Jean McMillan

Yes, I've had the experience of not feeling physically hungry. I didn't experience it as an issue but rather as a benefit of my band. And yes, you need to plan healthy meals and Snacks and eat them according to a reasonable schedule. I also suggest that you weigh and measure your food. When you're not getting physical cues to eat, you have to rely on your own discipline. To understand why you no longer feel hungry and no longer experience satiety after eating, you really need to talk with your surgeon. It's my understanding that the presence of the band on the upper stomach stimulates the vagus nerves that are responsible for carrying hunger and satiety messages to and from your brain.

I'm not clear on the sequence of events in your story. Had you regained the 50 lbs before your unfill, back when you were eating slider and junk foods,or after? When was your unfill? Has your eating changed since then? In what ways? If you have plenty of restriction when you eat now and rarely feel physically hungry, what is the problem? Are you snacking/grazing even when you don't feel physically hungry?

Welcome, Steph. How have you been cooking your veggies? Have you tried cutting them into small pieces before cooking them, and/or mixing them with a small amount of low-fat salad dressing, yogurt, mayo, sour cream?

There's a band vets forum at another support site, and to join that group you need to be at least one year post-op. So based on that...Welcome to the world of band veterans!

READY TO BE WEDDED TO YOUR BAND? On a humid May morning 37 years ago, after a four year courtship, I married my first husband. We exchanged our wedding vows in front of a Catholic priest, a Presbyterian minister, and 40 guests consisting of family and friends. We walked out of the church and into our married life with “until death do us part” in our young minds. Six years later, we divorced. Eventually each of us married again, this time to the right partner, and we’re all still happily married today. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. It’s practice that will make your “marriage” to your adjustable gastric band perfect, or as perfect as any human endeavor can be. It’s important to know that when you wake up in the recovery room after your surgery, you won’t be magically endowed with all the knowledge, experience, and habits you’ll need to succeed with your band. Even if you did tons of research, faithfully attended every pre-op educational class, and listened closely to and made detailed notes of everything your bariatric team told you, some things – important things – you’ll have to learn through the everyday experience of living and eating with your band. When you leave the hospital or surgery center after your surgery, you probably won’t be headed for your honeymoon quite yet. That will come later, when you’ve had enough fills to achieve optimal restriction and you begin to feel that your band is really working. The excess weight will start coming off and you’ll walk around in a dreamy pink haze, delighted with your new life partner. You might even give your band a silly private pet name, the way my husband calls me “Love Bug” (which always makes me think of my first car, a chubby little Volkswagen Beetle). Then one day, the reality of banded life will wake you up. You’ll think, “Who is this creature I’ve married?” And like Jenny, a former coworker of mine, you’ll realize that while the engagement, wedding and honeymoon were exciting and fun, the day-after-day business of marriage isn’t exciting or fun 24 hours a day. It’s hard work. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It’s humdrum. Jenny divorced her new husband after only three months of marriage not because she didn’t love him, but because she didn’t love being married to him. For many of us, being a wife isn’t nearly as fun as being a bride. One day you’re a smiling princess dressed up in flowers and lace; the next day you’re a haus frau frowning at the skid marks in your prince’s underwear. I suspect that Jenny just wasn’t old enough or mature enough to be a wife. Neither was I when I married the first time. One of the reasons most bariatric surgeons and insurance companies require a patient to have a pre-op psychological consult is to evaluate the patient’s understanding of what they’ll have to do to succeed after surgery. Are they ready for a lifetime commitment? Do they have reasonable expectations? Can they follow instructions? Are they capable of learning the new behaviors they’ll need for a productive, peaceful partnership with their band? HABIT FORMING New bandsters need dozens of new habits – something like 60-70% of my book Bandwagon is devoted to explaining those habits, so I’m not going to try to cram them all into a single article. I’ll pick one at random. Hmmm…how about EAT SLOWLY? How are you going to turn that behavior into a habit that will