Jachut

I wont be able to make this one sadly. Doug has a wanky cocktail function with Ernst & Young and wont be home.

I think Fee's had this done a few years before she was banded. As long as you're happy to have to have more surgery post weight loss I think its a good idea if you can afford it. It will give you a terrific boost, a great start and make you more comfortable and feeling better about yourself right from the get go. Its different to getting your boobs done, that really wouldnt be worth it prior to losing a lot of weight.

yep, all the time. It seems to make no real difference to me. My band seems to work more for me by restricting how hungry I get in the first place, more so than restricting how much I can eat. It certainly doesnt mean I can eat more but sometimes I think the band has worked more on my head than physically on my stomach. I think I should be able to only eat a certain amount so therefore that's what I eat kind of thing and I just dont think about eating more. I dont need to feel "stuffed" full to not eat, so I dont really worry about liquid washing things through.

I can eat bread still and I've had 3 fills, I have 1.4ml in a 4ml band. It sticks and gives me discomfort if it's really white and fluffy but if I take it slow I can eat it, I nearly always choose good wholegrain bread. I dont subscribe to the low carb theories on diet and I do think bread is a valuable food, so I eat it. It hasnt stopped me losing by any stretch of the imagination but I dont eat more than a slice or two every couple of days.

Hmmm, not sure this week, depends when it is. I could do Thursday night if it was a dinner type arrangement I guess, but it would be difficult, Doug doenst get home till about 7. Anyway, I will fit in if I can.

Tsk Tsk Kelly, dont you know the trouble a little prick can get you into? Lol. You look great. Why the heck not? You deserve it!

I always turn to carb foods like cakes, Cookies etc. But those foods per se are not such a problem for me, I can resist them usually but its more about being in the situation where they're the easy choice. Like being disorganised, getting caught out at lunchtime with no healthy food on me like fruit, eating on the run etc. That and easy crap for dinner like Pasta for the same reasons, no time to cook a meal, not having done the grocery shopping etc. If I control my life better my food choices are good, if I have healthy choices available I dont crave the junk or choose it.

You look incredible. I really didnt realise what they could do with a pair of empty old boobies, I'm realising fast that mine are going to need doing too. It just helps so much to see real pictures of real people. Would you believe a week or two back I got info sent out by Keith Mutimer too, lol, he did a breast reductionf or my girlfriend and she said he was great. Another of my friends has worked with him before. Having seen you in real life I really wouldnt guessed that you needed any of that, and I still dont think the before pics were all that terrible, lol but gee you really do look great after!

Yeah, unfortunately I think that's true. In my mind I want to be 68kg. Dont know why, its always the weight I was striving for when I wasnt very fat, but I've never weighed 68kg in my adult life and I'm not sure I'm meant to. I dont think my doctor would fill me tighter and tighter to get there and I wouldnt want to live that way anyway. And who says I'd look the way I want to even then? 68kg would be a reasonable weight for my height of 5ft 10 (Its in the 145-150 lbs range) but I'm not sure it'd be attainable for me. So I've set a more reasonable goal of 75kg for starters. But one thing that I wont compromise on - I'm not prepared to stop at 2/3 of the way there as statistics say is common. I didnt have this operation to still be overweight. I wasnt very obese when I started, I'm only 38, I'm fit, healthy and active and I just dont think its unreasonble to want to get back to my healthy weight range, not just my better than being hugely fat weight range. And given my activity levels I dont think it'll be terrible difficult to achieve either.

I can eat anything I want to and havent PB'd and I'm sure the amount I eat is more than a lot of bandsters, but then I only have 1.4 ml in my band too. I generally eat about a cup of food at mealtime but on that, i need Snacks too or I'm starving. I do however run for about 40 minutes a day and do weights 3 times per week and have greatly increased my incidental activity since losing 20kg as I now have so much more energy. So despite a relatively large food intake I'm losing well. I eat when I'm hungry till I'm no longer hungry (that doesnt mean stuffed). I think its vitally important to learn to listen to your body and trust it to tell you what and how much it needs which is why I refuse to measure and weigh food or "diet" in any sense of the word. I was nervous doing this at first but over the months I've begun to eat like a normal person. I have good days, bad days but I'm beginning to find if I"m not hungry then no matter what the food on offer is, I dont want it.

