Jachut

Sadly you really cannot possibly know what your ring size will be, if indeed it will be any different. My ring size was the same 40kg (about 88lb) ago as it is now, I've never gained any weight on my hands. I've always had large fingers though. You can get ring guards (little things you wear under a too big ring so it doesnt slip off you're finger) so perhaps if you get the ring to fit you now, you can later wear it with a guard if your fingers change size.

Hmmm, I read Patricia Cornwell's latest while I was in hospital with my band. Very disappointing, really really lame ending. I hate detective stories where the ending is so stupid that you could never ever have pieced it together. It's like she got really lazy and just banged out another novel without even putting together a proper plot, relying on her name to sell it.

Ok, deal (yep tanning booth is a solarium) I promise I dont do it all the time, just sometimes! Totally stupid in a country like Australia where you get skin cancer without ever tanning on purpose.

I noticed something similar in that I had a really bad taste in my mouth for days - a metallic one, if I didnt know better I would have thought I was pregnant again. Then my tongue went all white and coated and I had really bad breath, its all gone away now. Big time detoxing and all the drugs exiting your system would be my bet.

It's the same as confidence - you know if you act confident you will be confident. You just have to do it and not wait until this or that happens. Just act like the person you want to be and you will become that person. Now OK, maybe tube tops and low rise pants may not be a good idea just yet, lol, but you know what I mean.

Hm almost as bad as watching your kid throw up unchewed cocktail frankfurts, eeeew. Literally one bite swallow. I think you call them weiners, lol. When I was a physiotherapy student and we did dissection on human bodies, we looked for the carrot gland in the abdominal cavity, lol. Where do the carrots come from?

I could easily have gone 3 days after my op.

I think its entirely possible too that many people are overweight because metabolically their bodies just dont function normally. Surely some of us here have super duper efficient bodies that hang onto everything we eat - and lots of us I'm sure have gotten overweight on what others would consider a fairly normal intake of food.

No no no. I've never ever let myself do this. I spend time and money and effort on my hair, my clothes etc. Now I'm a pretty "natural" sort of person, dont like a face full of bright make up and I like to keep my hair natural looking and not to "styled" and I dont wear high heels to the supermarket but I would never roll out of bed, pull on track pants and go out. I get my nails done and I paint my toenails, I like the solarium (naughty, naughty, it will kill my skin), I get my hair coloured, to cover the gray. I dont let myself be self conscious either - I swim, I go to the gym, I act just like a thin person would. I think that makes me stand out less (invisible isnt the word I'd use). I dont think anybody would look at me and think "geez, what an eyesore". You can indeed be attractive at any size, because the most unattractive thing I think is not that someone looks a certain way - what really turns me off is sloth and laziness and lack of effort. I dont mean that in the sense I'm calling you that, I hope you get what I mean, but you dont have to be classically or conventionally beautiful to be attractive and the most beautiful person can be unattractive too if they choose to act like a slob.

I would - I ate a spoonful of hummus last night and that went down fine. I found the same thing - not hungry but craving different tastes. I ditched the yucky canned Soups - full of salt and crap for you anyway - and dug out some Soup recipes of my own, last night we did have some canned vegetable soup for dinner (all my poor family getting over gastro) and I added some kidney Beans and cheese to mine and two crackers and blended it up - YUMMY. I've made vegetable and lentil soup and chick pea soup and made a sort of soup out of the family spaghetti bolognaise. I never want to see another fruit smoothie again as long as I live, lol, but I cant think of anything else to have for Breakfast. We arent advised to aim for so much Protein in Australia but I was trying to do so, the minute I ditched that and went back to eating liquid versions of stuff I would normally eat I felt loads better, I was having Protein shakes to the exclusion of vegetables and fruit, which didnt work for me. Including beans and lentils in my soups has given me loads more energy since its protein and carbs in one little package and very healthy for you. Tasty too. I also made a soup from a load of roasted vegetables I had in the freezer (eggplant, red pepper, pumpkin, zucchini) which I'd done with sea salt and olive oil. I put them in with a litre of chicken stock and a jar of sundried tomato pesto and made a soup out of them - it's thick and very very rich but absolutely to die for.

I think 1200 is a rough guide, I guess for some people it's still too much to keep weight coming off. What kind of exercise are you doing? To keep it coming off week after a week, you need 4-5 good long cardio sessions a week. Some people get away with less but exercise is every bit as important as what you eat. And probably valuable because it will allow you not to have to drop too low calorie wise and run the risk of not getting in all the nutrients you need.

Oh, well if we're talking heaps of food I cheated big time yesterday (still on liquids). Wait for it, I ate an entire teaspoonful of hummus!!! I find myself doing the same thing, and yet when I tote up what I've eaten for the day I'm actually frightened by how little food it is. And I'd have to say while I think the surgery was a piece of cake, having enough energy to get through the day on the amount I can eat is a bit harder. I am struggling a bit with that. I keep thinking I'm getting sick when really I'm just flat from eating so little.

Well my annual lose weight one is taken care of now, so I guess it's to spend less money and stick to our budget! Oh, and be tidier and more organised.

Oh to be able to shop in any store! Well done.

D'oh I've answered twice. Oh, well, you get my perspective from 10 days out now.