serve you well for the rest of your life? So Dr. McMillan tells you, “Eat slowly,” and you nod your assent while thinking, “Get real! I’m too busy to do anything slowly. I have 3 kids and 2 dogs, I work 2 jobs, I take care of my elderly Aunt Bertha, I coach my daughter’s softball team, I have a house to run and a spouse who’s always on the road…” Well, you get the idea. Dr. McMillan has just told you to do something that’s very simple and yet impossibly difficult, you think Dr. McMillan needs to wake up and smell the coffee, and a door in your mind slams shut. Actually, Dr. McMillan is already awake, has had a cup of coffee, has tended to all 10 of her dogs and all 3 of her cats, is about to leave for the fitness studio, and when she returns she will deal with a home renovation project while running her home-based publishing business off the kitchen table; tomorrow the fun will start all over again, including a 5-1/2 hour shift at her retail job and a trip to the supermarket. She’ll get someone to come look at the leaking French doors, do the laundry, pick another batch off ticks off the new dog, and cook several meals. Dr. McMillan’s friend Nina calls her the “Tennessee Tsunami”, and despite all that, Dr. M. still manages to eat slowly every time she sits down to a meal. As a pre-op, it took her maybe 5 minutes to hoover her way through a meal that would feed a farmhand, and now it takes her 5 minutes to chew her way through the first bite. But that EAT SLOWLY habit (or any other habit) didn’t become a habit for me overnight. It takes many, many repetitions to turn a new behavior into a habit (a British study found that it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days of daily repetition to make a new behavior “automatic”). I know it’s a big challenge, especially when you’re also trying to learn a few dozen other new behaviors and turn all of them into habits while somehow conquering the dozens of bad habits you already had, but I assure you, it’s worth the effort. MIND OVER MATTER? Sometimes the biggest stumbling block in changing my behavior isn’t the behavior itself – it’s me and my stubborn, willful mind. I rarely have a valid reason to refuse a new, healthier behavior, whether it’s a small thing like putting my fork down while I chew each bite, or a bigger thing like always wearing seat belts in the car. My brain stomps its feet and cries, “I don’t WANT to do it!” I have to ease into the new behavior gradually, so that I don’t become overwhelmed and end up crying, “See, I TOLD you it wouldn’t work!” So although part of me knows that this is a huge, lifetime deal, I dole out the changes in small pieces, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. If I live as long as my mom did, I have another 32 years of eating ahead of me. I eat 6 times a day, 7 days a week, so if my arithmetic is correct (no guarantees there), I have another 69,888 meals to chew my way through. That is a truly mind-boggling number, so I’m tackling this task one meal at a time, and I suggest you do the same. I also suggest that you tackle one behavior at a time. Even simple things can become too complicated when you try to do them all at once. Last year, I bought a new cell phone. I hate the telephone and always have; as far as I’m concerned, cell phones are the work of the devil. I chose a phone with far more capabilities than my old one. It seemed like a dandy little gadget when the sales associate was demonstrating it, but when I’d had it a week, I had to return it because (as I told the puzzled 20 year-old who processed the return), I simply could not deal with a device that required me to hop on one foot while patting my head, rubbing my tummy, and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” in order to send an e-mail. So sitting down to each post-op meal trying to remember whether you’re supposed to hop, pat, rub, or sing is a set-up for failure. Better to pick out one new behavior as this week’s challenge. Next week, add another new behavior to your repertoire. The week after that, another one. During that time you’ll be repeating all the new behaviors as you slowly add new ones, and gradually the behaviors that were new become old…in other words, they become habit, and you won’t have to think about them much if at all. When I was a little girl, my mom had to remind me to brush my teeth every day, but eventually the tooth-brushing became an automatic part of my routine. If I were in a car accident (God forbid) and suffered a spine or brain injury that erased all my old habits (good and bad), I’d have to start it all over again. I’d probably festoon my house with reminder notes: BRUSH TEETH on the bathroom mirror; EAT SLOWLY on my placemat; FEED DOGS (well, maybe not – the dogs come complete with their own extremely reliable and audible meal reminder system). That’s a lot of work, I know, but the pay-off is enormous!

