Jachut

I had a huge fight with my mother over this - she said to me out of motherly concern "weight watchers works so well, it always works for me, when I really stick to it". (she maybe has 10 to 20lb to lose every now and then). She was rather offended when I pointed out if it worked that well she would only have had to do it once. Hehehe, I got the silent treatment for a while over that (you'd have to know my mother, sigh. I love her to death but boy oh boy you have to tread lightly). Also, you have to progressivly eat less and less to lose weight long term. What you're doing now wont work forever, your body will adjust and then you need to be able to get that fill and decrease calories again. But its keepign it off where the band really shines. I cant believe how good life can be eating sensibly but pretty much whatever the hell I want, exercising with dedication and just NEVER putting on a pound or two.

I have to remind myself of this often too, but the undereating you do with the band can actually cause cravings. When the cookie monster takes over, for me, its always been a day where I've not eaten a lot. I get to about 4pm, I dont feel physically hungry, but suddenly the urge hits. I have a few tactics. Eat Breakfast, a snack AND lunch(and a high Protein lunch at that). That's hard to do without feelign like you're eating just for the sake of it. And I always leave work with a coffee for the car trip and some gum, otherwise, I stop at the supermarket and buy crap to eat while I'm sitting in the traffic. Sigh, I reckon eating crap in the car is one of the MOST disgusting fat habits, it revolts me, I would be really critical of anyone who said they do it and yet I'm really prone to it myself. Its just slovenly and disgusting and I really try to tell myself I can eat properly at home and eat whatever I want, just not mindlessly chow down a packet of chocolate biscuits dropping bits all over my car. Keeping my car pristine really helps too.

Why not try it and see? Like Betsy says, its not necessarily forever, you might find you lose best that way. for me, it was never ever necessary, I lost slowly at about 1lb a week longer term (really fast at first though) but I never plateaued out significantly, instead, the loss got slower and slower till it was 1lb every 4 weeks! That's not a plateau though when you're BMI's already under 25, you've lost 90+ lb and you're just seeing where you end up. I do what Btrieger is suggesting, I dont limit carbs on purpose, but I probaby wouldnt eat bread or Cereal or Pasta with more than one meal a day - I cant eat that many "heavy" meals in a day. If I ate it for lunch, I really wouldnt fancy much for dinner kind of thing.

I'm a compulsive soy label reader because my son is allergic to it. it IS in everything.

Lol, Im glad someone else said that Elcee. Its another one of those cultural differences between Australia and America - chicken salad or tuna salad for example means to me pieces of chicken or tuna mixed in with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, mushrooms, carrots etc. In a big bowl, tossed, maybe with dressing (I'm partial to a little flax seed or olive oil). Its mostly a vegetable dish with a bit of Protein added. To most people here it is simply tuna or chicken mixed with mayonnaise! That's not a salad, its tuna mixed with mayonnaise (ok, maybe some celery too). Carrots ARE diabolical, that's for sure. I cant eat raw carrot easily at all. Salads require care too.

Funnily enough, me too! Cake and cheese that is. I cannot stand the smell of cheese melting. It makes me really nauseous - and my boys both like to cook cheese on toast every morning for Breakfast, and there's one lady at work that makes a toasted ham and cheese sandwich every day for lunch in the staffroom. Its like a pregnancy aversion, so strong is my reaction to it. pizza too, I would vomit before pizza would pass my lips these days - and yet I've never had an averse reaction whilst banded to either pizza or cheese.

If it helps at all, I lost 100lb still eating bread, Pasta and rice. Now, with any form of weight loss surgery, your stomach volume is drastically reduced and you DO have to make sure you eat a balance. What is the saying, man cannot live on bread alone? That's true. Once you have taken care of your Protein and vegetable needs, you wont be able to eat a large volume of anything else. I need to include a serve of Cereal each day - either a good wholegrain cereal or oatmeal/muesli OR I'll eat a sandwich (well as much of it as I can) on good multigrain bread - and the bread I have in the fridge atm has 10g protein per 2 slices anway, as well as about 8 grams of fibre, and lots of important fats and compounds in the seeds etc. We do have good bread in our supermarkets here. The only carbs you REALLy have to avoid is crap - white stuff - white rice, bread, flour products - pretend supermarket wholegrain and brown bread, get the good stoneground health food stuff - and sugar. You do not need to live your life in fear of potatoes. But I think any WLS patient ends up on a lower carb diet than the average citizen, and that's a good thing. However, I severely lack energy and my bowels are NOT happy if I dont eat some good carbs.

There's a fair bit of credible info out there these days about soy being a rather dangerous food to ingest much of on a daily basis due to the hormonal influences it can have on the body. If you jsut drink a bit of milk in tea and coffee, then I wouldnt worry about going with soy if you cant drink dairy, but if you drink glasses of it at a time, I'd perhaps do a bit of googling to inform yourself of possible risks.

