Wheetsin

For take-out it's either Chipotle or Hot & Sour Soup. Turkey pepperoni. I micorwave it on paper towels until it's crunchy. Fat goes in the paper towels, they go in the trash, and I'm left with a good ratio food that's tasty and works nicely as a chip subsitute. I like to dip mine in cottage cheese. Cottage cheese. Edamame - I like to roast mine until browned, or longer/lower heat until dry so they're crunchy. Makes a great snack nut. Refried Beans. I always have a can of fat free chili/lime refired beans in the pantry, and now that I've found refried black beans, those as well. Soy milk. In a pinch, it will do for a meal on the go. I've yet to find foods I can't eat, but some cause more discomfort than others. These include anything slimy (cut strawberries, bananas, applesauce, wet eggs, etc.), things I tend to swallow too much at once (I don't care much for chips, but I do like the Archer Farms Hot & Spicy chips... but have to go VERY slow). I've given up red meat because it's way more chewing than it's worth. I can do grapes but I either peel them or chew them up and spit out the skins. And I can do Peanut Butter, but unless it's whizzed into something, I have to be careful with it.

Yeah, it's fast food. Assembly line style. Maybe similar to Subway in how it works, tho I've seen two Subways with drive thrus. If you have a Mesa Wraps or Qdoba, it's not horribly different. Sit-in, but their futniure is specifically designed to be uncomfortable. For two reasons that are related - one to ship people out faster (they get horrendously busy at lunchtime), and two is because they sell beer, but don't want people lingering there like they do at restaurants or bars. Chipotle: Gourmet Burritos and Tacos

BooBoo - our master bedroom has a walk-in closet. The right side has a high-hanging rod, for dresses and such, and a shelf above it. The left side has a shelf at the middle with rods above it abd below, for shirts, slacks, etc. In the middle is built-in shelving for sweaters, shoes... My husband gets the lower rod on the left. The rest of the closet is mine. Of the chest, dresser, and armoire he gets one drawer in the chest. Our has has two other bedrooms, each with identical closets to the master, but smaller. The 2nd bedroom closet is completely mine. The 3rd we split evenly. I've finally gotten the closets to the point where I actually wear what's in them. Every now and then I will "closet audit" and find things I don't wear, and toss them out. I'm like Fairy in that I have criteria for staying in my closet. I have to have work it in the last 3 months, OR know I will where it but just haven't had the right occasion/event. It has to fit, if it's too big I toss it or put it in my "consider it for lounge/housework" pile - things like big tshirts and knit gauchos go here. I REALLY need to do something about my clothing situation, as in get rid of it. We have a storage unit and at least 40% of it, ceiling to floor, is full of big 50+ gallon storage tubs full of clothes. On top of that there are probably 20+ of the Ziploc XXXL storage bags, 4 - 5 55+ trash bags, and who knows what else. Easily enough for 4 separate wardrobes. But what to do with it? I thought about ebay but was talked out if it. Maybe consignment. I'm not much of one for charity (depends on the charity), and don't have a lot of bandsters in my area who would wear those sizes. Maybe in the spring I will just get a uhaul or smtg, and go consignment... *shrug*

Im eating soup now. If I eat lunch, 95% of the time it's soup because that's the only thing I can get down. I have uneven restriction, so I'm usually super tight early - mid day, and open after. Lastnight for dinner I had a turkey patty with onions and peas, and this morning it took a good 10 mins to "recover" from a drink of soy milk. However, the only way I mix my lunch soup with solid food is if the soup has chunks in it.

My fast food choices: Chipotle chicken bol, no rice extra black Beans, hot salsa, light on the cheese & sour cream. I can easily get 2 - 3 meals out of this. Schlotzky's Thai chicken pizza or Soup. Taco Bell or Taco Bueno - pintos & cheese. Sometimes I will get a spicy chicken taco and add some of the meat to the beans, hubby eats the rest. McDonald's Fruit n' Yogurt parfait.

