Jachut

I do my own thing, I'm not a good bandster in that respect. I probably get away with it because I'm not filled yet and only just back onto a regular diet. I do wait, but its usually only an hour or so. Not the 2 hours I was told to wait. I just plan on taking it as it comes. Later on drinking might make me hungry sooner or it may make me PB. If so I wont do it. If it continues to not make any difference like it does now I will drink when I please. But I really wouldnt want to be downing anything substantial with a meal.

I have in the past had keloid scars develop - I had them up the back of each heel (from having posterior heel spurs removed) although 25 years on they have flattened out and are not really noticeable anymore - but they were the classic red/purple, really raised scars. I would have said for years that I was a person who suffered keloid scars. I also had an awful one on my shoulder from having a mole removed, but its hardly visible now 10 years on, so perhaps they were never keloids to begin with. Yet my caesar incision is all but invisible 3 years on and my lap band scars are really doing great, so who knows. But that silicone stuff you put on scars to flatten them out really works miracles with keloids, I've seen it oa couple of friends, one who had breast reduction surgery. Not that I get round looking at my girlfriends' boobies very often, but she did offer to show me because she was so amazed with the results. You honestly can hardly see she had an operation. Its expensive but perhaps worth a try? And yes, the rubbing will cause a more visible scar.

You'll find they're very flattering too. Contrary to what you may expect, I think a lower rise visually flattens your tummy out and lengthens your torso.

Good thinking. I'll probably do stuff like this, I dont want to change what my family eats too much to accommodate me. They enjoy a roast lamb or chicken dinner etc. So do I actually. And we usually make a great shepherds pie for the next night from the leftovers. If I have to occasionally mash up a family meal (or a part of it) then I will. Other nights they can eat band friendly food but it's not fair to deprive them totally of favourites because I cant eat them - and I've survived 3 kids without resorting to cooking two different sets of meals at night, I'm not about to start now, lol.

For me it progressed to sips to full serves over about a week.

Oooh, nice. I agree I think thongs (makes me laugh, thongs are things you wear on your feet, I call what you're talking about a Gstring), just make a different VPL, they dont always get rid of the problem. Plus I spend half my life pulling my undies out of my bum, why would I wear them there on purpose? It amazes me people dont check themselves for embarrassing things like VPL, or when they were bright undies under white pants, that type of thing. Nothing worse than the wedgie VPL either, where one side is wedged rightup. That's a really good look, tee hee.

Oh I'm in Australia and they're usually store brand ones from the couple of fat shops I buy from. Levis only come up to teeny tiny sizes here, they're hard to find. It might depend a bit too on how tall you are, I'm very tall so the rise would be lower on me than it would be on someone shorter anyway, kwim?

January 5 First thing: coffee Breakfast: all bran with berries and banana and skim milk Lunch: a latte at the hairdressers, half a cup of cottage cheese when I got home at 3pm Dinner: small plate of spaghetti bolognaise, oh boy did I enjoy it, but doing better without so many carbs so will keep this as a rare treat.

I drown it with coffee too if it really wont go away, otherwise I just go and do something else, shopping being a fave, lol. Interestingly I've had very little head hunger since banding becuase I'm just so "not hungry" all the time. I've had one or two very tiny pieces of chocolate when it's going round because I wanted to and the Christmas cake is still calling me from the pantry but I really havent suffered from it like I used to.

I'll only wear relatively low rise jeans. Not show your bum crack low rise but "women's cut" jeans that come all the way up to your waist, ugh, I loaaaaathe them. They cut you in half when you sit down tight or not. I like my jeans to sit a good few inches below my navel. So mine come nowhere near my port and I wore a pair home from the hospital. I do have one or two pairs that have a higher rise and I had to wait a few weeks till I could wear them.

Quite honestly, my hair falls out like that all the time, I can always run my hands through my hair and they come out plastered with 20 hairs or so. I've not gone bald yet and my hair has always been like this. The main trouble it causes me is because its at all stages of growth I have tons of tiny little short ones, medium length ones and long ones which means frizz. It drives me nuts. Healthy hair hmm - well yes you need enough Protein but you also need plenty of other Vitamins and minerals, especially zinc and Omega 3 fats are vital as well. I'd take a hair nails and skin supplement AND flaxseed oil, not waste a single calorie on nutritionless food and keep up your protein as well. You probably wont get noticeably thinner, but I can tell you its a big pain in the bottom to clean the bathrooms. My hair is plastered all over everything.

