Shinyhappymommy

I don't have a lot of time this morning, but I started a thread about my feelings about my band a while back. You can read it here. I need to update it because I'm still doing great!

I weigh on Tuesdays, so for me that would be the day that it makes sense to check in. This week my weight was 217, down 3 pounds from the week before.

Thanks for that insight, Jacqui. I love your attitude toward healthy eating.

I have a tip for tuna salad. The other day on a whim I stirred in some part-skim ricotta cheese into my tuna, added pickle relish and ate it with whole grain crackers. The ricotta added just the moisture and texture that I was looking for. I usually use a light mayo, but this was just as good to me. I also use real butter. I cannot bring myself to touch margarine of any kind, so I try to make the portion small, but do use butter if I need to. I'll put a little dab, like 1/2 teaspoon on my steamed veggies. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to use less on my whole wheat toast. I just reintroduced whole wheat bread into my diet and can hardly stand toast without butter. I do like it with cottage cheese piled on top, but if I'm eating it mostly plain, I need butter. Plus, a 1/2 teaspoon of butter just doesn't cover the whole piece, so it's more than I should probably be using. Any suggestions for toast? I have been known to use a buttery powder intended for popcorn on my sauteed mushrooms. I use olive oil in the pan, and put that butter flavor in with it. I don't know, though, it's still pretty artificial.

Ezma, Ooh, I wouldn't wait. I'd do it starting tomorrow! It's done wonderful things for my body. It is a little complicated with all the different workouts, but I'll tell you how I started off and it worked out great. (I had help knowing what to do from a family member who is a certified T-tapp trainer.) She suggested doing a 14 day bootcamp to start. So do the workout every day for 14 days. (I take Sunday off, so I just did it until I had done 14 days total.) Start with the instructional tapes. Do #1 first for a couple days, then move to #2. You don't have to do them both on the same day, you can just do one or the other. When you're ready, move to the Total Workout. It will take about 50 minutes, while the others are 20 or 25 minutes. The instructionals are very effective, so don't switch from them until you are really understanding the form on each move and feeling strong. Once you're done with your 14 day bootcamp, take a couple of days off and then alternate every other day the Basic Workout Plus and the Total Workout. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, and I can as my relative for you if I don't know the answer. I just love T-tapp. It doesn't kill me and I really feel stronger and taller after I'm done doing it. It's not your typical workout, there's no music and it's not perfect in it's production quality, but it is a wonderful system and very effective. I do have to warn you that I think I had significant muscle gain from this workout and so you have to take that into consideration with your weight numbers. Do start with your measurements and compare those instead of the scale. I lost 1.5 inches off my hips in two weeks while not losing any pounds. That was a testimonial to me. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

So I'm a little late to the plateau party. I know I've read of frustrations from my fellow VVs. I'm just now realizing/admitting that I'm at a plateau. I weigh the same today as I did on August 3rd. I didn't realize it because I've been bouncing around a few pounds up, a few pounds down, and hadn't really looked at the pattern. So now that I've admitted it, what do I do? Get a fill. Did that. I'm happy with my restriction. Eat like crap for a couple of days, then back to good eating. Not sure about this one. Dh looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned it and he's usually super supportive. Up my exercise. That's just the thing. . .I started exercising right at the end of July, right about when this plateau started. So I already did up the exercise. Don't worry. I'm leaning toward this one. I think I'm doing the right things, just that my body needs a break from losing weight or something. But how long do I wait? I'm getting a little impatient. Anything I haven't thought of? How long did your plateau last? Did you do something that made a difference, or do you think it would have broken either way? I'd love to hear your wisdom.

I've been there with the fear of knowing that I couldn't catch my child if she were to run off. She was a runner too, so I just stayed home nearly all of the time. That is such a scary scenario. I'm pretty sure I knocked her down to keep her from running on at least one occasion.