I'm the wrong person to answer this because my basics are overboard and particular, but here you go. My basics for winter: 4 pairs of jeans. Two light wash, two dark wash. In each wash, one with an inseam for flats and one with an inseam for heels. So basically a pair of light & dark jeans for heels, and a pair of light & dark for flats. Two pair of black dress pants. A pair of grey pants. 3 pair of subtly patterned brown slacks. (I do not like solid brown pants.) These are absolute minimums for me b/c I won't wear slacks more that once between cleanings, and I don't want to bother with 24 hour cleaners. Camis and long sleeve cotton shirts. I have camis in just about every color. I like to layer, and they're perfect for wearing under blazers, layering under shirts, etc. I also keep 2 cream and 2 white long sleeve cotton shirts, for wearing under sweaters. Shoe basics - brown pant heel boots, black pant heel boots. An everyday black heel, an everyday brown heel. An everyday black flat, an everyday brown flat. A boot for when there's ice/snow out. And then the "sport shoes" - not quite tennis shoes, not quite flats. Think Sketchers style. I wear these fairly often outside of work. I follow the same rules for coat basics. One for black-based outfits, one for brown. For black, I have a black wool peacoat, and for brown I have a leather coat with a tie waist. I'm extremely particular about what I wear black with, or what I wear brown with, and I never mix the two unless it's khaki bottom with black top.

So I'll tell a little story first. A coworker and I went out shopping today at lunch. We were standing there looking at something, and she went a few steps away to look at something else. Peripherally I noticed someone off to the side, and I had the "sense" that this person was starting at me, but without being completely aware of it. Hard to explain. After a few seconds I DID become aware of it, and normally I would ignore it, but what went through my head was "Maybe it's someone who thinks they know you, and they keeping looking at you trying to figure out if it's "you" or not" (at this point I didn't even know if the person was male or female). So I looked up at them to see who it was, and some guy is standing there completely staring at me, and I don't know who it is. I had completely assumed it would be so I was caught off guard and just kind of turned around and went the other way because it creeped me out. I would never, ever in a million years assume that someone looking/staring at me, or even up coming to talk to me, etc. was flirting. I would assume they were just nice, just weird, thought I was someone else, etc. After I had gone the other way my friend found me and was talking about the guy that was "totally checking me out", how he had leaned to watch me as I walked around the corner, etc. And I suddenly realized - wow, she and I have very different ideas of what's flirting, and what isn't. So then I started wondering, are there things I do with NO meaning behind them, that are perceived by others as flirting? So if you want to flirt with someone, what do you do? And likewise, what does someone else do that makes you believe they're flirting?

It wasn't that pleasant to think about as I wrote, either. Very few things can make me ill on site. Cadavers, organs, blood - doesn't phase me. Saliva on the other hand, ewwblblblb...

I see support in different ways. There is the support that I would receive from "real people" (those I know in real life), and support I would receive from "virtual people" (those I know online). In the virtual world, support to me is getting information or answers to my questions. I'm not an emotionally needy person, and what little I do need I prefer to get from "real people." Most of the things I need support with are significant changes, such as getting banded, for which I don't feel adequately prepared or informed. So, when I come to a support-based message board, I'm looking for information. I would not be the type to ask "virtual people" to "cheer me up, kick me into gear, help me through hard times, etc. To me, "virtual people" are words on a screen, and I just don't see support coming from that. (Nothing wrong with those who do, just different people types is all.) So when you come to ANY virtual setting for support, what is that support to you?

Well, let's see. I didn't eat Breakfast. For lunch I got some sushi rolls, about 1.5" across and deep. Average size. I ate part of one about 40 minutes ago and can still feel it there. For dinner last night, I ate about 1/3 of a wrap made from a normal-sized tortilla. That would probably compress down to about a cup. If Im getting something like cottage cheese or tuna, I will grab - probably the equivalent of a baby food jar. So - as you can tell from my example, I don't give a $^#& what volume of food I'm eating. I eat when I'm hungry, and I stop eating when I'm no longer hungry. It's never much food. I think the quanitty thing is a (good) guideline surgeons use to guide those who don't yet have a feel for how much food they need post-op. Once people get to that point, measuring portions seems to go out the window.

I should probably add, I'm around 5'11 and have broad shoulders, wide hips, both of which effect my sizing.

Many bandsters find that bread, above and beyond all else, is nearly impossible for them to get past the stoma. Yes, you can chew it up, but it has a ton of gluten in it, and even well-chewed... heck, especially well-chewed, it's that much more sticky/gummy. If you chew up bread and swallow it, you've basically just swallowed salive that's about the consistency of gummy pudding. That's not very user-friendly when it comes to a very small hole. Human saliva is pretty thick, you jsut don't realize it becaause it's spread out. Imagine (eww) a glass of thick human saliva, with a piece of bread in it. Mash the bread around, and imagine how thick that's going to be. Hence the problems with it.

