Wheetsin

I haven't weighed in a week or two, but I'm probably 150 - 160 lbs down.

Green, if you haven't yet, check out the Darwin Awards.

Hahahaha. Yesterday I was at Target looking for some yoga pants. In the Women's department. There was a not thin, not fat lady ahead of me poking through some clothes that were hanging on the wall. She had a kid in her cart distracting her. I wlked by and was looking on the other side of her, and she says, "Oh! I didn't realize these were the really big sizes." Then she looks at me, gives me that up & down look, turns red and says "Sorry I didn't see you there." It's ok lady, I'm PROUD of the sz 18 I pulled off the wall! (People assume you have always been as fat as wheneve they see you) Today a guy at the grocery store told me I looked like "the modern day Mona Lisa." And I'm thinking... umm... a gender neutral person with no eyebrows?!?

Strain it = liquid. On the subject of eggs. Soo weird. I can do non-scrambled eggs just fine. Scrambled ones tend to take too long to pass. I've not PBed on them, but I've thought I might. I should specify - real eggs. Unprocessed. The crap that cafeterias use that comes out of a milk carton tends to stick, but I can do it. Haven't PBed on it, but it doesn't taste anywhere near good enough to justify the 30 mins between bites.

See, I paint my ceilings and assume everyone does, even though I know it's not true. (But everyone SHOULD). :heh: When you go to buy rollers, they will be packaged based on the texture, and usually give you some examples of the texture they're suited for. E.g. "lightly textured, wood or sanded drywall", "medium texture, stucco or cement," etc. If you are uncertain, go to a paint store (not hardware store) and ask them what nap you should use. You can even bring in pics of your walls to show them the texture.

Answers below in blue.

I don't see any reason to think your band has slipped. Restriction can go away over time - with weightloss, with new body patterns that emerge, etc. I'd say chill... you're probably not slipped. You've probably just lost some restriction. In the unlikely event that something has happened, you doc will be able to tell very easily.

I should add - there are "general" definitions, but certainly all of the above can mean different things to different people. Some people will tell you it's only a PB if food comes up, and that if just saliva comes up, it's still only sliming. Etc.

1. Sliming (I've never seen it abbreviated) is - to me - the heavy salivation that usually precedes a PB. The saliva takes on a thicker, "ropey" consistency and comes on almost non-stop. 2. Dumping (haven't seen this one abbreviated either) is not something bandsters do. It's associated with gastro bypass or routing procedures. 3. PB = productive burp. It's the process by which something that cannot pass through the stoma (the opening the band leaves) is ejected. People often call this (unfortunately) "puking" or "vomitting", even though they're completely different functions.

The only place I've been able to find it is Wal-Mart, and they're out of it maybe 30% of the time that I look, so I buy 4 or 5 bottles at a time. I've looked at Target, grocery stores, Walgreens, CVS, Eckard's, etc. Only Wal-Mart seems to carry it around me. Unfortunately. :cry It comes in two flavors, one is Cherry, and I believe the other is a PM and comes in "Warm Vanilla" or something (it's soooo nasty). I also believe both are marketed as "Rapid Blast".

No, because there are no foods that universally (among bandsters) can't be eaten. In addition, every surgeon has their own version of a "foods to avoid" list. E.g. my surgeon says eat anything you can tolerate, but don't drink carbonated beverages. Another surgeon in town says don't red meat unless it's slow cooked, carbonated beverages are fine. It's truly individual. Each person finds things they can, or cannot tolerate. Personally I've not yet found a food that I can't eat. Some go slower than others, but I can still eat them without problems.

Here are some I've encountered. I've removed my responses for the sack of text length, but I love to egg people like this on. From a former employee, explaining why she wanted to go home early: I have to take down the hummingbird feeders. If I don't, they'll all die. See, the geese are getting ready to fly south for the winter. If I leave the feeders out, the hummingbirds will stay to eat, and miss the geese. See, they use their long beaks to clip on to the geeses' armpits, and hitch a ride with them. Think about it. They're so small, there's no way they could fly that far on their own. Their beaks are like little roach clips. A random stranger in the grocery store told me this as I was trying to pick out a good watermelon: Don't waste your time thumping them, just go for one with lots of this stuff *points to the growth scars on the rind*. That stuff is from the bees. See, the bees poke their stingers into the watermelons and suck the juice out, and being poked by the bee stingers makes this stuff on the outside. So, the more of this stuff on the outside, the sweeter the watermelon must be. Have more, but heading out. Will pick up later!

