Jachut

Yes, but I dont think its to do with the band, I think its the fact that I've gotten older, moved into my 40's, had cancer and gone through radiation and chemotherapy and as a result gone through menopause, it was bowel cancer I had and I've also had to deal with an ileostomy and having a bag (which is temporary) and just the general feeling that my body has somehow let me down and I'm now measurably older and no longer a young woman sort of feelings. On top of that, pelvic radiation does actually do damage to your bits. So there's really no mystery there and plenty of practice does keep those feelings alive somewhwat..

You've got to get smart with it. When I got banded, I decided to start running because you can burn massive amounts of calories in a short time, at the speed I run, I can burn about 500 in half an hour and I knew that hard as it would sometimes be, I really COULD find half an hour most days. I certainly dont have time for the gym with a half hour of cardio and an hour of weights kind of routine and I dont even really have time to drive the 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back for a class. So..... I dont. I was also doing bootcamp but at the moment, having had a large surgery, and six months of chemo, I'm feeling like being more gentle on my body and apart from my runninng and doing ballet/yoga/pilates style routine for toning (and its working WAY better than weights ever did for me). I started this after I began teaching gymnastics to young kids as a casual job and realised that despite my 'brute strength", I really have no true functional core strength, nor any grace or flexibility. It kinda made me think that maybe making your muscles all short and bulky aint all its cracked up to be, well, not for my body anyway. Anyhow, I digress, the point is I've taken a forty minute long Callanetics routine and fit it in in brief five minute spurts through the day (i'm also doing relief teaching and I've fit in these exercises at the start of recess and lunchtime before I go for my coffee, lol) - and am getting truly great results without even feeling like I spend any time doing it. That and a run every day and I've gotten back into great shape after my big surgeries.

Lol, maybe he's lying half dead on the living room floor, too weak to phone for help?

Water, but not so much that you dilute your body's salt and electrolyte levels. I had a few months of wicked night cramps recently, just after I had my ileostomy surgery. Because with an ileostomy you lose a lot of water and salt from your body anyway, and because I also had chronic diarrhoea so I lost even more I was having leg cramps every night - water and a lot of added salt to my diet did the trick, and lots of foods with potassium, like bananas.

Oh, yeah, that was a rude, sarcastic comment for sure. I would have probably hit her, lol. I dont give a rats behind what someone else thinks of my decision, to me it was worth it, and they can think what they like. But I might have said something very rude back to her, like F*ck off! But that's just me, I'm not shy.

Lol, this reminds me of a thread on here a year or two back where people were talking about running with a gun. My jaw literally hit the floor when I read that, I was completely gobsmacked. I havent ever even SEEN a real gun, people just down own them here - yeah, air rifles and other such things maybe, but a personal gun, that you actually carry? It just doesnt happen. Yet these ladies were talking about it like a completely normal thing. But in principal I agree, it is dangerous - my DH wont let me run after dark even when its only 5.30 pm and I'm running round white bread middle class suburbia.

ooooh, I'd try it but it would take me a few weeks to get a copy shipped here. It looks completely mad - right up my alley!

hehehe, its ticker, not tickler!

Yea, biccies or biscuits - they're Cookies, but not humungous ones the size of a car wheel, more the type you buy in the supermarket produced in a factory. A scone is more like what America calls biscuits - I think. I think I was told once that what we call crumpets are English muffins to Americans, whereas I'm not sure what we call an English muffin actually is to an American? I've had grits explained to me a zillion times but I just cant grasp the concept. Also, talking to my sister in law, who spent a couple of years living in Canada and the US just recently, when people react with horror that we Aussies still eat bread, we're not talking the same thing at all. Think of McDonalds buns, says my SIL and that's bread, its very soft, doughy and slightly sweet whereas what we eat here on a daily basis would be something exotic and continental that you'd have to buy at a bakery - a much more rustic and healthy option. I bought some rolls at costco recently and had to throw them out, they were truly awful, I dont like any of Costco's bakery products, they're very very different to what we have here. Also, our cappucinos and lattes are not such an indulgence because they're European style and purely espresso and steamed milk. So there's being culturally myopic, which is one thing and there's truly confusion when we use the same words to describe very different things. But surely everyone knows that anaesthaesia, oesophagos, oestrogen etc are just another way of spelling the same word? Just like grey/gray colour/color etc. What I *REALLY* hate is the freaking Microsoft dictionary. Now that is culturally myopic, as it only includes the American way of spelling everything. This is off topic, but it is fascinating how we can be talking about such things, and meaning something entirely different.

couldnt agree more! The Whole Language approach is on the way out here, a lot of schools have moved back to a phonetics based literacy program. I did the THRASS course a year or two back and I can honestly say its the only time in my short teaching career that I've learned more than just airy fairy theory and actually learned something practical - HOW to teach something rather than just crappola about how kids learn etc. Now, I just have to find myself a job in a school that uses THRASS or similar!

iron will - for me there's no compromise. I cannot have a small amount of something or a chocolate substitute or just one cookie when i feel like a pig out. If I start, that's the end of it, so I just dont start.

