Jachut

I was just trying on formal dresses and evening gowns, sigh. It is very true that loads of cardio just makes you a smaller version of your flabby self. I can get into a size 16 (US 14) now, but every lump and bump I had is still there, just smaller. I really really MUST get into some serious weight training!

I would think that if you were bulimic or a true binge eater, you could quite literally kill yourself with a band. Binge eating really has little to do with how hungry you are, so the fact that you dont get as hungry with a band isnt going to have much effect. And binge eaters and bulimics eat way past when their body tells them its full - you can still do that with a band too, but you will make yourself sick. Its not as if you cant physically force more food in there after a certain point. But more worrying than that is consistently overloading your new stomach could cause your band to slip and/or erode and then you can be very sick.

The biggest thing that works for me is mental attitude. I think it helps that attitudes are a bit different in Australia - we're not given all those rules about eating 1/2 to 1 cup, so many grams of Protein, etc, there's not the fashion for protein first, any of that. Well there wasnt with my surgeon anyway. I got banded, i saw a dietician to make sure I knew what a healthy diet was and pretty much left to it. So for me - I'm never ever going on another diet. That simple revelation has meant that I no longer feel I have to eat everything! No food is out, I can eat anything I want to within moderation, as long as most of the time what I eat is healthy. If I"m down the shops and I want the free cinnamon donut with my coffee (NOT humungously fattening Krispy Kremes type donuts!) I just have it and I dont think about it again. I dont count calories, I dont count anything. Overall I eat way less and that's really ALL it comes down to in the end. I also exercise - I run regularly, becuase I LOVE it. Again, I picked something I wanted to do, and am not forcing myself to do this that or the other because there's some magic formula for weightloss. So it takes no willpower to keep going becuase its basically something I do for fun. I do use all the little tactics though - I dont stock the house full of fattening things becuase if they're there I will eat them.

I had 2 free passes for one that opened locally to me. My experience is that its a great, supportive environment for women just getting their fitness back, its time efficient and non confronting and a good place for older women to exercise too. For me though, I was already quite fit, its way too slow paced and easy for me. I prefer the "real gym" and much more high energy stuff. I think its terrific, just not my speed.

well I dont diet, but I have changed my diet to a degree. I eat way less junk than I did and make more healthy choices. I agree, if you dont change your diet significantly, you may lose that first bit of weight easily enough, but you wont get all the way there. I believe this is a major reason for the statistics that say bandsters on average lose 1/2 to 2/3 of excess weight. I think a large degree of people probably continue on with poor food choices but smaller quantities. I worry a lot about eating enough to be healthy - 2 fruit, five veg a day, that sort of thing. So when I waste a food choice on something that doesnt do much for me nutritionally, I'm aware that I'm missing an opportunity to eat something healthy. Therefore I try to make as many of my choices as possible count towards meeting my nutritional needs for the day. Its like feeding a small child - you cant waste your appetite on rubbish. That naturally means less fat, less calories and less highly processed carbs. I havent found anything else to be necessary, really, but if I did, I'd do WW. I'm dont believe in low carb/high Protein diets.

Way to go Melanie!

You will always be more restricted on harder foods - and tuna to me is one of the hardest, its very "sticky". I eat loads of soup becuase its a great way to get in lots of vegetables, home made soups like minestrone fill me up pretty well, OK I eat a normal sized bowlful, but heck, its not a million calories, its not high fat, so I eat however much it takes to make me feel satisfied. When I eat harder foods I eat a bit less. Its that simple. You eat what you feel like eating and you eat till you're no longer hungry, regardless of how much that is. If its routinely a lot then its time for another fill. Works for me, anyway, I'm losing albeit slowly. But early on I lose very fast.

Fluoroscope/xray isnt routinely used in Australia anyway - and we dont have fill centres, they're generally done by the surgeon or an associated doctor. So you just have to inch your way slowly towards perfect restriction, it takes a fair while. Six months on I'm perhaps just getting there.

Its kind of twilight zone spooky but I was banded at about the same time, have lost about the same weight and was filled to the same level and I too just stopped losing and lost restriction. I've never had tight restriction but I think its just a function of having lost a lot of internal fat and its time for more. I had .2 cc yesterday and I can feel it today, whether it hangs around or not is still to be seen. I had toast for Breakfast and I should have stopped halfway through the second piece, finishing it off had me blocked and sliming for about 10 minutes. I really think I overate, not that I didnt chew becuase I deliberately ate toast to test whether I could still eat bread and I ate slowly and very carefully. I'm yet to truly recognise when to stop I think, but I was easily downing 2 pieces of toast a few days ago, so I think this fill might be sweet for a while anyway - I still want to be able to have small amounts of those foods, not cut them out completely, so for me the tradeoff is perhaps not being so tight, so I have to use my head about with regard to how much to eat.

