Jachut

Just eat less! But I think the easiest way to keep calories low is to cut out the starchy part of a meal - the breads, pastas, rices, noodles, those are the calorie dense foods that add up - as does fat. I dont believ in low carbing it, but I did greatly reduce the carb and fat portion of my diet. So dinner might be a small piece of steak on the barbecue and a big salad, I dont feel the need to for a potato to go along with that, although we do have sometihng like spaghetti bolognaise once a week or so. I choose salads, yogurt and fruit and Soup for lunch, might have some crispbreads or crackers with that but would rarely choose a sandwich with 2 slices of bread in one meal. Breakfast is when I indulge most in carby foods - I love my Peanut Butter toast, or bowl of Cereal - but its ONE piece of toast, a small bowl of cereal and I round it out with fruit or yogurt instead of large servings. An hour's running a day burns up a lot of energy too, so that I never have had to give up anything totally.

The band did work for me like that for about the first year and then that sort of fadcd away and my appetite returned to much more like normal, only I was satisfied by small amounts of food. i had to learn to deal with the head hunger and constant grazing. For me personally, the ONE thing that keeps my appetite in check and stops me grazing all day is to have an absolutely unbreakable rule that I DO NOT SNACK. Not even a little bit, not even a chip when the bag is passed around. Once I start, I have enormous difficulty stopping and then I get that "oh, well, I've blown it now, may as well really enjoy it". I never ever ever snack. So it worked for me to have less fill to eat slightly bigger meals to get me through. Overall, though, I've been unfilled totally now for five months and havent greatly increased what I eat. I think I've learned a lot of new habits, and whilst I do eat more at a time, its not enough to cause weight gain at all. I think the thing is, the band's effectiveness does wane a bit over time, and you'd better be sure to take an active part in learning a new lifestyle, or weight gain can creep on over time. Who knows though, perhaps if I do decide to get refilled, I'll find the band a lot more effective again? Diet pills are just not the answer though, so risky for your health and they dont work long term anyway. I decided to just accept that I was cursed with this damned appetite and it was my lot in life to have to work to control it. And over time, I really have become a lot different, its not so hard anymore.

They dont look like they'd be very supportive to me, an underwired bra is always going to give you a much better shape, regardless of what the advertising spiel says. There's no way you'll get the same sort of shape from a bra like that. Treat yourself to a fitting and a pretty bra you'll actually enjoy wearing, part of weight loss is not having to wear such unsexy underwear as that, they're really not going to light any fires, lol.

Well... it sounds like you mnight need a fill. I wouldnt let getting a bit full and stuck on pizza deter you - as you get more restriction you will get that instantly with some foods even though you've not had enough and will be hungry later. if you get full and a bit stuck feeling on a proper meal - not that you shouldnt ever eat pizza but its a "difficult" food - if you get full on say a grilled chicken breast and vegies and stay full, then you have enough fill. But with restriction, you can get really full feeling on one mouthful if its a hard food for you, if that makes any sense. And yes, head hunger will escalate two or three hours after a meal, as you start to be not full, but if its not actual physical hunger, then that can be difficult because a good fill can help to dampen down that head hunger a bit as well, but probably wont ever eliminate it.

I had DD breasts, I'm 5ft* /10, so whilst they were pretty humungous, they werent over the top for my size/height, what I'm trying to say is I'm not a big breasted person, just had huge breasts as a result of being obese. I've gone from a 20DD to a 12C - and the C is pretty ambitious, I'm sure in various styles I'd be a B cup. For a while I was considering a reduction, I hated them, thought they dragged my whole look down, but they've shrunk to very small and I couldnt be happier. Most of that shrinkage came AFTER I'd reached a BMI under 30 too, in face even since a BMI of 25. As did most of the fine tuning of my body, all those little things that you think I could use a nip or tuck here or there, it all disappeared with continued weight loss.

I found nothing was truly off limits, but some things were so difficult I pretty much stopped eating them.