I lost about 120 which was much more than I technically had to lose, its taken me to a bmi of 19. The first 80 was quick and easy and saw me to the 'normal' range, the rest took about 3 years. I now maintain with no fill - because you have to work the band you learn new habits.

Lol, the Americanisms drive me nuts! Like saying you survive on cheetos, you guys would say "I live off of cheetos". You dont need the of in there, you just say "I live off cheetos". That one drives me insane. I also spell grey, colour, favour, neighbour, whereas you guys would say gray, color, favor, neighbor. Ok, so these arent errors, they're differences in expression, I realise that.

Well, I prefer running, but it fits in with walking for the purposes of this discussion. You can do it anywhere, anytime, take your shoes on holidays and run every day so you see a new area and dont come home fat! Like you, I'm not comfortable riding on roads! I also hate cyclists on the road with a passion as a driver, I know they have a right to be there, and I know we have to share the roads, but they're still darn dangerous, they hold up traffic, they're apt to pop out at you when you least expect it, they're difficult to see etc. I dont want to annoy people by being an inexperienced cyclist on the road. Cycling and spinning also really bothers one of my hips for some reason. It requires expensive apparatus too and if you're really seriously into it, it gives you huge legs and a sore butt. I'm not a big fan.

I think the thing is, you still need to eat relatively the same amount of calories over the week - ie. you must balance out a high calorie day with a low calorie one! It cant hurt to try it, some people swear by it. Myself, I know I have the odd high calorie day quite without plan, simply because some days I eat badly. I have to eat badly for four or five days to really notice my weight go up though. And it doesnt happen overnight, but a week later or so. i always think I've gotten away with it, but damn, there it is a week later! It sure doesnt speed up my metabolism and make me lose.

Thanks Brenda, that's really encouraging to hear. I'm finding this the scariest part of the whole process, I was much less worried about the bowel resection and ileostomy creation than I am about trying to find normal again - I have no rectum anymore so who knows what its going to be like!.

Exactly, your perspective is different and you'd not make a comment like that with a nasty motive, simply with a view to "boy, I wish I had your problem". People forget that they've been there and got fatter and that it does actually pose quite a health risk.

Oh goodness, opening a can of worms, lol. There have been all in brawls on here about this topic, with heavier people getting into those of us that had lower BMI's, suggesting that with a bit of willpower, we could have "done it ourselves". Well, my response to that is that if it were so frickin easy to lose weight when your BMI is 35, as mine was, then why the heck have these heavier people gotten even fatter than that. There are definitely people that feel they are more deserving, that they suffer more because they are heavier etc. In those cases, the question can be spiteful but its more about them than you. Other times, people genunienly dont think a BMI under 40 is that heavy. It is actually obese but people are so used to seeing such huge people these days and hardly anyone of a truly normal weight that it seems 'normal'. Their question really does reflect that they dont understand that you are feeling he effects of obesity at that stage. By the same token, we've had huge arguments because some of us, me for one, cannot understand how anyone could be happy with losing down to a BMI of 28 or 30 and stopping there. To me, that's still rather fat, pretty fat actually. But that's because I havent been morbidly obese, its because I somehow was lucky and did lose right down to a BMI of 20, and I just have a different perspective on it. I'd be desperate if I put on weight back to a BMI of 25 again. You do this to please YOU and that's all that matters. By and large I dont think people mean o be rude or nasty, they hjust see things from another perspective.

Ugh, I'm about to have an ileostomy reversal and i've been told by my surgeon : Never. Trust. A. fart. Sounds great, not. I think I'd rather have a bag. Yours should clear up when you're eating more normally but some metamucil will also add more bulk if you can tolerate that yet. I'd ask my surgeon before taking it though, although you drink it, it might not be considered "liquids", not sure. Mine, well, I gather I'm going to be stuck with sharting for six months to two years, eeek.

Very similar routine and intake to Cocobean - 3 meals, maybe a small snack, and I eat bread, rice and Pasta. yesterday for example: breakfast - 1/2 cup muesli, with skim milk and a few slices of banana lunch: 2 sushi tuna hand rolls and after that rice had gone down, an apple afternoon: a handflul of barbecue shapes (a wicked little savoury cracker that entices you to eat the entire box) dinner: lasagna (teeny tiny piece, lasagne is pretty darn fattening) and garden salad That would add up to under 1500 I'd be guessing and is pretty similar to how I ate whilst losing. I run for about 40 minutes to an hour most days of the week. I maintain 135 lb pretty reliably.