I'm 235 - 245 now, depending on the day. Tops are between 14/16 and 18/20, have some in either size. I bought a regular misses 1x at Kohl's the other night, and a junior's 2x at Target. Pants are 18 - 20, the occasional 22 if I'm somewhere that they run small. If I'm just going to walk in anywhere and try something on, I will grab a 20 and go up or down from there. Pre-op I was 382 and in a 30/32, which fit most of the time, but not always.

I just found out about their decision to do it this morning, so I hadn't really thought much about their success, ability to change, etc. Do I think they could... I know they both could at first. I think my mother would have the hardest time staying with the program. But maybe once she lost the weight (she's only been short term successful with weightloss one time), that would be enough to motivate her. My feelings aren't (yet) stemming from concern about their success. I'm being much more shallow than that. And I don't as of yet feel any responsibility for their success/failure. I've already told them it's up to each person to make this work. Right know the rift it's purely - I want you to be healthy, but son of a bitch, you gave me so much shit about doing this, and now that I've been successful, you're going to turn around and do it too. The bypass probably would be a better option for my mother, but she won't do it. I've talked to her about it. My father - probably the better band candidate.

Just answered this in a different thread.

There's a HUGE difference between "starvation" and "what's required to maintain a healthy weight." The lap-band limits your portion size, in most cases. Many people at or close to goal find that they're eating portion sizes that maintain their weight. I know MANY bandsters whose "tiny portions" are actual, regular portions... just sooo much less than they mammoth portions they were used to. Keep in mind that obese people require many more calories to maintain their weight than non-obese. Let's take some random person (we'll call her Jane). Jane at 400 lbs takes almost 3,800 calories to maintain her weight -- that's neither losing, nor gaining, but just staying 400 lbs. If she eats more than that she will gain, and if she eats less she will lose. Jane at 150 lbs takes 1800 calories to maintain that weight. Decreasing Jane's intake by 2000 calories is not starving her, it is getting her to a normal intake that will enable weightloss. Most bandsters seem to target around 1000 calories. That is essentially a reduced calorie diet, made available through decreased intake. I'd have to wager that if anyone here could MAINTAIN that, they'd not be here. We could all cut our calories for some period of time, but where are we in a year? 5 years? 10 years? Could I eat like I do now, without the band? No way in hell. I don't have enough willpower, and was too eractive to anything that felt like hunger, and way too ingrained in my bad bheaviors. We absorb/digest everything we eat, that passes through the stoma. Just like anyone else. That's why lap-banders are more accountable for their actions (IMO). If we sit around eating ice cream all day, we metabolize it and will not lose weight. As long as adequate nutrients are going in your mouth, and you're not yakking them back up (not very likely), we get enough nutrients.

For headaches, you cal also try Tylenol's "Rapid Blast". It is extra strength adult Tyleon in liquid form. There is also a liquid Tylenol PM. For sinus headaches, a dose of Rapid Blast followed by a about 1 tsp of liquid Benadryl does wonders!

I cannot do pills at all unless I crush them. One of my worst PBs was on something roughly 1/3 - 1/4 the size of a Tylenol. I've tried two other times, all very small pills, and just can't do it. A stuck pill feels just like a stuck anything else. Whether or not it will pass depends on - how quickly it dissolves, and really just the flip of a coin as to whether or not your body can get it through, whether or not Jupiter is aligned with Saturn, and how many dogs are out there living with cats.