Just remember - take it at your pace. If you find week 1 amazingly difficult, then repeat it! Do it as many times as you need to until you're ready for week 2

Its really pretty easy. The first rule of healthy is variety. Dont eat the same thing day in day out. You need to decide whether the low carb thing sits well with you or not, for me I dont believe in it, dont have an interest in living that way and would have to relearn planning and cooking a healthy diet, so I just eat "normally". So..... eat a lot of different foods, try to include a few different coloured vegies on your plate with your evening meal, try to eat two fruit, five veg a day, dont overdo the bread, Pasta and rice, eat the wholegrain or wholemeal varieties where possible, dont add fat when cooking and definitely dont bread and fry things - the grill and the barbecue and dry roasting are best. Most nights of the week we do eat boring and plain - ie. a piece of Protein be it chicken, fish or red meat simply prepared, potato and vegies. We'll do a rice or pasta meal once a week. Home made Soup makes a good dinner and your family can have a bread roll with that even if you dont. Salads, yogurt, fruit and nuts, someting on crackers and some fruit makes good lunches, and I always stick with a basic good quality Cereal (oatmeal, muesli etc) for Breakfast, usually with some berries and a dollop of yogurt, or a piece of wholegrain toast with Peanut Butter (or vegemite, lol, I am an Aussie after all). I pretty much stick with 3 meals a day, no Snacks, no seconds, avoid sweet stuff nearly all of the time and dont have a lot of alcohol or liquid calories. I lost 130lb, and have maintained that loss unfilled for five months now, just a basic, sensible diet really does work - but I do run for an hour or so or go to the gym most days.

Fruit, I just couldnt do with fill in my band. A peeled apple maybe but that was about it. I did puree it a lot into a smoothie. Now I have no fill I am absolutely loving being able to eat fruit again. Everything else on your list I had absolutely no trouble with AND I could eat bread easily.

I hated hated hated being tall and overweight! I felt so unfemine, even at a BMI of 35 which is the largest I got, I was big and beefy and I so envied women much fatter than i was just because they were small and feminine shaped. In the end, at 5ft 10, I have gotten to 135lb and I love it! I am very tall and slender and when I put heels on I feel incredible. I was never ever going to settle for just getting into my healthy weight range, I'm too much of a perfectionist.

Even though you feel normal, the band is attached to the outside of your stomach by stitches. Eventually scar tissue forms as well and this holds your band firmly in place. The reasoning behind liquids and mushies is to avoid your stomach having to work vigorously to churn your meal up - which means that the stitches and the scar tissue get a chance to heal and cement the band in place, rather than risking breaking stiches and such by eating solids. You can eat solids, they can go through and you feel fine at this stage, but you're placing yourself at risk for slippage further down the track. So you're doing the right thing getting back on trace. And even though some doctors allow their patients to eat solids earlier than others, obviously there's risk involved in that and the longer you go, probably the better.

cooked and soft in soup broccoli should be fine. Raw carrots are a killer for me.

nausea and heighened sense of smell do often go together. At the moment, having chemo, I often have to leave the room, and even the house when my son cookes cheese on toast for breakfast, its enough to make me puke. I cant stand the smell of meat cooking either, and I notice the smell of everything, its very like being pregnant.

I'd never want to say there's one right way of parenting, its such a volatile area and its just not true anyway. Different things work for different families and different children and you have to find your own groove. I'm personally a little uneasy with sticker charts and other rewards when it comes to food, it strikes me as a little too close to "oh, hurt your knee? Here, have a cookie to make it better". Perhaps I need one for myself though, lol. Chemo has affected my taste buds. At the moment my entire diet revolves around vegemite on rice cakes, tomato soup, toasted ham cheese and pineapple sandwiches and very cold salad vegies and fruit. Maybe if I eat some steak I can have those true religion jeans I want? I already got a diamond ring, a new car and a new kittencourtesy of a very doting DH, lol, and I didnt even have to eat anything to get those!

I'm pear shaped and I've lost right down to a BMI of 19. Am I tiny on top and large on the bottom - well........... I'm in proportion, I'm not a different size on the bottom than on the top, I'm a 6 to 8 all over. But I will say - my chest and shoulders are absolutely skeletal. My shoulder blades stick out, you can see the ribs in my chest, and my vertebrae all protrude. I have C cup breasts, but on a 5ft 10 frame you'd call me small breasted. Im not a heavily muscled body type, and fairly fine boned. But I'm glad to be pear shaped because i have a pleasing overall shape that fits into anythng i want to wear, I dont have a stomach to accommodate, nor do I have overly big hips, I"m just the normal female pear. The trouble is, I sort of have to dress to hide my chest a bit, because it can lkook a bit awful and I'm having cancer treatment at the moment and both my surgeon and oncologist are giving me real grief over my weight, threatening me with sustagen (ick) and appetite stimulating drugs. I've been arguing that I do eat, I'm not underweight, and when the oncologist had me stop on the scales he was surprised - he said "your light but not officially underweight, I'm surprised". They look at my chest and think I've come out of a concentratio camp. but that extra weight loss is a result of my illness and at a BMI of about 22 I looked great. I think your surgeon's nuts to tell you to stop at 180 (and where does he get off telling you how you shoudl look anyway?), that'd be fat for ME and I'm 5ft 10! I actually like my slender frame and my small breasted look - I think its elegant and fashionable and regardless of what men may like I have never been a fan of the buxom big breasted look and most women that say "I'm curvy" I privately think are really just a bit fat. Curves are god given, a result of your bone structure and musculature and when they're truly there, they're stunning -think Eva Longoria or Kim Kardashian. But you cant create them by remaining a bit overweight - as in Queen latifah!