READY TO BE WEDDED TO YOUR BAND? On a humid May morning 37 years ago, after a four year courtship, I married my first husband. We exchanged our wedding vows in front of a Catholic priest, a Presbyterian minister, and 40 guests consisting of family and friends. We walked out of the church and into our married life with “until death do us part” in our young minds. Six years later, we divorced. Eventually each of us married again, this time to the right partner, and we’re all still happily married today. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. It’s practice that will make your “marriage” to your adjustable gastric band perfect, or as perfect as any human endeavor can be. It’s important to know that when you wake up in the recovery room after your surgery, you won’t be magically endowed with all the knowledge, experience, and habits you’ll need to succeed with your band. Even if you did tons of research, faithfully attended every pre-op educational class, and listened closely to and made detailed notes of everything your bariatric team told you, some things – important things – you’ll have to learn through the everyday experience of living and eating with your band. When you leave the hospital or surgery center after your surgery, you probably won’t be headed for your honeymoon quite yet. That will come later, when you’ve had enough fills to achieve optimal restriction and you begin to feel that your band is really working. The excess weight will start coming off and you’ll walk around in a dreamy pink haze, delighted with your new life partner. You might even give your band a silly private pet name, the way my husband calls me “Love Bug” (which always makes me think of my first car, a chubby little Volkswagen Beetle). Then one day, the reality of banded life will wake you up. You’ll think, “Who is this creature I’ve married?” And like Jenny, a former coworker of mine, you’ll realize that while the engagement, wedding and honeymoon were exciting and fun, the day-after-day business of marriage isn’t exciting or fun 24 hours a day. It’s hard work. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It’s humdrum. Jenny divorced her new husband after only three months of marriage not because she didn’t love him, but because she didn’t love being married to him. For many of us, being a wife isn’t nearly as fun as being a bride. One day you’re a smiling princess dressed up in flowers and lace; the next day you’re a haus frau frowning at the skid marks in your prince’s underwear. I suspect that Jenny just wasn’t old enough or mature enough to be a wife. Neither was I when I married the first time. One of the reasons most bariatric surgeons and insurance companies require a patient to have a pre-op psychological consult is to evaluate the patient’s understanding of what they’ll have to do to succeed after surgery. Are they ready for a lifetime commitment? Do they have reasonable expectations? Can they follow instructions? Are they capable of learning the new behaviors they’ll need for a productive, peaceful partnership with their band? HABIT FORMING New bandsters need dozens of new habits – something like 60-70% of my book Bandwagon is devoted to explaining those habits, so I’m not going to try to cram them all into a single article. I’ll pick one at random. Hmmm…how about EAT SLOWLY? How are you going to turn that behavior into a habit that will serve you well for the rest of your life? So Dr. McMillan tells you, “Eat slowly,” and you nod your assent while thinking, “Get real! I’m too busy to do anything slowly. I have 3 kids and 2 dogs, I work 2 jobs, I take care of my elderly Aunt Bertha, I coach my daughter’s softball team, I have a house to run and a spouse who’s always on the road…” Well, you get the idea. Dr. McMillan has just told you to do something that’s very simple and yet impossibly difficult, you think Dr. McMillan needs to wake up and smell the coffee, and a door in your mind slams shut. Actually, Dr. McMillan is already awake, has had a cup of coffee, has tended to all 10 of her dogs and all 3 of her cats, is about to leave for the fitness studio, and when she returns she will deal with a home renovation project while running her home-based publishing business off the kitchen table; tomorrow the fun will start all over again, including a 5-1/2 hour shift at her retail job and a trip to the supermarket. She’ll get someone to come look at the leaking French doors, do the laundry, pick another batch off ticks off the new dog, and cook several meals. Dr. McMillan’s friend Nina calls her the “Tennessee Tsunami”, and despite all that, Dr. M. still manages to eat slowly every time she sits down to a meal. As a pre-op, it took her maybe 5 minutes to hoover her way through a meal that would feed a farmhand, and now it takes her 5 minutes to chew her way through the first bite. But that EAT SLOWLY habit (or any other habit) didn’t become a habit for me overnight. It takes many, many repetitions to turn a new behavior into a habit (a British study found that it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days of daily repetition to make a new behavior “automatic”). I know it’s a big challenge, especially when you’re also trying to learn a few dozen other new behaviors and turn all of them into habits while somehow conquering the dozens of bad habits you already had, but I assure you, it’s worth the effort. MIND OVER MATTER? Sometimes the biggest stumbling block in changing my behavior isn’t the behavior itself – it’s me and my stubborn, willful mind. I rarely have a valid reason to refuse a new, healthier behavior, whether it’s a small thing like putting my fork down while I chew each bite, or a bigger thing like always wearing seat belts in the car. My brain stomps its feet and cries, “I don’t WANT to do it!” I have to ease into the new behavior gradually, so that I don’t become overwhelmed and end up crying, “See, I TOLD you it wouldn’t work!” So although part of me knows that this is a huge, lifetime deal, I dole out the changes in small pieces, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. If I live as long as my mom did, I have another 32 years of eating ahead of me. I eat 6 times a day, 7 days a week, so if my arithmetic is correct (no guarantees there), I have another 69,888 meals to chew my way through. That is a truly mind-boggling number, so I’m tackling this task one meal at a time, and I suggest you do the same. I also suggest that you tackle one behavior at a time. Even simple things can become too complicated when you try to do them all at once. Last year, I bought a new cell phone. I hate the telephone and always have; as far as I’m concerned, cell phones are the work of the devil. I chose a phone with far more capabilities than my old one. It seemed like a dandy little gadget when the sales associate was demonstrating it, but when I’d had it a week, I had to return it because (as I told the puzzled 20 year-old who processed the return), I simply could not deal with a device that required me to hop on one foot while patting my head, rubbing my tummy, and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” in order to send an e-mail. So sitting down to each post-op meal trying to remember whether you’re supposed to hop, pat, rub, or sing is a set-up for failure. Better to pick out one new behavior as this week’s challenge. Next week, add another new behavior to your repertoire. The week after that, another one. During that time you’ll be repeating all the new behaviors as you slowly add new ones, and gradually the behaviors that were new become old…in other words, they become habit, and you won’t have to think about them much if at all. When I was a little girl, my mom had to remind me to brush my teeth every day, but eventually the tooth-brushing became an automatic part of my routine. If I were in a car accident (God forbid) and suffered a spine or brain injury that erased all my old habits (good and bad), I’d have to start it all over again. I’d probably festoon my house with reminder notes: BRUSH TEETH on the bathroom mirror; EAT SLOWLY on my placemat; FEED DOGS (well, maybe not – the dogs come complete with their own extremely reliable and audible meal reminder system). That’s a lot of work, I know, but the pay-off is enormous!