Answers in blue. My name is Diane and I am going to be banded on Jan 15, 08 and I have lots of questions. What does feeling restrction mean. Some people say they feel more restriction in the morning than in the afternoon. And some people say the band helps control hunger, but most of us do not eat because of physical hunger, mostly just because food is there. So does it take away appetite? Feeling restriction means that you are getting full on a very small amount of food, that you can feel the pressure of the food sitting above the band, that you find you cannot pass certain foods, etc. + a host of other things people begin to experience when they reach restriction. Restriction itself is the state of having the band physically tightened around the organ walls enough that it is being partially closed off. Some people (me included) lose their appetite, some do not. Most everyone finds that, once they reach their ideal restriction, very small portions fill them up for long periods of time. And then the nutritionist said after the band I will be eating between 500-800 calories a day. So then how can you possibly not loose weight? 500 - 800 is a little low. Most people generically target 1000 - 1200, but really an ideal intake is different for everyone. As long as your range is falling between your BMR and AMR, you should see weightloss. There are periods where you will not, even if you follow the rules. And then she said I will only be able to eat 1-2 ounces at a time. That's not very much. I think most people find that 4 - 6 oz, or about a cup, is where they fall but this is completely different for each person. There's no way I could eat even a half a cup (unless it's hot soup) during the day, but might be able to wing more than a cup at dinner if I'm hungry. So, will I ever be "normal" again. As in can you go out with people socially. Well, I don't think many of us here would consider ourselves ABNORMAL. I think I'm normal (as far as eating, social life, etc.) goes. And do you throw up a lot or have bad pain? When you do something stupid like don't follow the rules, aren't paying attention, or maybe are just having one of those days, it's possible that what you've swallowed will not pass through the stoma. When this happend, usually the food has to come back up. It's not the same as what you're associating with throwing up - there's no stomach acid involved, no partially digested food, etc. It's just whatever got stuck, and maybe what you've swallowed since. Actually when I "PB" qas we tend to call it for some stupid reason, it's usually just really thick saliva, no food. For me, the time leading up to the PB - when my body is trying to clear whatever is stuck, is fairly painful. It's a long time of a noticeable pressure, followed by a relatively short time of some sharp cramping/spasms. The PBs themselves are not that bad, mostly because they mean the pain stops. And then how do you stop loosing weight so you don't end up looking like Star Jones? I don't really know about Star Jones, but I'm going to guess she had bypass or something like that, because bandsters don't lose weight uncontrollably. If you find you're losing too much weight, an unfill could help, but most likely you'd find that your metabloism would adjust to your daily caloric intake and you would reach equilibrium (maintenance). I asked the nutritionist these questions and she said well people eat all day long and stretch out their pouch. Here's a nutritionist who doesn't know what they're talking about. Nutritionists are not band experts, they are nutrition experts (and in some cases, that doesn't even seem to apply). You could eat all day and NEVER stretch your pouch, as long as you weren't eating more than what it could contain without needing to stretch. Does that make sense? Most stretching occurs when you eat more than the pouch can contain, causing it to have to stretch. Overeating, basically. (per my surgeon's info) But how can you do that if you can only eat 1 ounce at a time or you are in pain and throw up? Please help Like I said earlier, I don't know too many people who only eat 1 ounce at a time. Most of us eat until we're no longer hungry. By "us" I mean people who have lived with their bands a while, learned them, and developed their own sense of what they should be doing. If it's an ounce, it's an an ounce. If it's 5 ounces, it's 5 ounces. Being in pain and throwing up isn't something that happens all the time for no reason at all, and it isn't how we lose our weight. It's something that happens when, for whatever reason, something we've ingested cannot pass through the stoma, OR if we've piled too much in too quickly and filled beyond capacity faster than we can empty. I would GUESS that many cases of stretching the pouch (keep in mind we're still talking low rates) happen when it's SLIGHTLY overfilled over longer periods of time.

I lost my appetite about 2 days before surgery (liquid diet), and have never really gotten it back. It's very, very rare that I feel hungry. It's not unusual that I go all day and eat nothing, and come dinner time I'm still not hungry but eat something or have a Protein drink anyway. I'm not alone - a while back I started a thread on this, and more people than I would have anticipated reported the exact same thing.

This is making me want to ask all of the men I know if they think I flirt with them, because I do the same things you're (across the board) describing, and mean absolutely nothing by it. I just consider it being nice, joking around, whatever.

Very normal, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose. For the first few weeks, you can guesstimate that roughly 30 - 50 percent of the weight you lose is fat, while the rest is going to be Fluid. I lost about 30 - 35 lbs in my first week. enjoy it while it lasts, because eventually you're probably going to slow waaay down.

I MAY have access to do this, never had to try before. If you want to PM me with your desired name I can give it a try, and if I can't do it I can post it to the other mods to see if they can.

I don't believe in free will so it's all good.

