilty whenever I eat anything that comes in a box, I'm a cook from scratch kinda person. But really, read the nutrition label on those wraps - what's so bad about that? Unfortunately, cooking for five every night, I dont really get to use some of those great convenience products - way way too expensive to use in that kind of volume. I am a convert though to powdered peanut butter!! WOW! The very thought horrified me when I first heard of it but curiosity got the better of me and how bloody fantastic it is to get to have chocolate Peanut Butter on rice cakes (my very favourite breakfast) without the horrible calories of real peanut butter and real nutella! I had to buy it off ebay and import it :-( But I must have more!

What a contentious topic! I think there's a large percentage of people that know the band will be work but secretly hope it will be magic. I know I sure did. I mean WHY would you have a surgery that you didnt think was goign to make a hard job easier? And lets face it, although it doesnt make it so much easier that it feels like magic, it DOES make it a lot easier - or we all wouldnt have lost weight. NONE of us could do this alone before, and with the band we can therefore it does do something - it does cut down on the willpower required, it does reduce hunger (even if you still get hungry) and it does reduce the portions you can eat. What it does not do - cut out head hunger, chocolate cravings, the habit of a nightly glass of wine. That's where willpower comes in - and even then, with the smaller food intake, I have not had to give up those things entirely. If someone is doing their best to stick to the plan, but falling off the wagon here and there, and not losing as much as they thought, or just maintaining - that's quite normal pre fill. If someone is stuffing themselves stupid and eating all day and every day and crappy food at that, then they are really not exhibiting any self control or willpower at all and probably deserve to be told they have a bad attide. Ditto exercise. No reason not to be doing it, other than laziness or in some cases, inability/disability. The band wont cure that sort of "bad attitude". It only cures the doing your best but not perfect kinda person, who tends to get better with fills. But we pretty much are all fat people who sat on our butts and stuffed our faces, a little humility goes a long way. Post op is incredibly difficult for some people.

I went 12 weeks from surgery for my first fill and during that time had the most superb restriction. I lost about 1/3 of my excess weight in that 12 weeks, it literally poured off me. Once that swelling wore off, I have never, ever been able to replicate that restriction - I have never been able to get to the point where I have no hunger at all like that first couple of months, yet could still eat anything, just a tiny portion. Now, to get to that level of "unhungry" I'd be so tight I couldnt eat anything. I get it for a day or two after a fill and that's it.

Amen to that - if you rely totally on a tight band to keep you on the straight and narrow you are absolutely up a creek called merde, sans paddle if you ever have to unfill for any length of time! You really need to have learned what and how to eat if you're going to manage and you MUST keep up the exercise. I'm also very very grateful that my need to unfill came five years into my banded journey - I had not only learned new habits but my body was well and truly used to being thin - it appears to have a new "set point" if you like.

I've had great success with the lapband. I do attend a practice in melbourne that is run by Prof. Paul O'Brien who is one of the band's pioneers. Their aftercare plan and their dietary guidelines are simple. Eat 3 meals a day (small Snacks if you really are hungry), come in regularly for checkups, get fills on consultation with your doctor - and the schedule and amount differs for everyone - settle in for slow but steady loss and never accept vomiting, reflux, night coughing as normal. Eat a normal diet - from all food groups, dont eat sliders, no need to cut carbs, obsess over Protein or avoid the occasional treat. Exercise regularly. Even thought that sounds simple, of course there are people who have the troubles you're experiencing. The band doesnt suit everyone and getting just the right restriction can be tricky - many people go back and forth from too tight to too loose and cant find just the right amount, I've even come close to having that sort of trouble myself since having my band unfilled totally for a big surgery, cant get the restriction I had, but I know I"m getting close to tight. So....... I know I have to work with what I have. The band takes a lot of work, if you let it it will help you eat the right things in the right portions but you are ALWAYS going to have to have self control to not overeat bad foods, which all too often go down very easily. If you expect it to literally stop you eating too much or eating the wrong things you are going to be very disappointed. It also doesnt result in very fast weight loss, its more slow and steady and it does require exercise as well as diet. It sounds to me like you'd be better off workign with the lesser restriction to the best of your ability and stop looking for the band to give you complete control. And if you cant do that, as many cant, this is a complex disease that has emotional and physical elements to it, then perhaps you might be able to look into a differnet surgery that might suit you and your issues better. The band does tend to work very well for lower BMI patients with eating habits not too out of control (which is what I was) and who are able to put in reasonably intense and regular exercise. This is not the situation many morbidly obese people find themselves in and the band is not always the right choice.