I think the last sentence sums it up. I agree, some people do seem to need to low cab it, and it tends to be the people with that whole metabolic syndrome - abdominal fat, insulin resistance, high cholesterol, PCOS - but I think for most people calories are calories are calories and as long as you STICK to the diet, it will work. Everyone loves to bleat about how high carb low fat hasnt worked, but when you look at what people actually eat - its high carb, HIGH fat, they're not sticking to it at all. I'm eating the worst diet you could possibly imagine at the moment - high white carb. Every meal is based on rice, bread or Pasta, I have to limit fruit and veg, I cant handle fibre. I have not gained, in fact i have lost. It makes me anxious becuase like Atkins, I dont believe its best for my HEALTH overall, but I dont think health and weight loss are the same thing necessarily. Tastes matter too - to me bacon is a disgusting greasy processed food full of nitrates and other additives and anyone who thinks that its healthy is a bit misguided. But if you love it, you can justify it on the basis of the Protein, simply by taking the Atkins side of the fence. I think the key is eating in a way you can sustain for life, be that high carb, low carb or whatever.

Its entirely normal for me and its one of the main reasons why I got a band to NEVER diet again and to NEVER make any food off limits. Its worked for me. I do still have those days sometimes, because despite saying I dont diet, I dont truly eat whatever i want to eat whenever I want it, I watch what I eat, I keep the calories down and I do usually say no to any sort of junk/sugar. So every now and again I will have a day where I eat pretty badly. But I just put it behind me and move on and get back with the program. Restricting what you eat, in most people, will lead to blowouts, its that simple. To me though, I can handle small amounts of the foods and it does prevent the blowouts to some degree. Others are more all or nothing. I also dont do what I'd call "binge" its not enormous amounts of foods but I might have a day when I eat nothing healthy and eat between meals.

Iron would be my guess. I have fairly deep set eyes and we have hayfever and asthma and congested noses in the family too so dark circles are a fact of life to me and two of my kids have those allergic dark circles. But interestingly I noticed, that in the early period of my cancer treatment, when I knew that my iron levels had come right up (combination of a great diet due to unfilled lapband, heaps of fruit, vegies, red meat etc and the bleeding tumour gone) my skin looked fabulous, my hair was wonderful, my nails improved so much that I dont need acrylics anymore and the dark circles reduced markedly. I'm now post chemo radiation, post surgery and 8 weeks into a new 20 week round of chemo and down to a scrawny BMI of 19 and I *STILL* look way better than I did at full restriction - I've learned a lesson about just how difficult a restricted band makes getting a really nourishing diet in. You just cant do it long term on 1200 calories a day! I never took supplements, didnt believe in them and still dont believe they replace a good diet, but its the only way when you cant eat the food. Then again, you've got a lot on and you may understandably just be exhausted.

I agree, headhunger isnt physical, its habit and impulse and wanting to eat for reasons other than hunger. Its baking Cookies for you kids right after you've had dinner and are full, but still eating four or five of them, or worse, eating the mix! Its eating to cure boredom or stress - its pure habit just like biting your nails or anything else you might do under certain stresses or whatever. No lapband, indeed no weight loss surgery at all is ever going to cure it, it takes willpower and nothing more to resist headhunger eating. That willpower is much easier to summon when you're actually physically FULL as opposed to just not particularly hungry.

It probably wount "cause" consipation but its the other foods your'e not eating that is the problem. No fruit, no vegies, no wholegrains - constipation is almost sure to occur. Protein powders make my tummy blow up like a 6 month pregnancy and produce absolutely foul gas if I have more than one shake in a day (like on preop). The odd Protein Shake will also give me bad smelling gas, but not painful bloating.. I avoid them completely and luckily I never had to do a preop diet, I've only ever tried Proteins shakes out of curiosity as they dont really fit my idea of healthy eating.

Yes - thats right. I have a 4cc band so a bit different experience probably but I never had to work for a "sweet spot". Every fill was right for me, it was just a matter of how long they stuck.

