Jachut

Hmm, I've only just had my first fill but I'd have to say that the amount of restriction and the dampening of my appetite so far, what most would call unrestricted, I call just enough to make it easy for me to do the work. does that make sense? I have no desire to get to the point where I can only eat a few tablespoons of a very limited range of foods. I"m really really REALLY happy with where I'm at. I've made good choices, I've avoided bad ones, I've employed my willpower, I've pushed myself at the gym. I really feel like the work's been all mine and that the band is just a little helper. So regardless of restriction levels, I'd call that a sweet spot.

Incredible. I bet that though you'd like to lose a bit more, all the rewards are coming thick and fast anyway now.

I had my first fill yesterday and it has made a difference not in restriction or not being able to eat anything in particular but it's just completely cut the hunger and interest in food again. I would be happy to wait till 16 Feb though, you dont want to suddenly end up overfilled.

I'm exactly the same. But strangely I dont find it disappointing when my weight chops and changes. I'll weigh in the morning, I was 101.6. YAY, I've finally cracked the 102's. THis evening I'll weigh myself and I'll be say 102.3 but I'll think YAY! I'm finally under 102.8 at night. So contrary to what they say about it making you fall off the wagon, it doesnt me.

We all get old unfortunately, if your face is not quite as padded out afterwards as it was, your new body will be a consolation. You'll look younger overall if you're not obese. YOu'll certainly feel it. I think society's obsession with youth is a bit sad really. There's loads of beautiful older women around, I think my mum's beautiful. She's 66 and yep, she probably looks 66 but she's so vital and healthy and active and there's so much more to her than what her face looks like. I have absolutely no fear of turning 66! I also dont care much about a bit of wrinkly skin on my tummy or if I dont have the most perfect breasts in the world either after my weight loss. Nobody has everything! Everybody has their good and bad points.

I'd have to agree with jeans. As to bra's well yes, not that I actually own any decent ones, I'm still wearing ratty nursing bras from when I was pregnant with Eliza - they're 4 years old and I wore them right through pregnancy, through two years of breastfeeding and ever since. I am not buying new ones till I've gone down a size. Jeans and any sort of glam shoe make me feel a million bucks. Gotta be the right jeans, lowish rise, nice bootleg flare, they suit my proportions perfectly. And I love earrings, beady earrings. They always make me feel pretty.

Hi Jess, long time no speak. Hope you had a nice time away (assume you're home?). I was banded by Mr Crosthwaite too. I saw him today for my first fill. I dont know of any face to face support groups, although Im a member of an msn forum and we're meeting for a coffee on Sunday as there's quite a contingent of outer SE Melbourners. We should do that coffee somewhere central. If you want the MSN addy I can pm it to you. It's nowhere near as large as this board though.

I found out today that I have the 4ml band and it now has 1 ml in it. It was not a painfull process at all, easy peasy. I dont really feel any different, other than I did start to eat a bit fast at lunch time and felt it back up. But I stopped eating for a minute or two and it went down.

Its exactly the same as my experience with bread. Some things just make you out of control. Plus who wants to eat stuff that is so far down the food chain, you cant even remember where it is derived from. Chemical crap is what it is, and I'm afraid it will give me a brain tumour or something. When I was pregnant I was really sensitive to MSG. Raging thirst and inability to sleep for oh, 4 days was a sure sign I'd ingested that toxic little chemical. The amazing thing was once I had an internal no fail barometer I was amazed at how many places use MSG. We went out for Pasta one night and sure enough, I was awake for days. Pasta for pete's sake, whoever thought an Italian restaurant would put MSG in their food? Oh well, a good lesson learned I guess, stay away from the stuff. And you didnt really do too badly, and burning it off is a great idea too. Chalk it up to experience.

Carbs - cakes, muffins, Cookies. Once I started on those foods I couldnt stop. The sugar rush was addictive. I've discovered since banding that if I dont eat them I can avoid them quite easily. But if I were going to break out those are still the foods I'd head to. But overall I was a healthy eater, just too big an eater. So I dont have a ton of problem foods I need to avoid or that I think about all the time.