When I woke up from the anaesthetic the pain was quite bad, very localised, right around my stomach. They quickly gave me morphine and it was fine for a few hours, that night I had an extremely restless night - not so much bad pain but discomfort, I was hot and itchy after being in bed all night, I was in a bit of pain, my back hurt, but I was able to get out of bed on my own and walk around. I was given some tranquilisers so I could sleep, becuase I just wasnt tired after being in bed all day and I woke up the next time feeling great, the pain had gone. Got dressed (put jeans on!) and went home, never needed one single painkiller, in fact I went for a half hour walk the afternoon I got home and we went Christmas shopping the next day. I sat with a hot Water bottle on my tummy the night I got home and that was all. I was banded on Friday, drove the kids to school on Monday. My two year old was farmed out for the week with my mum and to daycare, so I had time to recouperate, didnt really need it but all the same whilst I was coping just fine, I dont think I could have coped with a toddler throwing a tantrum in the supermarket. For a few days I let Doug do all the washing etc just so I wasnt doing anything heavy. It would have gone without a hitch apart from the fact that I dont seem to cope very well with very low calorie diets. I had fainting spells on the pre surgery Optifast and by Day 4 was feeling like death and fainting again. But once I ditched the Protein drinks and water routine and started having some real food, that quickly cleared up and a week later I'm fine to have an hour's walk, do my housework and such. Dont even get any more tired than usual. It was absolutely a piece of cake.

I've had my period in surgery when I had my wisdom teeth out, they just gave me a pad that could have passed for a loaf of bread and those very sexy mesh knickers they give you when you've just had a baby. I wouldnt wear a tampon into theatre, but it surprises me that they would find it - unless they routinely catheterise lap band patients? Which would seem unecessary when you can get up and walk around a few hours later anyway.

I wouldnt think there's an "average" as such because it depends on lots of things, like how overweight you were in the first place and how your body recovers from the surgery. That's a super amount to lose though, enjoy it while you can. What a great head start!

Was it like a stitch? You probably irritated your diaphragm somehow. That was the only thing I got as a result of the gas - a stitch in my left side.

Oh boy you look soooo fantastic. And so happy.

Ok, so I can already tell that me with my cast Iron gullet who is one week out and having absolutely no trouble with full mugs of thick soup will be the one complaining about being able to eat anything and everything in oh, about four weeks time! I havent had so much as a twinge from down there, I just feel constantly full like I just ate so I have no desire to break rules, and am getting by famously. I was cautious and apprehensive day 1 and day 2 but not since then. Isnt it amazing how different we all are.

I'm not worrying about it. It hasnt even been mentioned to me by my surgeon or dietician, again another thing that's a bit different here in Australia. Obviously protein is necessary in what you eat but for me it's not the focus. In actual fact I was thinking more about protein in the first few days and having protein shakes in preference to anything else and I felt deathly ill. The minute I dropped it and started figuring ways to get the good foods I would normally eat in in liquid form I feel about a million percent better and am not fainting anymore.

Its so true. I'm a little obsessed about this. Its just my nature to turn weight loss scientific rather than just do it, and I'm a bit panicky over this initial post banding loss. I really believe that initial huge quick losses are not something to aim for because you're only losing lean body tissue (and water). I've worked quite hard to get real food in in liquid form and my first week's loss has been 2.3 kg which is still pretty fast but nowhere near as incredibly fast as lots of people lose at first. I've tried hard not to let the surgery set me back, I'm living my ordinary active lifestyle and getting a walk in each day. But I"m frustrated I cant do vigorous stuff and weight training for a good few weeks yet - I feel like I'm withering with each day, lol. A few weeks is not going to hurt but I'm going to really work on my body during this journey. I want to end looking really fit, not just thinner! And the more muscle you have, the more you can eat (meaning maybe one or two less fills) and therefore the more nourishment you get in and the easier it is to maintain your weight. But it is inevitable in a large weight loss that you will lose muscle tissue because your body needs more to support your weight when you're obese. Your excess weight is not just fat, its bone and muscle too - and in fact you'll often find when you go back down the scale, you're leaner at a certain weight than you were on the way up because your bones are denser. I like your take on things JQ, I think you've had such incredible success because you focus so hard on the exercise side of things too. Its not all about just eating less is it?

I just cannot understand why you wouldnt try the lapband first. Its reversible, its way less complicated and if it works for you it means a healthier and more enjoyable lifestyle. Who wants to lose their weight at the expense of their health?. Even with really pressing reasons to get the weight off, losing a lot of weight very quickly is probably worse for your body than a lot of the conditions its intended to cure. Its well known that you're better off to stay a modest 30lb overweight than to yo-yo back and forth gaining and losing for example. I dont believe that even with all the problems that have become apparent that the band is very risky. The USA is a very very large country and on a US based forum, you are going to hear about them. The Australian ones I visit for example, of course have way less members and its only the very odd problem that you hear about. I just dont see that you have much to lose in trying the lap band before having GBP surgery.

I like to set dates as goals for myself. My first big one is April next year, I've been a part of an online group for over 3 years now, we're an Australia wide thing, but I got to know all the Melbourne girls in real life very quickly, its really a big mothers group, we got to know each other on a pregnancy forum and it blossomed from there. We've had one national meet this year, and are having the next in Melbourne in April. I want to be 90kg by then, I'm down to 108 so it's maybe doable, will take a bit of dedication as its a bit over a kilo a week. I give myself permission not to be disappointed if I dont make it as it is a bit ambitious but I'm going to try. Lots of the Sydney and Brisbane girls I havent seen since May so it'll be a big change. After that, I'm going to go like the blazes till I get back to a size 16, then I'll set more goals from there. For getting to 90kg I'm going to reward myself with the new bio-ionic hair retexturising, turn my frizzy hair into a glossy mane!