No, the only time i ever decided to have fill removed, it was very much just because I thought I didnt need to be quite so tight, not because I couldnt eat. I could have simply waited for it to loosen up. I always have tiny fills, but really, I wouldnt even hesitate to go away a few days after one. Perhaps just plan some mushy, easy to eat foods to have on hand. And dont have a really aggressive fill.

That's a stressful and sad situation to go through, you really dont need to be worrying about weight loss as well. You've done really well, that's a huge loss and if your body has been in the hormonal turmoil of being pregant/not pregnant several times, as well as you being presumably stressed and upset, then to not have lost is really understandable. I'd even go so far as to say that trying to concentrate on falling pregnant AND losing weight at the same time is asking a lot of yourself, in terms of dedication and commitment. You're not going to want to be exercising really hard, well, not like running miles or anything and perhaps you can concentrate on just being healthy for now? The weight will take care of itself when its time. Good luck, I hope your dreams all work out.

Trouble is if you shave it'll be growing back almost immediately. Have you thought about getting waxed? There's the embarrassment factor, of course, but the hairgrowth would probably be slow enough that you're not pulling all the dressings and stuff off regrown hair.

Hmmm, well to be completely honest, I have found I had a real "window' of opportunity with the band. My band, at 4 and a half years out, still keeps my portions small and i have had no trouble keeping my weight off, and I dont doubt that if I didnt have it, I would be hungrier than I am. But the diminishment of appetite and cravings (to the point of forgetting to eat sometimes) didnt really last much past 18 months or so for me. Over time, I did get hungrier. Like I said, I havent gained, but I now work as hard to avoid bad foods as I ever did pre band, only when I do cave and eat them, I dont eat so much. I'm back to always being interested in eating whether physically hungry or not, but I have way better self control these days than I did. This doesnt sound positive, and I dont mean it to sound discouraging because I couldnt be happier with my band and I actually suspect that it could be as simple as a fill. I just dont desire being tighter becuase I dont want to have to go back to being as careful as you do when well restricted.

I remember mushies as being reaaaaaallllllly good! It was such a great progression after all those liquids. My favourites were: a salad of skinned cucumber, skinned tomato, tinned flavoured tuna (which made the dressing), chickpeas and avocado. lentil dahl with a dollop of natural yogurt and a squeeze of lemon juice mashed pumpkin, potato and mixed vegies with some gravy fruit smoothies made with yogurt, milk and fruit

Part of learning to love exercise is getting used to the sensations of pushing yourself hard. People that dont exercise have a natural kind of panic reaction to the pounding heart and gasping breaths. But you soon realise that that doesnt kill you and in fact brings rewards of its own. You've already got the post exercise high, becuase you're so proud of yourself. That's fantastic. Wait until you can do so much at such high intensity that you get the real endorphin rush! You'll be hooked.

I remember that fear well before being banded. I had a vague unease about it all, and it eventually hit me that I feared not being able to eat. My thinking "I'll try to diet and this time I'll REALLY do it well" was really me wanting to leave myself an out so that I could overeat! Before that point, I'd never actually seriously thought I got anything out of overeating other than I just liked food. I still dont know exactly what it is I got out of it, but at least I'd figured out I was dependent on it. From that realisation came the realisation that if I was ever going to lose weight and keep it off, my eating HAD to change that way anyway and I HAD to stick with it. Once I'd reasoned this, it was fairly easy to decide that I may as well make that process easier with surgery since I had to do it one way or another. And just like everyone told me on the boards when I was panicking over the same thing, I've never ever ever looked back. Fact is (I have a band, not a sleeve but the principle remains the same) I enjoy food more than ever now that it doesnt control me, its not "dangerous", it doesnt make me fat etc. I still get pleasure out of eating, the way we are designed to, I just dont need to overeat to do it.

Running, bootcamp and boxing. I like it pretty hardcore, walking's not my scene at all. I love spinning on the odd occasion I can get to a gym too. But I really do love my bootcamp, boxing and running which are done outdoors (possible all year round in Melbourne).

First and foremost, this must be something you do for you and you alone. I feel the same way about cosmetic surgery, budget and money issues and how we allocate family funds are relevant of course, but the actual decision to change your body in such a fundamental way can only be made by you and it is ONLY for your benefit. What someone else thinks is absolutely irrelevant and their support will not really make your journey easier anyway, you have to find the strength within yourself this time. On a more practical level, virtually nobody loses a lot of weight and keeps it off. That's a fact. The band makes eating right and exercise possible and maintainable. You will have to work at it, yes, but you will have success this time.