4th January First thing: cup of coffee Breakfast: fruit salad of strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and sliced banana topped with vanilla yogurt and flaked almonds Lunch: lentil dahl with natural yogurt Dinner: home made tandoori chicken patty with steamed broccoli, carrots and brussel sprouts. An hour later just two squares from a block of chocolate. A few cups of coffee, my Water and Vitamins during the day. I'm not getting the exercise in at the moment, I hurt my ankle by doing too much walking in the last few weeks, but due to school holidays I just cant realistically get to the gym or pool regularly for another month. I'll continue to get there when I can (only twice a week or so) and get back into it when school starts back.

I had to do the same thing with the gym - we have a fabulous one locally, with great classes that miraculously suit the creche times, but every single time it turned into a huge tantrum over going in the pool - as its also a big swimming complex with 2 olympic size pools, a wave pool and a gorgeous toddler pool with a big slide coming out of a frog's mouth! I couldnt hack the whining so I didnt rejoin there, but went to another gym. Its' OK but has only half the equipment, so when they say 20 mins only on the treadmill they mean it, there's people lined up waiting. Boo hoo. My last 2 days have been ventures into proper solid food and have gone fine. I've eaten slowly but boy it feels good to eat steamed veges again. I'm still losing well so I dont see a problem with the fact that I can eat nearly anything and that I can eat a reasonable amount at one sitting. I dont quite understand why you wouldnt be happy with being able to do that and lose weight at the same time. If I'm still like this in another 2 weeks I will be saying to my surgeon when I see him that I dont want a fill yet.

This happened to me and I didnt feel better till I ditched the Protein drinks and had some real food, albeit in blended form. Namely some carbohydrates. All protein and no carbs makes Jacqui a very sick girl. I was fainting left right and centre by day 4 and I had the dark undereye circles happening too. I just made some really hearty soups and blended them up. And of course day by day as I could eat more, I felt better and havent looked back since. It was a bit disconcerting because I had no real problem with pain from surgery or anything like that.

Julie as long as you're happy with him then that's all that matters.

As long as your stomach is empty for surgery (so only fasting for 12 hours or so) there's no real advantage to being completely cleared out. But some patients do require liver shrinking. You dont have to do Clear liquids to do that. I really think since every surgeon has different routines, its down to the individual. After surgery, I added thicker liquids and foods as and when I felt ready. I think I knew when the time was right.

This really annoys me, what like you're being assessed as to whether you're some kind of glutton or not before he'll deign to see you? There's one or two surgeons in Australia I've heard about that have this kind of pre-op requirement, one guy who expects his patients to be on Optifast for a month pre surgery and if they dont lose enough weight to satisfy him, he wont operate. Is it just me or would anyone else tell him to bang his preop requirements where the sun dont shine? Rude Rude Rude, it is a sure sign of a surgeon who has no empathy with what it is like to be obese and ruled by food and eating issues. If you could stick to a month of Optifast, you probably wouldnt need the surgery and to turn it into some kind of moral judgement on you is just wrong. At least it's only 7 days, you will be able to do that but the principle annoys me. I wouldnt want any kind of judgement from my surgeon - to me its as important a relationship as the one you develop with your ob/gyn. Sorry for the rant, its a pet peeve of mine.

Bananas have always given me a golf ball in the chest feeling - unless I eat them sliced. A big bite of banana always gets stuck. Ditto eggs. I wonder if they'll be problem foods for me once I'm filled.

"I think because I really didn't diet that much (if any) in the past 5 years my metabolism wasn't shot and that's why I am losing. Yo-yo dieters eventually screw up their metabolism" Hehe, I like that. I'm glad I also was such a rotten dieter and that my idea of dieting was indeed 1800 calories a day. I havent done years of Atkins or any other extreme form of dieting and despite being fat, I have always exercised, so I have a pretty good metabolism now. My husband lost 30kg at the age of 17, from just virtually starving himself for 9 months, kept it off till married life started, lol. But he now is moderately overweight on half the intake of most men AND he finds it very slow and difficult to lose weight. I think that's why the band must be a forever thing - like it or not, you do adjust to the lower intake of food and will probably always need to eat less, say to remain at 150lb than another 150lb person who has never dieted. But I do notice its much harder (and slower) at 38 than it was at 25 before I'd had any babies.

Yep - its common here, its a morning thing. Dont you guys have yum cha? Trouble is the foods always little dumplings and things like that - I'm thinking 3 days after a fill might not be such a good idea. I guess I can always get soup.