An accountability partner is someone with whom you share your daily food & exercise plan, how well you've been following the plan, and any events or situations in your life that are affecting your weight loss or management.

It took me a year to reach my weight goal (90 lbs lost). I lost weight most quickly in the first 6 months, more slowly after that. I've never been able to correlate my weight loss rate with my fill level, though, and I lost weight fairly evenly throughout my body as the months went by. My middle is my trouble spot too. It still is...but not nearly as bad! I eat a very wide variety of foods I like - meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, etc. I need plenty of variety, because when I get bored with food I'm too likely to turn to sweets and salty snacks.

Unbeknownst to me (since I hadn't had a fill or any eating or other band problems for over a year), my old 4cc band was too tight. That put so much pressure on my esophagus that it dilated and lost its ability to transport food into my stomach. Now I'm afraid that even a bigger, newer band could create the same problem, so I'm revising to the sleeve. Not thrilled about it, but making the best of the circumstances. I'm extremely lucky that I have another surgical option for weight management and even more that my insurance is willing to pay for it. I'll always be a bandster at heart, though!

thanks!

The "zones" come from Allergan's patient education materials. Click the link below to see their current Lap-Band Green Zone diagram. You'll need to place your cursor over each section of the diagram to see a list of the signs that you're in that particular zone. http://www.lapband.com/en/live_healthy_lapband/about_adjustments/#greenzone Generally speaking, if you can eat more than one cup of food at a time, you may need a fill. It depends on what kinds of foods you're eating. For example, I can eat a lot more soft food like yogurt than I can of solid food like chicken. In 4-1/2 years, I've had 17 fills and 7 unfills. Three of the unfills were to treat problems, the rest were a matter of "fine tuning". I'm glad you've found a surgeon in Seattle. I think have a local doctor, nutritionist, and other support will help you a great deal.

Raushanah, I think there's hope for you yet, if only because you recognize that you can't do it alone. One of the things you can do is to find an accountability partner. I'm going to send you a PM about that. Another thing you can do is to participate here on LBT - ask questions, answer questions, etc. Even if you don't have a lot of "in person" support, you can find lots of "virtual" support here.

Thanks, Manda, but some of us - me, anyway - should thank you. LBT participation is one of the things that keeps me on track!

Makes sense to me...

Tammy, I kind of wish he'd given you a bigger band, but hope the surgery and hernia repair will be a long term fix. Sometimes small hiatal hernias are missed altogether, and sometimes they worsen or develop as a result of weight loss. A few years ago I asked my surgeon if my untreated hernia could have contributed to my band slip and all she would say was "possibly."