*nodnod* Another myth - working out will make your skin shrink. This is just another facet of the above. Your skin doesn't shrink because you're exercising, you're just adding muscle bulk behind the skin, which fills it out more. Very very very very very very very few people have great, naturally elastic skin. BUT, unless they're like... 6, or were only obese for a handful of months, or just REALLY lucky, they're gonna look like the rest of us. Balloons are really stretchy, but if you blow one way up, and leave it like that for 5 years, and then defalte it, it's not going to look like a skinny little balloon anymore. Unfortunately there is no OTC pill, cream, ointment, injection, etc. that will force skin that has lost its shape & elasticity to go back to the way it "should be."

I'm sooo gonna need PS. I'm so freaking deformed. I have 4 boobs. Two that I was born with, and two that have formed as my side fat has gone away. The new boobs (or "noobs") have formed straight down from my armpits. From my boobs down to about 3" above my bellybutton I look ok, aside from the fact that it looks like a toddler used their new Crayola marker in the fabulous fall color "Stretchmark" to create a schematic of NY's subway system. And the fact that I'm saggy, and have random sad faces, and sometimes a mad face, popping up over the emotional canvas that is my mid-section. Below that, my bellybutton has disappeared. I'm not kidding. It has been sucked backward into the black hole of my abdomen, creating a sort of bottomless lint trap. If you were looking at my belly head on, my "Artist Formerly Known as Bellybutton" looks kind of like a cross between a big frowny face and a melting sharpei. I can literally take something long like a medical Q-Tip (think of the big huge ones the swab your pootie with during a gyno visit), insert it into said bellybutton, push it in until my fingertips are against my skin, and not reach the bottom. Stemming downward from my cavernous bellybutton, almost like a line of drool, is a crease. This goes all the way down my bottom stomach. (I have a top stomach, and a bottom stomach, like a big fat "B"). The skin around the line is very saggy, but also poochy. I've never seen one, but I would image this is what an 80 year old butt crack would look like. My thighs also look like a couple of socks full of quarters.

I would start with the state medical board.

I have no true phobias (a debilitating fear that you literally cannot function through). Things I strongly dislike include: Large spiders. Tiny ones don't bother me, but anything bigger than say, a quarter, gives me big creeps. Exposed heights - I'm fine in an airplane, helicopter, etc. - and will stare out the window all day, but I'm enclosed. If you put me on the edge of a cliff, that's a different story. I don't think I could do a hot air balloon. I like roller coasters (if they don't drop), but freak on the ferris wheel. (I will also get mild vertigo in these situations, sometimes a really long stairway is enough to do it).

I came very close to joining Sigma Tau Delta, a sorority for English majors who met a host of other requirements. In a way I'm very glad I didn't, and in a way, I wish I would have. The glad I didn't actually covers "in many wayS." Wish I would have only covers the missed networking later in life.

:hail: :hail: :hail:

No sites are going to be comrehensive to where you could select exactly what you had and avid issues of serving size, or even individual product differences (e.g. this store's "ground chuck" has 5g of fat, but this store's "ground chuck" has 7g). But there are a few sites that get you close, and let you add your own serving sizes... or select several of a smaller size to roughly estimate a larger one. The only one I can ever remember is FitDay - Free Weight Loss and Diet Journal but I know there are at least two or three other biggies out there.