If you have all those things you mentioned and you're still losing weight, then I'd say you're at your sweet spot! No need to be so tight that you can't eat solid foods if you can do well a little looser. Sounds like you're doing great. Try not to overanalyze what you're doing. If it's working and you're feeling great, then don't worry if you eat more than you thought you would be. Eating is a good thing and if you're making healthy choices, then yay!!

I'm using the T-tapp workout combined with walking. This week I'm starting the Couch to 5K program in place of my walking. My week looks like this: M- Full T-tapp workout, short walk (1.5 miles) T-Short T-tapp workout, CT5K walk/jog W-Full T-tapp workout, short walk (1.5 miles) Th-Short T-tapp workout, CT5K walk/jog F-Full T-tapp workout, short walk (1.5 miles) S-Short T-tapp workout, CT5K walk/jog I love the T-tapp workout. It helps define muscles and I feel stronger.

I haven't seemed to have too much trouble getting rid of the bigger sizes. I just went through things again for a garage sale we're tentatively planning and felt a little pang of sadness as I saw my very favorite things going into the piles. I had to remind myself that it's a great thing, nothing to be sad about. :thumbdown: I agree about thrift stores and plus sizes. I never could even find a blasted 18, let alone anything in the range of 20s. If we had a decent thrift store within a reasonable distance I'd donate them, but we don't, so I'm hoping to get them into the hands of those who need them at the garage sale. I'll advertise that I have plus sizes, hopefully that will help. I've been blessed to get some clothes from a fellow bandster. So when I get into those size 16 jeans, I'll have a dozen pairs that will fit. That's been a huge blessing to me, because frankly I can't afford to buy a new wardrobe to wear for only a couple of months. I like to hang things that I'm almost small enough for in my closet alongside my other things, so I am reminded to keep trying things on, so as not to miss them before I'm too small to wear them. Such an exciting prospect!

I'm game. Point me in the right direction and I'll participate. (Of course this is a good week, having broken that darned plateau, so I'm willing.) :thumbdown:

I love it how you guys call me Skinnyhappy. Thanks for the compliment. I was actually just coming to post that yes, I have broken my plateau. Here's what I did: I did the two days of adding a few decadent treats to up my calories. I didn't go totally crazy, but did up the calories a ways. My weight went down a little, but right back up the next few days. So I don't think that was hugely successful for me. The numbers on the scale were really stressing me out and so I had dh hide the scale and decided to only weigh on my official weekly weight day which is Tuesday. He's so cute about it. He has taken it on as a personal challenge to keep it's location a secret. This morning the scale had magically appeared in its spot for my weekly weigh in. During this last week I've continued to exercise and loosened up my eating a little bit, allowing some extra calories here and there. I didn't track calories, but it was not exorbitant amounts of food, just a bit more. Anyway, this morning I stepped on the scale, so nervous, and to my utter joy, I have lost 3 pounds this week!!!! My conclusion to all of this is that hopefully my exercise is finally making the difference, and that with the exercise I needed to increase my calorie intake to compensate for the exercise. I've been exercising 6 days a week, between 1 and 1 1/2 hours a day. I haven't missed a workout since July 28th and that's about when my weight loss stopped. I felt like at some point the exercise would have to make a difference and that the new muscle mass I'm gaining from exercising would start helping to burn fat. It's taken about 6 weeks for the weight to start coming off again after beginning my exercise routine. I've always heard that when you start exercising, your weight loss can slow down, or even go up, but experiencing it has been hard. I've just tried to focus on the nsvs that I've been having because they were there. My clothes were getting baggier, my inches were going down and I knew I was becoming healthier. I'm just so excited to see the scale move again. Oh, happy day!