I've been banded almost 5 months and I havent PB'd yet. I've had minor discomfort every now and then usually when I've started eating too fast or with difficult things like bread but overall I can and do eat everything but dont PB.

I'm averaging a measly 1/2kg a week now (about 1lb), but I guess I dont have more than about 40lb to go to get to a healthy weight range, I've lost quite slowly but fast enough to satisfy me. Its pretty painless. I could probably lose faster if I "dieted" but I dont want to do that.

Sorry you're so sick, that sounds just horrible. I've woken up with a sore throat this morning and am being a real baby about it. Your doctor sounds completely mental to me. McDonalds and Subway? The only think I'd agree with him is that I find a sandwich for lunch helps my weight loss. If I eat a salad or something lighter, I'm picky all afternoon, just not satisfied, a sandwich I can eat half of leaves me stuffed and not even thinking about food till dinner. But not Subway, I make it with salad ingredients, Protein like tuna or chicken and good quality wholemeal bread! As to your immune system, well losing a lot of weight may leave you a little more vulnerable, just make sure you're taking your Vitamins and you'll probably get over this little bout of being sick all the time.

What you'll find too is that your attitude will change and 8 months, a year down the track, your idea of going off and enjoying a food/wine tour will not be the same as it is now. I too enjoy food more than ever now that the evil hold it had over me is gone. I dont view dinner out as a chance to pig out to the extreme so that I can start my "diet" again tomorrow. I enjoy it more than I ever did. I get the same satisifaction on 1/3 of the food. So dont stress about the holiday, you'll enjoy it in an entirely new way.

I stop eating - it might be 5 minutes, or 20, until I just feel "better" again. If its only the first few bites then no, you're not full, its just that first bite syndrome going on probably. I take the first few bites of anything very very slowly (and tiny bites).

I know we have it and I've never used it!

Yeah, what she said. I had a day like that today actually. I didnt eat any dinner and went on a very big run to make up for it.

As an adult, I can control myself, ignore advertising for what it is and make rational healthy choices for myself and my family. But I wish to goodness my job was not made so flipping difficult by my children being bombarded with the desirability of crap food that is only going to kill them in the long run. There's so much "fashion" attached to foods that kids want - fast foods, lollies and the like - that they desire it because all their friends have it. I wish they knew nothing about any of it.

I pretty much get full in exactly the same way I did before only sooner. Sometimes I get hiccups too but only if I've been eating something like bread.

I dont pay any attention to protein and really would eat far less than lots of people here, and I've had no hair loss. I really believe hair loss is more a general nutrition problem, not protein specifically.

Ok, I'm in but I'll have to convert to imperial from metric. Right now I'm 209lb. This is just what I need.

Good Luck Jess.

All that up/down stuff is water fluctuation in your body. The scales really are not your friend on a daily basis - although I wish I could listen to my own advice. I've put on 4lb since yesterday and I had a really good day, didnt eat anything I shouldnt and went to the gym. Grrrr.

I never got how you could lose inches and not weight but I certainly do now! It is incredible isnt it? I'm going shopping in the next few days too, yeehaa! Its getting cool in Melbourne now and nothing from last winter fits me, even Tshirts and long sleeved tops, they're just gaping. Enjoy your shopping, at least it's kind of in season - I'm going to Byron Bay in September and it'll be the dead of winter, no idea where I"m going to get warmer weather clothes from in Melbourne in September. Perhaps I'll have to shop up there, lol.

I had rotten breath only during the liquid phase of the recovery, and i had a revolting khaki green build up of slime on my tongue, lol. I could brush it off with my toothbrush. The dietician explained that not eating solid food meant your tongue didnt get exfoliated and hence the build up which could lead to bad breath, also that possibly I was in ketosis at times. But since I went onto mushies I've never had the problem again. Since then I've never lost more than 1.5kg in a week anyway and now it's fairly crawling, so no risk of ketosis.