Jachut

I usually get up, have a cup of coffee or two and later a bowl of Cereal, or a yogurt and piece of fruit, maybe toast. lunch could be a sandwich - something like tuna, curried egg or turkey, lettuce and cranberry sauce, leftovers, or a salad and a piece of fruit. dinner, gosh last night we had salmon and a pear, walnut and rocket salad, the night before we had scrambled eggs on toast, before that was lamb loin chops, mashed potato and broccoli and carrots, and I think we had spaghetti bolognaise on Monday night. I pretty much dont eat between meals. Meals are almost normal person sized for me at the moment.

I'm eating 3 times as much as I ever thought I'd be able to post banding and have lost plenty, although its really time for another fill now and to decrease the intake a bit, I'm bouncing around the same kilogram and have been for over a month now. But the point is I've eaten normal quantities of veges, almost as much as I did before and have just cut out the other crap. I find when I serve up a plate, I just dont have the rice, potato or other starch anymore, dont even put it on the plate. I dont need it, as I've generally eaten bread during the day, and I dont favour the Protein over the veges, I think they're equally important. If you eat a piece of chicken and then you're stuffed and cant eat your veges, that's not a balanced meal. Well not if you want to avoid getting scurvey anyway. I make sure to eat a piece of fruit during the day too. I'd like to eat more fruit and more veges, I dont think as a bandster you eat the amount the body really needs, so its important to supplement. But its the trade off for normal weight I guess.

I didnt officially have to do the Optifast but I tried to anyway thinking it would be a great kick start. I was passing out after about three days, I called my doc and he told me not to be an idiot and eat something. I cant survive on that much food and I had problems on liquids a few days after surgery too until I started actually getting in real food in liquid form instead of Optifast, Water and coffee. Its tempting to go for the fast weight loss but there's really no advantage to your body to lose 20lb in 8 days, its not fat and there's no way it can ever be fat when you lose that fast, its water, lean body tissue and a bit of fat. So just get a balanced, reasonable amount of calories in via good Soups, fruit and milk smoothies etc and you'll be fine.

They wont let you use a tampon during surgery but they'll let you use a pad, I was allowed to wear undies as long as they were cotton. its happened to me before, when I had my wisdom teeth out, I told the admissions nurse, she gave me a ginormous pad that looked more like a loaf of bread and a pair of those gorgeous mesh knickers they give you after you have a baby. All sterile and new out of the pack for surgery. The danger of a tampon is that if something should go wrong with the surgery and they didnt know it was there, it could be left there.

Its stitched on and then your own body forms adhesions round it, it becomes part of your body after a while. Otherwise you couldnt lift or carry anything or do anything vigorous at all. Anyway, dont you just lie there and think of England, lol?

Me depending on days. I've got two big assignments due in the next fortnight and cant afford to spend Eliza's daycare days doing coffee, lol. So either Tuesdays/Thursdays would suit me or anytime after 4 April.

Kim that is exactly why I'm becoming a teacher.

Have you ever read the ingredients on a Lean Cuisine? There's more chemicals there than real food. Frozen foods are fine for convenience, everybody needs that sometimes and of course we use them sometimes too, just as we also eat takeaway. But as a regular thing, its really much better to buy fresh and cook fresh. I dont mean to sound like a food nazi or disapproving, sorry if I did. Its just that its horrifying what you can actually ingest without even realising it. We all take a Multivitamin here, and Fraser takes Evening Primrose and Flax Seed oils for his eczema/asthma, they do seem to help lessen the severity. He reacts quite strongly to a lot of packaged foods anyway (I think its the soy lecithin they use to emulsify everything), gets wheezy and itchy under the chin. It's like bread with preservative 282 in it, that also sets my kids off with asthma. There's loads of bread has that in it, but there's also a fair few packaged breads that dont, and we have a great chain bakery, Baker's Delight, that doesnt use 282 in their breads. So I buy fresh bread too.

I had my first baby at 28 and that was great. I had my third at 35 and that was also great! Now I'm a uni student and will graduate at the ripe old age of 42. There's no right age to do anything!

We'll all miss you but its probably a good thing for you overall - that chapter of your life obviously has closed which is something to be so thankful for. I hope the rest of your life is as successful as the past year or so have been, your positive outlook has been uplifting. Good Luck JQ.

I wouldnt feed my kids frozen dinners to be honest. The more food you eat that's in its natural state, the better and most frozen packaged food is full of salt and other crap that you just dont need. Whenever I make anything like spaghetti sauce or lasagne I always make for the freezer too. Takes virtually no extra effort and means there's always an easy meal on hand. Mine go nuts for 2 minute noodles, the very thought of them eating those makes me scared they're going to drop dead of a brain tumour 5 minutes after they finish - chemical nasty crap. I try to keep it all as natural as possible and buy organic where possible despite the massive expense of organic fruit and veg. My kids turn up their nose at supermarket fruit now, they always know when I've been short on cash. The organic stuff tastes so much better and it actually gets eaten.