I went with my surgeon who had only performed 3 surgeries. At least, that's all he told me. He was very evasive about numbers performed, but when I asked if he'd done any, he said, Of course, you have to do three in front of a proctor. I was the third surgery on my day, so I was probably his sixth. Now he had done many gastric bypass operations, which he assured me were much more complicated than the band. I'm happy with how my surgery went, but there were a lot of places he fell short in other ways which surrounded him being a new surgeon to Lapband. From what you say about your surgeon, I would feel comfortable with her. She sounds like she's competent and not just pumping band patients through her office like crazy. I would ask if there are some patients that you can talk to about their experience. You're likely to get a pretty good picture from that aspect. Good luck. I know it's a hard thing to decide.

This weird thing happens when I exercise. Wherever I sweat a lot, under my arms, under and between my breasts, I get these little water blisters. It looks just like the sweat was unable to completely break through the skin and is stuck just under the very topmost layer of skin cells. They break easily by running my fingernail across them. I must have at least 50 a day. I try exfoliating those areas and still, same problem. I do sweat as well, so it's not all the sweat getting trapped there. Am I just a freak, or do others have this happen as well?

Thanks. I guess it's not a common ailment. It has actually gone away in the last few days. I guess my skin finally got used to sweating frequently and isn't trapping the moisture anymore. They weren't painful at all, just annoying.

You should call your doctor if you haven't already. I had a similar pain in my side for the last two of my three pregnancies. They told me I had a bruised liver, thought maybe it was gall bladder related, but neither of those were true. It was just this mysterious pain that subsided a little when I pressed on the spot. It went away immediately upon delivering my babies. That's why there's no way it was my liver being bruised, it would still have been bruised afterward until it healed. It's probably not the same thing since you said yours is above your heart and in your shoulder, etc. Let us know what happens.

I'm just going to have to wait and see what happens. If I'm still losing weight and at my goal, not wanting to go any lower, then I can see getting fluid removed. If I do what I imagine I'll do and taper off with the weight loss as I reach my goal, I'll probably leave well enough alone and keep the fill I already have. Of course, my plan is to have another baby after reaching goal, so that may very well change my plans completely.

Yikes! Please let us know what the doctor says. I hope you didn't hurt yourself on the way down.

Let's say your calorie goal is 1200 calories. Do you add calories to account for what you've burned off from exercise? I worry that I actually might not be getting enough calories because of my exercise. My surgeon wasn't ever very specific about that detail. What do you guys do?

Now that was a funny typo. :thumbup:

My surgeon was talking to me one time about it and told me that it's not considered a viable option for most of the surgeons he knows and that Dr. Rutledge is not taken seriously among his peers. I honestly haven't researched the differences in the surgery, I just know that from a surface google search, I found a few articles that say that complications that arise from this surgery are common and serious. Sorry, if you need concrete facts, I'm not the person to go to. I just know from what little I know that I wouldn't personally consider the MGB and certainly won't listen to a thing that Dr. R has to say.

Posting videos from Dr. Rutledge doesn't help your case--at all. He's got a controversial product to sell, (Mini Gastric Bypass) and so he's trying to put down his competition. His stuff scared me for about two minutes until I looked into it a bit. He's not a very reputable source for info about the band, IMO. You approached this whole thing with such a negative and sassy attitude, it's no wonder that you weren't received very well. I've had a great experience thus far with the band. I'm sorry it wasn't the same for you.

Thank you for the compliment. I am feeling great. That's why I'm trying not to obsess about my weight loss right now. I do think I may be on the low side of calories. I'm trying to increase by a bit, we'll see how that works out.

I'm right there with you! I have been at 222 for about a month, give or take a pound here and there. I had just started exercising about the time the weight stopped coming off. I know I'm losing inches though. My pants got baggier and I came down a pants size. I have started only weighing myself once a week because the daily thing was driving me crazy. I'm trying to have faith that if I keep up the exercising and eating properly that it will eventually start coming off again. Also, I have good restriction and am not overfilled, so that part's not the issue.

Think of it this way. If you get banded soon, you'll be able to eat actual food over the holidays instead of mushies or liquids. You seem to have your head on straight. Good luck with everything!