I began my weight loss surgery journey with very nebulous goals. Happiness wasn’t one of them. I knew I was miserable and frustrated and unhealthy, and mainly wanted to neutralize all that so that my future would be not-unhappy. As far as I was concerned, the words “happy” and “weight” didn’t even belong in the same sentence. In his book, Ultimate Lap-Band® Success, bariatric surgeon Duc Vuong (who is insightful about obesity despite being naturally as slender as a blade of grass) talks about identifying a "happy weight" versus a "goal weight". He says your happy weight is the weight at which you are no longer struggling with your relationship with food. You feel good, look good, are confident & active. Me? I have a happy weight, but it keeps changing. When I got to within 20 pounds of my goal weight (which I had casually grabbed off the high end of the BMI chart for a woman of my height), I thought that if I never lost another pound, I'd still be happy and consider my surgery a complete success. I did indeed feel better, look better, was more confident and far more active then than I ever would have dreamed, so I suppose you could say that my Happy Weight was 152 pounds. A few months later, I reached my goal weight, which was most certainly a very happy place. So I suppose you could say that my Happy Weight was actually 132 pounds, not 152. The problem is that my Happy Weight keeps changing. When I regained 20 pounds after a complete unfill to treat a band slip, the 152 pounds that had pleased me earlier was not a happy weight any more. My skinny wardrobe was too tight, my fat clothes were long gone, I tired more easily, my cholesterol went up, and I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t as miserable as I was at 221 pounds, but I wasn’t happy either. I knew I’d get back down to the 132 pounds again (and I did), but in the meantime….I was not happy! What about you? Do you know your happy weight? How do you even define it? Choosing a weight goal, whether measured by your BMI (Body Mass Index), a certain clothing size, reduction or elimination of a medication or the need for a CPAP machine, is fairly concrete. But how do you know what will make you happy? How do you measure happiness? I hate to tell you this, but achieving a certain weight goal won’t necessarily flip the Happy Switch in your brain. It’s quite possible that your happy switch will get turned on well before you reach the end goal, and also that achieving that goal may not yield the results you expected. If you believe (or at least hope) that being a certain body weight will make your partner fall in love with you all over again, things will get messy when you both discover that your slim new shape makes your partner insanely jealous every time someone else gives you an admiring glance. If you believe that a certain body weight will get you the job promotion you long for, and you get laid off instead, what becomes of your happiness? So my advice to you is this: keep your mind and heart open to the kind of happiness that takes you by surprise, and remember that many small NSV’s (non-scale victories) can add up to a huge improvement in your quality of life. There’s one aspect of Dr. Vuong’s definition of a happy weight that illustrates something that’s difficult for him (or any other never-obese person) to understand. That’s the part about your happy weight being the weight at which you are no longer struggling with your relationship with food. Bariatric surgery affects our brain and body chemistry to different degrees depending on the procedure, but it doesn’t cure obesity and it doesn’t forever vanquish our eating demons. That’s why weight regain in bariatric surgery patients is so common, and that’s why I highly recommend counseling, both pre- and post-op, to help us gain the insight and tools to conquer or at least tame those eating demons. Your bariatric surgeon should be able to give you a referral to a therapist who’s experienced with bariatric and/or eating disorder patients. Seeking counseling doesn’t mean you’re crazy – it just means that you recognize that you need help and are willing to give therapy a try.

Thanks, Karen. My advice may be crap, but I'm always good for a laugh!

And I'll bet your surgeon said you had the most beautiful liver he'd ever seen in a patient!

Sometimes a small hiatal hernia is missed altogether, and sometimes hernias develop or worsen after weight loss. My original surgeon knew I had a hiatal hernia and was supposed to fix it when he placed my band, but he didn't. I'll never know why. Hehas since lost his medical license and as far as I know, he might be carrying bedpans in Tijuana by now.