It felt like that to me too (dont really have any now I'm all healed) and really was like nothing more than being 8 months pregnant with a very high breech baby! I lose weight when I was pregnant too :-)

Oh piffle. I'd take that one with a huge grain of salt. I drink coffee daily still and it hasnt done me any harm. It's no more dangerous with the band than without. Coffee does have its risks but like anything, moderation is probably the key. And apparently decaf is way harsher and more acidic than regular coffee. I've cut down on coffee but include 2 or 3 decaf or regular teas a day - because decaf tea isnt harsh like coffee, but mainly because tea is full of antioxidants and is beneficial to your health.

Theresa you can indeed get electric plate warmers. It's a great idea for bandsters. Here in Australia you can find them on the internet and in places like Kmart and Big W - any variety dept store.

I really struggle with the eating slow thing. I've had no pbing but I've caused myself discomfort a few times just from virtually inhaling my food. I'm always being bugged by one of the kids for something too, so it can behard to concentrate. We've instilled the habit of sitting to eat at the table for one thing, we were shocking at eating on the couch most nights, not the way to teach kids good manners anyway. Plus our 14 year old chairs have all one by one bitten the dust at our casual dining setting and it just feels plain weird to eat in the dining room without company. But we're doing it and it's helped me. I find I have to consciously cut of tiny pieces of food, at least that slows down the gulping. Because honestly, I'm such a fast eater/gulper and enjoy eating that way, that I truly feel for half the bad foods like McDonalds etc if you have to eat them slowly and carefully they're not worth eating at all. For some reason, the experience to me is enhanced by shoving it in my gob at lightening speed. So you're not alone, and you've probably done no damage, you jsut need to really really concentrate on breaking this habit.

January 16 Breakfast: Weet bix with banana Lunch: 2 Ryvita's with Peanut Butter and jam, 1/2 a very large banana Afternoon: 1 carton of vanilla yogurt Dinner: marinated lamb backstrap, tossed salad

Hehe, Doug asked me one morning a few years ago "where the hell are the scales?". I'd thrown them in the bin the morning before in a furious temper, lol.

Gosh that would make me absolutely furious. I'd tell him to ram his fill right where the sun dont shine, but I'm ah, not backward in coming forward. There seem to be so many doctors in this game who just have no empathy with what it's like a) to be obese and to be banded. I'm really nervous about fills, not the needle part but I dont want to live on too restricted a diet and I dont want to be vomiting. Ok, so maybe I'm wrong and I do have to be more filled than I think I desire but yelling at me and trying to humiliate me is not the way to get that through, letting me get to it in my own time is. I'd see the other doctor and I wouldnt be afraid to say why - because to me it sounds like what he really feels is disgust at fat people and their lack of self control, otherwise why would he treat you that way?. He's not in it for the love of helping people that's for sure. I'm really sorry you've been treated that way, you dont deserve it. Getting your head around the steps you need to take in being successful with a band is hard hard work and everybody has a different physical response to it too.

I felt like that the other day, its coming up to that time of month for me and my appetite definitely increases markedly, and my weight has plateaued a little as well at the moment. I just allowed myself a day where I would have a little more than I had been having and make one or two not so sensible choices. I enjoyed it, (had a muffin and a cappucino down at the shops), it got it out of my system and amazingly, the sudden spike in calorie intake meant I was half a kilogram lighter the next day. Head hunger dissipates a good deal when you allow yourself anything, and make no food off limits. Everybody eats for comfort sometimes, the trick is learning to do it in an amount and way which doesnt cause you to gain weight. It's not bad to feel that way sometimes, it's normal. I think you need to distinguish between stress release (and I need to work on this too) and genuinely wanting something in particular. If you really want something in particular you should have it. I personally count having a muffin and a coffee and not then going "oh well, blown it, may as well pig out for the rest of today andstart again tomorrow" as a huge victory, not a failure. So I think if you can sort out the feelings whirling round in your head when you get this way and figure out if you truly do want something, you're winning the battle.