For me, I dont go to the gym regularly - but how long you work out depends on intensity. If you're walking on a treadmill and doing a machine weights program, you're going to need an hour and a half to two hours maybe three or four times a week. If you do interval training and heavy free weights, 45 mintues all up would be plenty. I'm a runner, for me the magic number was always an hour (at first about 7kms, now its about 10) and it always seemed that five times a week was vastly more effective than four - usually I try for six. It takes me about that to be able to eat anything I want and maintain. when I go to the gym I usually do a spin class which is an hour long.

That's exactly what I did and its a big lesson about sliders! I ate tons more, but it was all that stuff - salad, fruit - that I couldnt eat with good restriction. For the first few months I actually lost weight.

Yes, mine was unfilled for nine months while I had treatment for cancer. I pretended I was still banded and I kept running right through chemo, I managed not to gain weight. Its taken me five months to get restriction again, its been hard and frustrating, but it is possible not to pile,on weight.

So true. I got sooooo skinny during chemo, but I was elated that the scale read 60kg (which is underweight for me by the way). I've regained 5kg. I'm 65 (somewhere between 140 - 145lb) at 5ft 10, all the clothes I was wearing when i was so skinny still fit (I've made huge efforts to regain lean muscle, not fat) and I'm still thin, I know that objectively. But i feel like a fat cow because my weight has gone up by 5kg. I had cancer, for crying out loud, I was deathly ill and having horrible treatment. But I feel like a failure, yep because my weight has gone up by 5kg. Its now 2kg above the bottom of my healthy weight range. But I'm beating myself up for not being underweight still. All because of a stupid number.

I'm a pear and despite my BMI being 19 and all my chest bones showing, I still have a fair amount of padding on the backside and thighs. People tell me all the time I'm too thin but as soon as I get enough weight on me to hide the ribs in my chest, I have a muffin top and saddlebags. I have to stay skeletal on top for my lower half to be anywhere near acceptable to me.

I'd be eating the furniture on those spartan rations and going insane due to lack of taste and variety, but that's just me. If you can stick to a diet like that, you'll be a stick insect in next to no time. Its true that you should really only eat for about 20 minutes - you'll find that if you take, say an hour to eat a meal, you can put away a lot. If you graze all day you can also eat a lot. If you sit, concentrate and eat in a 20 minute session, you'll restrict calories. I wouldnt worry so much about not losing as having no energy, losing my hair, looking like a deflated balloon on a diet as extreme as that. But we all have different points of view on that score so that's just mine. No fruit, no wholegrains, no good fats like avocado or nuts, only one vegie, I just dont think that's healthy. Protein is only a part of a balanced diet, not the only important thing. Its also very important for bandsters, who are so restricted in what they can eat, to eat different things every day to avoid nutritional deficiencies.

I agree - you might stop losing for a while if you eat too little, and you might lose if you suddenly eat. Lord knows why but enough people here have tried it and its worked for them. But the plateau caused by eating too little must pass or people would never starve to death. The theory around high Protein diets and why they work is more to do with your body's insulin. The insulin surge caused by a high carb food causes your body to store fat more readily. Protein doesnt cause that surge and thus depresses the fat storing mechanism of the body - in very simplistic terms. But that doesnt really take into account that if you eat a slice of bread with an egg, you've slowed down the glycaemic load of the meal anyway and wont get the huge surge. This is why many people believe in a low GI diet rather than a low carb one. I know for sure its darn hard to stay at a reasonable weight on a diet of Cookies and muffins and the more you eat of them, the worse you get, you just want more and more.

It is true that what is a huge deal to you - being obese, or losing 30lb - often isnt even noticed for others. To be honest, I technically had 80lb to lose and I ended up losing about 120, at 30lb down, I was a bit smaller, yeah, but still very overweight with fat bits and rolls and such and it wasnt terribly obvious. I think people might have thought I looked a bit different around the face, like maybe I'd changed my hair or something. But at 30lb I'd barely gone down one size! People do hesitate too. I've lost count of the number of people who've said this year how great I look and the weight I lost has been due to cancer, chemo and having an ileostomy. Its rather uncomfortable. A lot of people wont speak up just in case. Dont be disheartened, you have to get through that early, less noticeable weight loss to get to the really good stuff where people comment if you lose 4lb!