Carb addict as well. But overall I ate healthy most of the time, however I've always been a "big girl", man how I hate those words, as in you're not fat, your just a BIG GIRL. I"m tall and well built and sporty, so many times in my life I've longed to be petite and cute. As a child/teenager I wasnt overweight. I was at the high end of my normal range, but because I didnt fit in, I wasnt one of the pretty girls, I began dieting. This was my downfall I think, it set up a cycle where I would think "next week I'm going on a diet so I'm going to live it up until then" and it would send me into a pattern of eating that I normally wouldnt go for - lots of junk food etc. Then I'd diet for a while and then go on a post diet binge. Nevetheless I got to my late 20's without ever being more than mildly overweight. I knew pregnancy was dangertime so I went into it aware and never gained much. But once I'd had 2 babies within 20 months of each other, my lifestyle did an about face and I suddenly stopped all the exercising etc, it became too logistically difficult. You can take a newborn out for an hour and a half long walk, but add a 20 month old and you've got 30kg of pram, children and a whinging bored toddler - I began to gain then. Then I went back to work and my eating habits just got worse, totally convenience based eating - fast food and quick Pasta meals and once budgetary constraints came into play too, we just started to live on cheaper junk foods. The habits stuck and in the last few years, I basically gave up and that's when I put on a lot and became obese. I also found that whilst I was breastfeeding, I gained at an alarming rate without seeming to eat more, it seemed to be hormonal.

Yes, its all to do with how you eat I think. And not being any tighter than strictly necessary, the longer I've been banded the more I think that beyond a certain point tighter only equals more problems, not more weightloss.

I havent lost hair. I'm shedding like crazy, but I always do. Its been noticeable lately becuase I"m paranoid about it, lol, but actually its just becuase my hair is at about the longest length it will grow to and thereofre a lot of it is in the shedding phase. This happened to me last time I had hair this long. I've noticed absolutely no thinning, all the new growth is already there. I've lost 46lb in 6 months, so a nice steady pace, not too fast, and my band is loose enough that I can eat a pretty varied diet, including bread and other carbohydrates. I dont do high Protein or anything extreme and I eat about 1500 -1800 calories a day but burn a lot with regular running. I do think at that calorie level, I'm as well nourished as I could be, plus I take a Multivitamin. Its all worked for me, my hair's actually glorious at the moment, shiny and nice and my skin is good too.

Byron Bay, which is a beautiful spot on the northern New South Wales coast. Its also something of a hippy community, so it will be fun. We're going with my sister and her husband - she moved to Sydney when she married so its going to be so lovely to spend a long time with her, and it'll be great for the kids. We're renting out a house together.

My doc does them a month apart. If its any consolation, I"m six months down and I STILL dont have good restriction. I've managed to lose a lot of weight though. But I cant keep it going, I've been very fill phobic but I really need another, which I'm having today. I had a good level for a very short while, then all of a sudden I lost it.

I think you're being a bit sensitive. This is your journey and you're the one and only person who you have to rely on. Others are not going to change their lives to accommodate you and nor should they really. You have to learn to deal with situations like that. I dont mean that to be harsh, but life is going to go on around you and others are going to live their lives the way they always did.

I'm no doc but low carb diets have that effect on lots of people!

I didnt think ketosis was a good state to be in? Why would you aim for it?

I think your best option really is to call. I'm sure they wont leave you high and dry at this late stage, and will be willing to work something out with you. But if you dont ask, you probably wont get. Good luck.

They are much more aware of it these days and take good precautions against it happening.

I dont take the least offence to people posting things like that, but I'd be careful what you say about people on forum's like this. You could put yourself at risk of legal action. However right you are.

Yes I have heard of it but to be honest, fills dont hurt even a tiny bit. I've never had my doctor poke around for my port either, he's straight in and out. It really doesnt hurt. its not like an ordinary needle because the saline is injected into the port, not into your tissue, so you dont get the pressure and burning/stinging you get when you have an injection, just the prick as the needle goes through the skin. Emla would be a waste of money for so small a prick (SUCH a bad choice of words, but hey, you know what I mean, lol).

There is no way I'm going to *need* plastic surgery but I when I get to goal I will have lost 80lb and I'm tall, so a relatively smaller weight problem than a lot of people. Even so, there's no way to lose even that much weight without it leaving some signs on your body and I think people need to be realistic about that. Its all about how much perfection you demand. I mentioned in another post that the body that's emerging from under this fat isnt the same one that was there when the fat went on. I thought I got out of 3 pregnancies with big babies very lightly, but the evidence is there in my stomach - I dont have any stretch marks, but there is going to be a bit of loose wrinkled skin and flab there, I can see as it gets flatter that its not folding quite the way it did when I was 25, lol, there's some looseness on the lower abdomen. But for me, my stomach even now looks flat when I'm dressed, I"m not having to tuck skin in and I can hide that little bit of bagginess even in low rise underwear, its literally right on my public line. To me, why would I tamper with that with a huge scar across my abdomen?. My boobs are a disaster zone, but that's a result of 3 pregnancies and six years of breastfeeding more than anything else. I may consider a lift but I can think of a lot of things my family could use that sort of money for that are more worthwhile to all of us. Again, a good bra and they look no worse than anyone else's. Its all in your attitude to a large degree. Hardly anyone over the age of 25 looks really good naked, and only my husband and maybe a doctor or two are going to see it, so as long as I look pretty much like everyone else I dont care.

I didnt realise becuase I think in kilograms! I just updated my signature and suddenly thought to do the conversion. 198lb. Yay! 46lb lost, 33 to go.

Incredible work!

I've had this before, I had a rhinoplasty and heel spur operations within three weeks of one another. I was fine, although I was only 18 and not overweight. I did feel very groggy for days after the second surgery (the heel one), but both were short operations so not too huge a dose of anaesthetic. Lap band surgery isnt terribly long which is good and I'm assuming that for day surgery you wont be out for hours either, so you'll probably have no dramas.