Bread is evil. I had a piece of toast yesterday morning and some this morning also. I was supposed to try bread this week. Not only did it make me uncomfortable - not PBing uncomfy, but really tight in the chest, and not only did I not enjoy it like I thought I would (have been dreaming of toast) but suddenly yesterday and today came the return of my old raging appetite for crappy carbohydrates. Yesterday I ate biscuits and today I have been pacing the house avoiding eating them. There's been biscuits (cookies) in the cupboard for weeks and weeks and I've never given them athought, suddenly they're calling to me. I really think its starting my day with a fastly digested low GI carb. I've felt so much better with fewer carbs in my diet and the only grain foods I eat are good wholesome unprocessed ones. I thought it was stress that led me to my little pig out yesterday but now I think given that I've felt the same today, it's a result of eating bread. I shall avoid it like the plague from now on.

I've got a serious jeans addiction.

I think you're body type and shape matter a great deal too - as they do in pregnancy. I'm very tall and had average sized babies. I didnt gain heaps of weight in pregnancy either. Consequently, I never really needed maternity clothes, I could wear my own clothes right up to about 7 months becuase my belly just never stuck out all that much. Oh, you could tell I was pregnant but I have so much space between my hips and my ribs that I never got that enourmous belly waddling pregnant woman look. So I have not one signle stretch mark nor any loose skin from 3 pregnancies. Just lucky. I'm also more of a pear shape than anything, my excess weight has gone on all over my body in quite even proportions. I dont have a big tummy (well not relative to the rest of me, you know what I mean). So there's no one area of my body really stretched out, I"m just a "big" person and people do goggle when they hear what I really weigh. That old "but you carry it so well". If you're short, you often get out of pregnancy way worse. You get a huge belly, you get the stretchmarks and you get all the pregnancy discomforts. If you're an apple shape and you put all your weight on round your middle, you get a stretched out tummy. Of course I may eat my words and run to the cosmetic surgeon's office, but I think how you carry your weight is a big factor. I might need a bumlift :-0

Regular exercise will make a difference to you. I'm developing my own personal theory here and I have no real basis on which to support it but I believe the well known advice to work out in your fat burning zone (65% or so of your max heart rate) - long, slow and steady is not that effective for lots of people. I believe you get better results and MORE fat loss if you work out hard with interval style training, and do weights. My DH has been walking 5km at lunchtimes, and I have to run to keep up with him. He's gotten fitter, and now cant get his pulse above 115 bpm with full out striding (he'd have to run if he went any faster). So it's definitely benefited him - but he's lost no weight at all after 6 months of it. It never did much for me either when I walked a lot. But gym workouts at higher intesnity and weights - that works BRILLIANTLY.

Those stats are what tipped me over the edge too. I realised I was kidding myself if I thought I could do this alone. And I realised I was facing morbid obesity down the track too if I didnt get a handle on things now. As to which surgery - no way would I go for a gastric bypass. It's way too extreme for my weight problem. But I simply cannot understand why, even if you're considering it - you wouldnt try a lap band first. So much less invasive and if it doesnt work you can then get a bypass. I know it's two surgeries but I'd rather live with that than take the plunge into having my insides rearranged without even trying the safer, easier alternative.

I'm not having an awful lot of trouble but early on events were few and far between, even though I wasnt constipated. I eat well and I get quite a lot of fibre, but I've noticed that as my restriction lessens (and more food is going in) I'm back to normal. I think it just has to do with the actual amount of food in your system as well as just fibre. When you're eating 1000 calories or less you just plain arent going to need to go as often, every 2nd or 3rd day will probably be more likely than every day.

Well I think you have to recognise satiety rather than utter fullness and stop there, but I've found it to be recognisable until very recently (like the last 3 or 4 days). So I guess I'm using willpower to stop at a small meal now. Not "OMG I really wanna eat that but I mustnt, I mustnt, I mustnt", more like "Ok, that was perfectly adequate, time to stop now". But I only lost 1lb in the last week, so I'm obviously eating more. I would guess - since I've not had a fill - that it will be like this for a while - have fill, feel quick and recognisable fullness, which gradually tapers off as it's time for the next fill? But I think it's also to do with how satisfied you are between meals too. Are you getting hungry, thinking about food a lot? I still havent gotten to that stage. But I feel like I've gotten to the point where my band does not restrict me so much that I dont have to worry about calories. If I were to remain unfilled after my visit on Thursday I think I'd need to be counting points on Weight Watchers in order to be able to keep to around 1200 calories and keep 1kg a week coming off. But I feel like I could do that without the willpower problems I had pre band.