It depends where you're starting out from. I started at a point where I wouldnt have really called gardening "exercise", even though its active, becuase it was pretty easy for me, I could already run and do stuff like that. But if you're starting from a point where pulling weeds makes you breathless and sweaty, then that's great exercise for YOU. I think no matter what it is, intensity is the key. If you dont puff and sweat then its really not very effective. You need to push yourself to improve and to lose fat. Exercise for weight loss really probably involves a change of clothes and a shower! It took me lots of hard core cardio to lose 130lb - running mainly, but boot camp also and nowadays I run and do Body Pump. I tried for an hour of pretty vigorous exercise a day, once I'd built up reasonable fitness, I certainly couldnt do that at first.

Force your child to eat something? Never. Refuse to provide crap becuase they wont eat healthy stuff? Of course. That's what good parents do.l My personal philosophy is that I provide what I consider good food, my kids have the choice whether to eat it or not. If they dont like what's served at the table they cn amke something else healthy, for sure, but I wont be manipulated into providing rubbish with a battle of wills. I have a very picky eater. I cant design the entire family menu to always be based on him and the healthy foods he'll eat - and there are healthy foods he will eat, plenty of them. But some nights, we want something that he turns his nose up at, it wont kill him to eat a piece of wholegrain toast and Peanut Butter instead. It works fine for us. He doesnt eat salad - I always just chuck some peas and corn int he microwave for him if we want salad. I always freeze off portions of healthy meals like home made spaghetti bolognaise, curries, casseroles in single portiosn so that any of my three can heat something up after school. I provide plenty of crackers, rice cakes, cheese, good quality bread, spreads like vegemite and peanut butter, ham, they can always make healthy Snacks. i do allow them cakes and biscuits, they're healthy active and growing children but I bake them myself so they're not eating trans fats and additives. I do limit those foods though. There's loads of fresh fruit in the house all the time but only two of my three will eat it and only the youngest would actually choose fruit for a snack. My picky eater doesnt eat lunch at school, drives me absolutely insane, he simply will NOT eat a sandwich that has been prepacked and made in the mornign (we dont have school lunches in Australia, only a lunch order from the canteen, that is usually junk). If he'd eat a salad sandwich every day, he could have a lunch order every day but he will only order hot dogs and such, so he only gets money once every couple of weeks,. He wont eat anythingn "weird" at school like Pasta or rice or salads or Soups, although my youngest and eldest will happily take a thermos of home made Soup or such to school, so, middle child has no lunch (I always pack one, he never eats it). I cant force it, as long as he comes home and easts healthy food not junk its OK. Mcdonalds, pizza, fish and chips, those are meals that we'd eat as a family maybe once a month - and its always been that way. I got fat on a healthy family diet plus extras I'd never let my kids eat in the quanitity that I did! Even with these healthy family habits, my eldest child is well and truly overweight now at a15, he eats just way too much and he's not active enough, he is completely and utterly hopeless at anythign sporty and eventually we had to let him give away the sports he hated so much. I do circuits with the treadmill and weights at home with him. The other two are always otuside playing and active. I find with kids, it takes every bit as much willpower to keep them on a healthy plan as it does to stick to one yourself. YOu have to make yourself shop healthy, you cant just not be bothered to cook dinner, you have to avoid the convenience foods no matter how busy you are, you have to plan for busy times by freezing etc, you have to supervise, encourage, its bloody hard work. But to not do it is exactly the same as failing to look after yourself - a cop out. You can make all the excuses you like, and believe me, I know what it is to have kids whine and nag day in day out for junk, I know what it is to have them refuse to eat what you make, but you have to be adult. You've got a responsibility to your kids and if you dont feed them well, and give them every start for good heatlh, you're failing in that duty, pure and simple. Nobody said parenthood was easy. But I think that duty is fullfilled by good role modelling and providing the right choices, you cannot force a child to eat or clean their plate.

Seriously - you'll have a drink but wont eat a cookie? Why not just enjoy a cookie and skip the drink?

With restriction I couldnt eat frozen yogurt or ice cream - the cold made my stomach cramp up. But I disagree that its wasted calories as long as its decent yogurt - good source of protein and calcium. Also, when you compare the fat content in a low fat and a full fat yogurt, its often only a gram or so and only about 30 calories difference - but the low fat has way more sugar. I'd tend towards no added or low sugar more so than fat, you dont eat enough yogurt (or you shouldnt!) at a time to really make a huge difference. Its the same with most ice creams - when you really label read, its hardly any saving of calories, a lot of extra sugar and a pretty second rate taste for the low fat vrsion..