Yeah, it makes me very sluggish and my running and exercise takes a sharp nosedive, i cant function without a small amount of bread/cereals in my diet. But it works if you stick to it. So does ordinary calorie cutting. I too find it hard to understand how you can eat 1000 a day and not lose, and my natural inclination is to think "starvation mode" is a crock. But - you have to remember, this is a large community of people who are or have been overweight. Odds are there's more than a few here whose bodies are just not workign the way they should. I know for a fact that at my height and weight and level of exercise, the charts say I shoudl be eating 1000 calories more a day than I do - yet I absolutely cant. Eating 2800 calories a day (and realistically and honestly, it wouldnt have been much more) is how I got obese. I maintain on 1800 - I ought to be losign 1kg a week on that.

Those sore muscles are retaining water. It'll go away soon and the exercise will help your weight loss - but you're unlikely to ever see a huge drop in weight simply because of exercise, its consistency and doing it with good food intake that just keeps weight dropping slowly and steadily over a long period of time.

Love your optimism Shirley, you are always so upbeat and that is why you've had such great success, despite a hiccup or two along the way. Onederland is just around the corner!

I still push myself and aim for improvement and achievement six years down the track. Nowadays a day off for me might mean a six mile walk with mybhusband or a spin class! If its easy its not really doing much - but you should take it easy once or twice a week.

Got back into my true religion jeans thiscweekend, theyd gotten a bit too snug. I might even be brave enoughbto wash them soon!

Depends entirely on your motives and what you want from your exercise. I like the gym for the variety of classes - I'm primarily a runner and I love it, but I like to go to a spin class or Body Pump Class. Personally, I think the gym is a pretty inefficent and ineffective environment for inexperienced exercisers. I dont think walking on the treadmill for cardio and then working out on machines is the best use of your time. If you're unfit and just getting back into exercise, then you'll get results of course, but as you get fitter, you're much better off doing interval cardio and real functional fitness activities like you'll find at a good bootcamp or with a trainer. Kettlebells, sandbags, heavy free weights - you can do all that in a gym of course but you'll have to seek out the trainer or develop the knowledge to do it yourself - my experience of big chain gyms here as well as small ones is that they tend to have the cookie cutter approach. Body Pump, for example - a great fun activity, will build muscle endurance. But it wont build you big muscles or greatly increase your lean body mass. However, does that really matter? I personally enjoy it, dont want big muscles and dont really like strength training. But I've never had the results from a gym workout that I got from Boot Camp! That was awesome, an adrenaline rush, skyrocketed my fitness, and was great fun as well. I'd always pick that over a boring old gym workout. Be honest with your time commitments too - I've got a gym membership but I've gone one because I can afford to run one that I dont use a lot. I use it to do a spin class on a day I want to exercise but dont want to run - I might go once or twice a week. I am NEVER going to have the time to make five scheduled classes a week and I am NEVER going to have the time spending two hours doing cardio and a weights machine program. I run at 5pm one day, 10.30 pm the next, whenever I can fit it in and that suits me. Are you self motivated? I am, so I dont need the gym to guilt me into doing the work because I've spent the money. I know I will get on my treadmill at home, or go out for a run. But if you're not like that, a gym can be a good motivator. So there's lots of factors to consider.