I dont want to get scientific about it this time. I'm never going to diet again and to me counting fat grams is dieting, it makes me obsessed and it makes me feel deprived. I know that if I base my diet around wholegrains and fruit and vegetables it's going to be reasonably low in the undesirable fats. I might eat a lot of fat one day in a meal and very little the next. I make sure to include plenty of good fats - most westerner's are deficient in Omega 3's and the benefits they have to your body include improved fat burning metabolism. So not only do I never restrict foods like oily fish and avocados, and even eat unsalted nuts occasionally, I actually take a few teaspoons of flax seed oil every day. So overall I probably have a higher fat diet than many but the benefits we've seen in our health over the last year (the effects on Fraser's eczema have been amazing) and my cholesterol has dropped by half, Dougs is down also, make it worthwhile. And it doesnt seem to be affecting my weight loss at all. Maybe later I'll have to keep a closer eye on it though.

I think different foods upset different people but as to how you "diet" that's up to you really. There's no need to avoid any particular food/s since in the end its calories in versus calories out that really matters. I for one dont intend to ever "diet" again so I'm not going to go counting calories, fat grams, Protein grams or any of it. That sort of behaviour, for me, is what got me here in the first place. For others that's really helpful and keeps the weight coming off. So you can do low fat, high protein, low carb, non dairy, whatever takes your fancy.

It would probably taste great, lol. I had pureed turkey and roast veg for Christmas dinner! It will get better! I have to go to a yum cha in 3 weeks, 2 days after my first fill and I'm very nervous about that. I bet I'll be drinking coffee while everyone else eats.

3 January first thing: a cup of coffee breakfast: yogurt and grated apple Lunch: lentil dahl with a dollop of natural yogurt Mid afternoon: a piece of watermelon and a diet hot chocolate dinner: yummo!! Baked salmon rolled in a spice/herb mixture, steamed broccoli and mashed pumpkin/potato several cups of coffee and about 1.5 litres of Water plus my soluble Vitamin in there too.

They're foods very likely to disagree with you and cause vomiting - particularly rice and bread but they're also low GI carbs (well Pasta isnt really) - which means they hit your bloodstream and cause a very fast sugar rise, necessitating excessive insulin being released to control it - I think the theory goes that eventually your cell membranes become insulin resistant to it and that insulin also facilitates the storage of fat. Wholegrains and less processed carbs, as well as the carbs in vegetables and certain fruits are digested much more slowly and dont cause the sugar rush, therefore are less likely to predispose one to storing fat easily. The whole high Protein low carb thing goes along similar lines, the same theories are behind it but whether or not you believe you need to eliminate carbs completely is personal preference. I think it was here that someone said if something sticks to the wall when you throw it, dont eat it, lol. White bread and gluggy rice would fit the bill perfectly. You can imagine how doughy they would be in your stomach, form a nice hard little ball to block you up. I'm completely phobic about throwing up too - but have read so many times that spitting up a bit of food that's irritated you is more like a baby regurgitating milk - its not horrible nauseated full on sick vomiting. I've only been banded just under a month - but I've had no trouble listening to my body. I feel full the same way I did before, way quicker, and once I'm no longer hungry but before I'm stuffed, I stop. Its really pretty simple like that. You're hungry - you eat. When you're not hungry, you stop. You dont have to keep going till you're sick. And introduce foods s-l-o-w-l-y. Be very careful to chew well, eat slowly and stop to let it settle before you hoe into something new. Follow your surgeon's instructions. I started with 3 weeks on liquids, started out Clear Liquids, went onto thin smoothies and thinned out Soups and gradually made the liquids thicker as I got hungrier, but always blended. When I saw the dietician at 2.5 weeks she felt I was ready for mushies, again I started out slowly. I just ate a piece of salmon baked in the oven, some broccoli (very well steamed till soft) and some mashed potato for dinner - first meal that I've eaten off a plate in solid form since banding. But I've not wanted for much, there's loads and loads of great foods you can eat whilst on the mushy phase, its really only the liquids that's a bit hard. I got quite detailed info from my dietician about what to introduce when - next week will bring a bit of minced beef and chicken, and crackers such as Ryvita (which I'm really looking forward to), harder fruits. But try one at a time carefully. I've not even come close to vomiting and have had no discomfort at all so it can be done. Oh - and think about what you normally put on your plate for a small meal and halve it, lol. You'll be amazed how full you get on a small amount of food. You really will be fine, I had all the same misgivings and can honestly say I've never enjoyed eating healthy food so much as I am now, its been fantastic.