(Writing this after the fact - wow, I really went on a rave here). We have a corner lot. And we're the first residential intersection coming off of a road that borders open land/wooded area on one side. Kids like to come down that road, turn into the residential area, and "doughnut" in our intersection. Not only does this wake us up very rudely at 3am, but usually the doughnut fails and we end up having deep tire/wheel ruts in the strip between street and sidewalk (which we're responsible for), and on into our yard. I'm going to estimate 6 - 8 times per year we have to go out there and full the ruts with soil & reseed because we're responsible for it if (I can just imagine someone turning their ankle stepping into the rut). And because we like our yard to look nice. We have no topsoil, it's 100% clay under our grass, so it gets VERY soft and squishy when it's wet, and then dries VERY hard. Needless to say, it can be a good bit of work/expense to fix this. Also, for a long time, we've had a large patch of grass that would die almost as soon as it started growing. We've tried fungicides, insecticides, fertilizers - all with the same results. Since taking a job where I can work from home, I've learned that our front yard is the hang out spot for parents and children waiting for the bus. Oh no, they can't be bothered to actually wait on the sidewalk, they loiter in our yard, sit on our retaining wall, etc. And kill our grass. We have landscape edging done with "edge stones" (interlocking bricks that can be angled to form curves) and the kids like to walk that like it's a balance beam, which causes them to shift and we have to re-set them. And we have three trees on the strip between the sidewalk and street, and the trees have edgestone borders around the bases with river rock inside, and they like to take the river rock (which we paid for, hauled, and put in place) and chuck it into the street, or even down the sewer drain. One time I went to run an errand and caught about 4 kids scooping up the river rock and throwing it into the sewer, so I pulled my car over and asked them to please stop doing that. I didn't yell, lose my temper, curse, etc. I just said "Please stop throwing our rocks into the sewer." One of their moms apparently lives 2 houses down because she came running over like I had just cut her kid's head off and asked what was going on. When I told her that we have a problem with kids throwing the rock into the sewer, she loked at me like I had a second head and was like "They're KIDS, what do you expect?" When I said "Enough quality supervision that they can't vandalize my property or my possessions" she just huffed off. No apology, no visible discipline. The last few snows have been very revealing, because they show where, exactly, people walk. And I'll tell you -- I really have to wonder WHY people need to walk the whole length of our street-side within 3 fee4t of our house (not on the sidewalk, but close enough to our house that they could touch it), or why they need to walk up to our windows (we keep blinds drawn on all ground level windows, so there's nothing to see). I'm starting to wish we could just fence in our entire property because people truly have NO respect for others' property -- this goes for children, adults, and everything in between. I have stood at my window and watched people walking their dogs along the sidewalk bordering our property, letting their dogs walk into our yard and take a crap. And then I raise the window, and ask these people, "Please don't let your dog crap in our yard" they say "It doesn't hurt anything" and keep walking, no picking it up or anything. Or more often they say nothing, and just let the dog continue. So then when my husband goes to mow the grass, he ends up tracking dog shit into the garage and I have to go scrub the conrete floor to get rid of it. The neighbors behind us have a cat that roams, and always wants to roam into our yard. We have a fenced yard and a dog that is very protective of his property. He freaks out if there's a strange animal in our yard, and he freaks out when he sees a cat, period. But that's why we have a 4 ft fence and a 13lb dog. This cat wanders into our yard all the time and shits in the grass and pees on my bushes and kills them. We've asked our neighbor countless times to keep his cat out of our yard and he just says "That's what cats do, you need to get over it." This summer the cat was in our yard - we didn't see it and let the dog out (yes, we can't even let our own ddog out into your own fenced-in yard without first checking for the cat), the dog took off after it, crashed into the fence, and we walked away with a $3k bill for the surgery it took to repair his leg. I SWEAR that I'm going to get an animal trap, trap the cat, and take it to a shelter 3 hours away so the neighbor can never reclaim it. When I see the cat in our yard, I will turn the hose on it, but I have to 1) see it, 2) get to the hose before it runs out of the yard. We've tried putting up "keep off the yard please" signs, and little signs that have a picture of a dog pooping with a "no" sign through it... we've tried staking off the problem grass area with wooden stakes and rope so people won't trod there until we can get the grass nicely rooted... but we just come home to find them torn up, or completely disregarded. I have literally driven down the street and seen ADULTS holding their childrens' hands, stepping over the ropes and walking right through the area. In the middle fo our freaking front yard!! For crying out loud people! The sidewalk doesn't go at an angle through our yard, it wraps around the corner. And you're out here walking and exercising, so can't you just take the 20 or so extra steps to actually walk around the corner on the flipping sidewalk? And we live in a "nice" neighborhood full of apparently ill-behaved children and apathetic yuppy parents. Wish I had a good solution for this one, because annually we have to put about $600 and our labor into fixing problems that are a direct result of this loitering.