Hope you feel much better. I dread the day. Its been five and a half years and I'm a teacher and have 3 kids and I havent caught it yet, how lucky is that! Touch wood! I do seem to have a natural resistance to tummy bugs but then again, I do get any horrid snotty cold that's going and get really sick with them. I have pb'd that's been more like vomiting before - acidy and yuck, simply due to having to heave repeatedly to get something up. I think its wise just to keep anti nausea medication to hand. I've just finished 20 weeks of chemo with no vomiting, but i've got scripts with about six repeats of Zofran which is super duper effective so i just keep some of that to hand.

We're not as enlightened downunder! I think that about the same proportion of our population is overweight or obese as the in the US, but its much more unusual to see super obese people with BMI's well over 40. We cater to bigger people more so than we did when I was in my teens (when I was an Australian 16, that's about a US 12 to 14 and I couldnt buy jeans to fit me, they just didnt make em that big) but at 245lb and a BMI of 35, I couldnt fit into those desks when I went back to university to do a Bachelor of Education at age 35. Luckily, I learn by listening, I have never taken notes in a lecture in my life, so I just sat with the desk up. I fit in the seat OK, but the desk would be wedged against my stomach. I'm 5ft 10 too, so at a BMI of 35, I was hardly a round barrell with an enormous stomach, I was just a big person. As I lost weight it was a major victory to sit comfortably in those desks. Nowadays of course, there's heaps of space between my stomach and the desk, you'll get there too. I didnt make a big deal of it, just sat down and didnt pull the desk, dont think anyone would ever have noticed that it didnt fit me.

I agree with what's been said above - you're still healing, swollen and thus very restricted. Its not a good idea to be pushing more food through. Eating so little is not going to hurt you for a while, remember, you're obese now, your body has plenty of reserve, plenty. Starvation mode - meh. People would never starve to death if that were true. And you're not going to become malnourished in a few short weeks. My advice is to ENJOY it. You'll be hungry soon enough and then spending months getting to good restriction. I almost half of my excess weight in the first 12 weeks after surgery with no fill at all, it literally fell off me in that time. Even with tight restriction years down the track I was never ever able to replicate that superb restriction and lack of appetite that I had in the first 12 weeks. Dont waste this valuable window! Its a real mental adjustment, for people who eat what they want, when they want and in large quantities, we have very very skewed ideas about what a healthy intake is. Wait even a few short months and then see how gobsmacked you are by what people shovel down their cake holes. Your perception is not really reality just now, just listen to your body.

Ever since i was banded over five and a half years ago, my stomach has been crazy loud and gurgly the miniute I lie down at night. Its not gurgling from food/liquid moving through the stoma, its air in my intestines. DH is banded too and he is the same, we often get into bed at night and laugh at the symphony our guts produce. I cant lie on my back going off to sleep because its so loud and violent it keeps me awake, i have to lie on my side, that quietens it down a bit. Now this may be TMI, but all that air never made it to the rear end, nor did I need to burp. Its kinda like bubbles rising to the surface, because the activity does die down after 20 minutes or so. I have had an ileostomy for the past 6 months and so now I dont, ahem, fart so to speak, but my stoma does - I cant control it or hold it in and since I have had the stoma, all this gurgling starts up and it makes loud, long noises and my bag blows up like a balloon for that 20 minutes! I usually have to get up 3 or 4 times to let the gas out of it, and then it all qietens down and i can go to sleep. But all this only happens when I lie down! It doesnt appear to be related to a full tummy, I dont generally eat at night, its not over-restriction as I have no Fluid at all at the moment, but it doesnt hurt, or cause me any problems and my sleeping partner is my DH of 20 years so I just dont worry about it.

The thing is, when you have a stuck episode, particularly a bad one, you can get swollen and inflamed from that, and that makes you even tighter and can really hamper your return to normal eating. Sometimes a total unfill is what is needed to let things calm down. the thing is, and i can hear people say "oh, if i could do this unfilled, I wouldnt need a band" but you need to realise that it IS in your control whether you let an unfill affect your weight loss. I agree, its almost impossible to do long term, but until you get back to restriction just focus on eating small meals, not eating between meals and getting your exercise in and you wont regain a ton of weight, its that simple. If you try to persevere in the state you're in, you could damage your band, and at the very least make yourself totally miserable. Go and see your doc and get it sorted, being unfilled is not that scary and it does not have to mean you'll suddenly pack on weight.