Its such an unfair situation that it is so difficult for some people. I can report from the "people who dont change what they eat, just eat less" camp. That's me. I lost pretty easily with the band, right from the word go. I kept losing way past the point where people plateau. I eat carbs. But I do eat healthy overall - I dont stuff my face with white carbs, sugar, crappy foods. But I do eat anything and everything. I use the band to let me live a very normal life - I can join in that morning tea at work because I dont over do it. But is that as effortless as it sounds? Not really. I exercise REALLY hard and a real LOT. I run miles and miles and miles every week. Not just slow steady jogging, I do interval stuff. I might burn 900 calories in a session. I chuck a 20kg sandbag about raising my heart rate to where I almost see stars, not push a weights machine in the gym around. If I go to the gym and just do a spin class, I feel guilty that I still need to run a bit that day. I really work hard. That allows me to "eat whatever I want" in small portions. Its the other half of the equation. So, the way I see it, its a trade off. You can low carb, change what you eat totally work really hard at that side of the equation and do zumba and a gym program for the other. I just choose to balance my equation by burning insane amounts of energy. Its how I handle my "eating issues". I have them like anyone else. But I manage them by allowing for them (yes, I know I will most likely boredom eat at 4pm at least four days of the week) and by burning more than I eat. I know I can never totally give up wine or chocolate! I dont have a turkey neck and no muscle either. That comes from fast weight loss and excessive calorie cutting, not from eating or not eating any particular foods. Many low carbers look like deflated balloons at the end of their weight loss too. You have to find your formula. Its different for everyone. You know you cant eat a gallon of icecream at a sitting very often. But you dont need to be perfect either. You dont need to hate yourself for not being able to eat perfectly and never slip. You can slip up, and quite often, its getting back on the wagon that matters. Seek out some help if you feel you need it, and if your best attempts on the eating half of the equation arent quite getting you where you want to be, adjust the exercise side. But every good day is a triumph and every attempt at a good day is better than how you used to be. There isnt a deadline to finish this journey either. Day by day, week by week you get there. Sometimes the good days outweigh the bad and those periods are satisfying, sometimes you really have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But you can do it if you're realistic about it - accept that the band changes very little about you, you have to do it. But its a process, not an instant phenomenon. If you can look back in a year and see how you've changed, then its a success.

Very true - I didnt have to do a pre op diet - BMI was 35, liver was fine, etc, but I thought it would be a good kick start. I couldnt hack it - I fainted everytime I stood up by day 3. I guess I could have perserved if I'd really "had" to to do it, but sheesh, that was hard core. My doc told me not to be an idiot and to eat something, lol. But sudden lack of food can make you feel pretty crook.

It wont work, whatever his motives. Thinking you can simply gain temporarily to have the "fat experience" is insulting. He wont know what its like to live your life on the outer, to struggle for self esteem, self respect, that feelign that you wont EVER lose the weight. All he'll find out is how darn hard it is to move with the extra weight. Even then, he's been superbly fit. He wont lose that in six months and his body wont lose the memory of its set point weight and fitness wise. The weight will come off easier for him that it will for someone who's been 400lb for 20 years. Good on him, I think personally his heart is in the right place, but he's just showing how maligned and misunderstood obesity is in our society.

17lb in four weeks is actually excellent weight loss. I think people think weight loss surgery and imagine weight literally falling off, but remember, this is a surgery which really only has a pretty minor effect on your digestive system at first - maybe mild restriction, certainly a week or two of being unable to eat normally until the swelling goes down. Its not like bypass where you're instantly and forever altered. In the fact of that, what you've been doing is pretty much dieting without much assistance and as such, 17lb is fantastic! Complain all you like though, this is a frustrating process at times. I dont think there's many of us who can truthfully say we didnt secretly think the band would be just a little bit magic. Its a bummer to come back down to reality and realise it isnt. But it will get easier with restriction. the other thing is that I think many of us have bodies that are terribly efficient at processing what we eat and storing it away and are terribly good at not letting go of it. D'oh! that's why we're fat. So many of us truly eat no more than what a lot of people out there eat and they dont get fat from it, yet we do. I know personally that I lost weight well and successfully, but it took me a lapband to do it of course - I'm 5ft 10, 140lb and run 8 to 10kms most days. All the charts put my caloirie needs in the 2500+ category - guess what? I maintain on about 1800 and begin to gain on any more than that. It just doesnt add up - but it gives credence to my belief that whilst I ate badly it was no worse than most people and they never got as fat as I did. Likewise, we all know many people cut out alchohol, switch to skim milk and walk half an hour a day and voila! That pesky 20lb bothering them is gone. If only hey?

Its on DVD unfortunately Elcee - and I'm no lawyer but I'd say copying someone's DVD and putting it on youtube is not that smart an idea, lol. It does make sense though, doesnt it? Hey Corrigan, I definitely dont do everything my doctor says, lol. I reckon of Protein shakes work for you and you like them, then that's all that counts. I'm a big believer in considering and respecting everything your doc tells you and then finetuning it for yourself. Because we all know there's a zillion people here who drink Protein Shakes and eat a low carb diet (both things my doc and many other Australia docs dont believe are strictly necessary) who are hugely successful! I speak up more to ease the guilt of those of us who like our bread, lol.