I wouldnt cut the strength training but I would increase the cardio by a couple of miles - of course buidling up to that if you need to. I just found that to really shift the weight and keep it coming off, I was running 4 to 6 miles nearly every day, I varied the distance of course, I didnt/dont run a whole six miles every day, usually it was about four. But a lot of cardio works really well to shift weight.

Oh yes, any kind of gummy lolly, I certainly cant shove those down my face anymore. Luckily they're not big on my list of desires. My sweet tooth likes its sugar combined with fat and flour, sigh, like cookies and cakes.

I think any diet is a lifestyle and that is made up of a whole range of choices, good, bad and in between. Most of what people say here is probably motivated not by judgement but by trying to analyse what you could have done better, next time you might have a chance to prepare, keep something on hand etc. It just comes across as if they think one bad choice is some sort of moral failure. For the people that REALLY think that, I think they're setting themselves up for failure sooner or later because nobody can be perfect all the time and the key to this is putting a not so great choice behind you and getting on with the good choices, not falling in a heap coz you 'cheated'.

You'll probably never know how it really effects you anway - my sister is hypothyroid, she didnt discover it until about 30. She has always been the tiniest thing, she's 5ft 6 and was always about 115 lb, really slim and she ate like a bird. Reason being, the problem dampened her appetite and she never had any interest in food whatsoever. Anyway, once it was picked up, of course she went onto thyroxine. Her appetite picked up and she promptly gained weight, she's a healthy, nice looking girl, she didnt get fat, but she's now more like 130lb or so and she had to really balance her suddenly increased food intake with running to avoid getting too heavy. Thyroid problems are not always the cause of weight problems or inability to lose it - of course once she was diagnosed I thought I had the easy answer, went and got checked, no dice. And the doctor said to me, your thyroid will never the cause of a 100lb weight problem, it might account for 10 or 20% of that. Then again, there's probably heaps of people here who have had a different experience. But on a good note, with a band, so many people that were unable to lose do lose.

Well, you wont get any arguments from me that high Protein diets can be hell. Its not a way I care to eat at ALL. I also get nauseated from heavy protein meals, and shakes and protein products like bars never fail to give me very offensive gas - "protein farts" are quite a recognised phenomenon if you google it, lol. But - are you including lots of berries and leafy green vegies to flesh out your diet and provide some fibre? I hardly think breaking out and eating watermelon is such a crime. But the trouble is that pre op diet is meant to shrink the liver and carbs have to be restricted to ensure all the glycogen in your liver is used up. So like it or not, its something you have to stick to. But if its any hope to you, I've never done a high protein low carb diet since surgery, never drank Protein Shakes or avoided bread and Pasta, I lost plenty of weight and I lost it easily.

I agree with the comment, if you had band problems before, you will again. Sadly, I think that's probably true. And that's coming for someone who has a perfectly functioning trouble free band. Dont even know what I'm doing here, lol, except that I was asked to join for my perspective on exercise and now and again I do pop in. I have to say, I love my band, but I dont have that sense of security with it. You read about soooooo many problems that I just think I believe deep down that some day, something will go wrong. once you've been banded, you've made that leap into the unknown, you've faced the fact that you cant use food again the way you did and that you'll be eating small portions forever. My attitude towards food, portion sizes and what constitues a meal and normal eating are so different now (my kids reckon I starve them) and I really dont think I'd have a lot of trouble with the concept of sleeving being irreversible if it came to that for me. That said, I eat about 1800 calories a day now to maintain and cant see why in the world I would need to be restricted as low as a sleeve restricts you. That's my only concern - long term nutrition and adjustability. But I still dont think I'd get another band if i have a slip or whatever.

Soy is quite a dangerous food to eat much of on a daily basis, it can have associations with things like breast cancer due to the hormonal effects it has. I cant quote specific studies, so I'm not claiming to be any expert, but its been around in the media enough for it to be a concern. I have managed five years of banded life without drinking a single Protein shake. I personally think they're an expensive ruse, entirely unecessary and if you eat properly (even in the post op liquid phase) you just dont need them, unless you need to lose weight in your wallet. And its not just me, they're just not pushed here and tons of Australian bandsters are quite successful without Protein shakes.

I have to say, it does sound REALLY mean! What business is it of yours, really? Stastically, virtually nobody loses a lot of weight successfully and then keeps it off, its really very very unlikely to happen. Why should she put herself through that for nothing? And she'll learn soon enough how it really is. Can you honestly say a tiny part of you didnt think this would be easy? Why would we DO this if it wasnt because we thought it would work? And it IS easier than dieting unaided. Sorry to be so blunt, but I really loathe the "you have to deserve this surgery" attitude so many display here. You have to be THIS fat or have tried for THIS long or be THIS sick. Its a personal decision to have the surgery and really no business of anyone else's.