I began my weight loss surgery journey with very nebulous goals. Happiness wasn’t one of them. I knew I was miserable and frustrated and unhealthy, and mainly wanted to neutralize all that so that my future would be not-unhappy. As far as I was concerned, the words “happy” and “weight” didn’t even belong in the same sentence. In his book, Ultimate Lap-Band® Success, bariatric surgeon Duc Vuong (who is insightful about obesity despite being naturally as slender as a blade of grass) talks about identifying a "happy weight" versus a "goal weight". He says your happy weight is the weight at which you are no longer struggling with your relationship with food. You feel good, look good, are confident & active. Me? I have a happy weight, but it keeps changing. When I got to within 20 pounds of my goal weight (which I had casually grabbed off the high end of the BMI chart for a woman of my height), I thought that if I never lost another pound, I'd still be happy and consider my surgery a complete success. I did indeed feel better, look better, was more confident and far more active then than I ever would have dreamed, so I suppose you could say that my Happy Weight was 152 pounds. A few months later, I reached my goal weight, which was most certainly a very happy place. So I suppose you could say that my Happy Weight was actually 132 pounds, not 152. The problem is that my Happy Weight keeps changing. When I regained 20 pounds after a complete unfill to treat a band slip, the 152 pounds that had pleased me earlier was not a happy weight any more. My skinny wardrobe was too tight, my fat clothes were long gone, I tired more easily, my cholesterol went up, and I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t as miserable as I was at 221 pounds, but I wasn’t happy either. I knew I’d get back down to the 132 pounds again (and I did), but in the meantime….I was not happy! What about you? Do you know your happy weight? How do you even define it? Choosing a weight goal, whether measured by your BMI (Body Mass Index), a certain clothing size, reduction or elimination of a medication or the need for a CPAP machine, is fairly concrete. But how do you know what will make you happy? How do you measure happiness? I hate to tell you this, but achieving a certain weight goal won’t necessarily flip the Happy Switch in your brain. It’s quite possible that your happy switch will get turned on well before you reach the end goal, and also that achieving that goal may not yield the results you expected. If you believe (or at least hope) that being a certain body weight will make your partner fall in love with you all over again, things will get messy when you both discover that your slim new shape makes your partner insanely jealous every time someone else gives you an admiring glance. If you believe that a certain body weight will get you the job promotion you long for, and you get laid off instead, what becomes of your happiness? So my advice to you is this: keep your mind and heart open to the kind of happiness that takes you by surprise, and remember that many small NSV’s (non-scale victories) can add up to a huge improvement in your quality of life. There’s one aspect of Dr. Vuong’s definition of a happy weight that illustrates something that’s difficult for him (or any other never-obese person) to understand. That’s the part about your happy weight being the weight at which you are no longer struggling with your relationship with food. Bariatric surgery affects our brain and body chemistry to different degrees depending on the procedure, but it doesn’t cure obesity and it doesn’t forever vanquish our eating demons. That’s why weight regain in bariatric surgery patients is so common, and that’s why I highly recommend counseling, both pre- and post-op, to help us gain the insight and tools to conquer or at least tame those eating demons. Your bariatric surgeon should be able to give you a referral to a therapist who’s experienced with bariatric and/or eating disorder patients. Seeking counseling doesn’t mean you’re crazy – it just means that you recognize that you need help and are willing to give therapy a try.

She was in her late 40's, so there's hope for you yet!

If you're getting stuck on everything for 3 days straight, it's time to put yourself on liquids so everything in there can calm down! I have fibro also (in fact, I tried to join your Fibro and Life group, but couldn't for some reason), and a few months ago I published an article in Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain LIFE magazine about the corelation between obesity and fibro. One doctor told me that weight loss can exacerbate fibro symptoms because of the inflammatory role of adipose (fat) tissue in the immune system. So it makes sense (to me anyway) that a flare up of fibro or another immune system disorder like lupus could cause inflammation in the digestive system.

Good for you! Donating all the junk food will help you a lot. I can't have junk in the house. If it's here, I'm too tempted to eat it. In fact, I start to obsess about it because I can't have it, and then I want it all the more. As for the skin thing...most plastic surgeons suggest that you wait until you've been at your goal weight for 6-12 months before having plastic surgery. I had a breast reduction before my band surgery, and since losing weight, I have some excess skin hanging over the old incision lines, but it's not awful. And I know a woman who regained about 40 lbs after her TT, has lost 30 of that, and her abdomen still looks great. I think your age is a big factor in this - as we get older, our skin loses resilience.

Thanks - those are great suggestions. Unjury's chicken Soup flavor Protein powder is tasty but you're right, very high in sodium. I'm going to try a version of your idea and try making a "cream of" chicken soup using half a scoop of unjury chicken soup powder (I have half a canister to use up)combined with low-sodium chicken broth and milk (the milk will up the protein content.

GREEN? It's green? But who am I to judge? My nails are medium grey with white tips right now!