This is a really hard thing. I also have 8 and 10 year old boys, as well as a 3 year old daughter and I worry about them, my 10 year old Fraser in particular. My middle son Ewan is the worst eater, he would eat nothing but junk. Most nights he simply does not eat his dinner unless it is one of about 5 meals. He skips Breakfast if I wont let him eat crap Cereal, despite a lot of healthy choices on offer. He throws out his school lunch and wont eat fruit at fruit time. He doesnt eat any fruit at all actually. Ewan's incedibly active and think as a rake. Fraser on the other hand loves healthy food but eats far too much. He is more inclined to sit inside on the computer/playstation. He's not fat yet but he's more "solid" than most of his friends - he's also much taller. I think he'll begin to have a weight problem in a few short years. I do what I can. I buy and serve healthy food. We dont have a lot of junk in the house. We try to do as many active family things as we can. But it still comes down to the them in the end. Fraser's also horribly asthmatic and just doesnt have the aerobic fitness he should. He plays basketball and Aussie Rules football but he struggles and I think he tires running around outside playing. I try to stop short of being a food nazi though. He has to make his own decisions and I bet vanity will win out as he enters adolescence and starts to care about girls etc.

I've had to pull myself up a bit on this, I've had a long flat period of not much loss (must update my signature). But I realised I've been eating band friendly food. For me personally it actually works better to eat more, I'm thinking of lunch in particular, always a meal I hated, I never know what I feel like eating. Anyway I'd been eating things like yogurt and of course was hungry again very quickly and picking in the afternoon. I've noticed if I eat a sandwich or something, not only does it take me ages to eat it so that I really feel mentally "done", I dont get hungry. A few small changes and the weight is now moving again thank goodness. But I think I'm ready for a third fill and you should go along anyway to yours too.

To a degree. Like people get all upset about going out and not being able to eat the food. I'm like pfft, so what? It's only food. I dont care. I do get the desire to eat certain things which I shouldnt, and I dont like the effect it has on me. Like today, I had a tute at uni at 12.00 so I ate no Breakfast and had a coffee and a muffin in peace and quiet at the shops thinking that doing so at 11.00 am would take care of lunch since the tute went till 2.00. Yep I enjoyed it, but havent stopped eating since, was decidedly unhungry at dinner so didnt eat, and now have the munchies. Its just not worth it to do that, its way better to eat 3 squares and not just nibble all darn day. Whereas once I would have just done that, eaten all day, now I look at the muffin and am quite able to say (most of the time) nah, not worth it. I honestly had no compulsion to eat it this morning, it just seemed like a good idea, a little slice of peace and quiet, something nice to eat etc. But really, just not the pleasure it used to be. I still get excited about food - planning healthy meals and eating them but it just doesnt have the emotional hold on me anymore. If I"m not hungry and its not mealtime then I dont need it and generally dont think about it. I've also started jogging and that really kills my appetite and deters me from overeating because I just want to get better and not feel "heavy" and blah when I do it.

I didnt even know anyting about it till I opened up this site, lol. Havent seen the news today. It was way up in Nth Queensland, absolutely nowhere near Melbourne, we dont get wild weather like that down here. How about our Queenslanders though? Anyone from FNQ?

I told all and sundry. Social events and gatherings are the same as they ever were only I eat less. Nobody notices that I have one glass of wine instead of 3 and nobody notices I only take a small amount of food or leave food on my plate. Its simply a non issue.

I was way less afraid of those things, which, afterall are easily rectified by removing the band, than I was of major major surgery and having my insides re-routed. Being a relatively modest BMI of 35 meant that that option would probably not be available to me anyway, if they did gastric bypass in Australia anymore. I also dont care to lose a ton of weight in a very short amount of time, look like a corpse and have a problem with loose skin. I love love love my band. I am living a completely normal life, just one in which I eat a bit less. I eat way less junk, but I eat out, I eat with family, I sometimes eat yummy things for a treat, I can exercise (I've started running again, a MAJOR NSV for me), its simply the best thing I ever did. If I should lose it one day due to a complication, well I guess I'll face that when I come to it. I think I would see how I went without it for a while - I only have 1.3 ml in my band and no real restriction, much of what I've achieved has come from conscious behaviour modifcation. I'd have to say the band's major influence on my has been psychological - I dont expect to fail, therefore I dont.

Kellie this is such a huge step in your journey. I hope you're up and on your feet soon - and that you enjoy looking down at them, lol.

Those NSV's are the best. It seems it takes soooo long to actually look better but the way you feel and those little signs that its working mean everything.

I felt like that a lot after surgery but it was remedied by eating. It took about 2 days on Optifast before I was fainting everywhere.

Good luck Kellie. I hope it's not too painful, lol.

And of course, plenty of people may have been thinking maybe you lost some weight, but not said anything.

Nobody uses fluoro or xray in Australia. My doc just whacks the needle in and its done.

Hmm, I think I'd rather get stuck in Malawi with too little fill than too much. If you have too little, you can schedule yourself to go to South Africa for more at your convenience, rather than be in an emergency situation to get unfilled.

I've got the giggles at the thought of losing 4 inches from your head, lol.