First of all, find little comfort in knowing that you're not alone because I could have written your description of your restriction pattern. We're pretty much identical. Hmm, I was going to say that if you're taking larger pills whole, you may need more restriction. *I* could use more restriction, and can't take pills. You sound like me, where restriction is based on time of day much more so than the food you're eating, how you're chewing, etc. I can gurgle over Water in the morning, but by evening have no mechanical restriction. In other words, I technically can eat much MUCH larger volumes of food than what we're "supposed" to eat. But I can barely get a nibble down before evening. That's why I say "rubbish" to "rules" about the band, and that's more than wanton anarchy. I've listened to people telling me that I need a fill, I shouldn't be able to eat more than 1/4C at a time, etc. I wish it were that easy! Thank good ness I'm accustomed to small portions, because if I *wanted* to eat a whole entree, I *could*... as long as I waited until evening. Before evening, it takes me about an hour to get a small Soup down. I could certainly use more fill to help with the evening hours, BUT - I don't want to be tighter than I am in the a.m. If I was any tighter, there's no way I could eat or drink much of anything before, say, 4 - 5pm. Actually I tried another fill and ended up closing completely, to the point that I couldn't pass my own saliva and had to yak every 5 minutes, just from swallowing. I'm afraid that any more fill will have me WAY too tight then, even though it might give me "moderate" restriction in the evening. My two ents - you don't want to be too tight, a factor which I firmly believe contributes to erosions at the very least, (I don't see how it could NOT), if not slips. So I figure I'm at my happy medium, because when you average out am & pm, I would have perfect restricition. I just don't have it all at the same time. As for your meds, the enteric coating controls where the medication is released. E.g. coatings are made resistant to stomach acid, but easily dissolved in the intestine. You definitely don't want to even think about chewing or crushing anything that's enteric coated. Have you asked your doc for liquid or elixir alternatives for some of your pills? My advice - don't sweat that you're eating more than you "should" in the evenings. Cup shmup. IMO, if you have problems getting Protein drinks down EVER, then more fill is not your answer. Else youll end up like me, having to stop to yak up egg white and soap lather saliva every 5 minutes en route to your emergency unfill.

DOesn't mean you have to do all the hills, right? Just do a few. Or go slower. There are many resources out there for exericsing with children - ways to use them in your routine, so that while it's exercise for you, it's fun for them. No idea how old your kids are, but all of these are from Google hits: <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Turn on some music and dance together. Toddlers love dancing, especially when their parents joins in. <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Push your kid on a swing. And, after every push complete one squat. <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Use an infant carrier or bike trailer to enjoy a bike ride together. <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Spend an afternoon at a park with a playground, but don’t spend the whole time relaxing on the sidelines – join in on the fun. Spend some time swinging to help workout your legs. Try making it across the monkey bars – even just once (it’s a great upper body workout and you’ll be amazed that your kid does it with such little ease). Try some pull-ups using a bar on the playset. Do some tricep dips on a nearby park bench. <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Play catch with a ball or get a small group together for a kickball or softball game. Involve your kids while you strength train. Let them count your reps out loud for you and/or clock your rest time in-between sets. For pool outings, don’t just spend time soaking up the sun. Walk back and forth in shallow Water while your kids have fun splashing about. On rainy days that force you inside, walk or run up and down the stairs. You might even make it a contest to see who can finish 5 complete rounds first.

I have several vegan friends and what strikes me is how many things they can't touch. Things I wouldn't even think of - ever - until they've told me why. WOW. I admire their dedication!

Completely unacceptable. File a complaint.

It's actually very easy. IMO the hardest part is going to be 1) if you have a popcorn ceiling and 2) if you have intricate moulding to deal with. The PITA part for me is all the masking/taping. The NICE part is that's only an issue with baseboards and rooms with crown moulding. Since I ALWAYS paint the ceiling the same color as the walls, I can be uber sloppy everywhere else! There is a chemical that I'm completely drawing a blank on now, that I've used to wash the walls with first. It was recommended by three prof painters I know personally. But you have to wear gloves when you work with it, I guess it can be nasty stuff. Last time we painted was a bit of a rush job, so instead of that chemical, I just used the Mr. CLean magic erasers, or whatever they're called. You need to pay attention to what paint is currently on the walls. Not just in terms of color/priming as a previous poster mentioned, but also in terms of type of paint. E.g. trying to paint latex over oil will require a special primer. Finish also matters. I'm a matte girl so it's no problem for me, but if you prefer glossies, they're a lot harder to get a good result from, and you may want to think twice about trying to DIY them. We're actually getting ready to contract out painting of the living room (22 ft ceilings - I'm not even pretending I'd do that DIY), kitchen, both hallways, DH's home theater room, and a spare bedroom, and a repaint of a bathroom. We've worked with the same painter for a while and we've sent him a lot of business. Our price for all those rooms is $1200 with materials included, it's not even worth the brain power to think about doing it myself for that amount. :whoo: If you're interested in bidding out, now would be a good time to get estimates. It's starting to get chilly out (depending on where you live) and painters' outdoor work is tapering off. They'll want to get some interior jobs in before winter hits. Some tips from our lessons learned if you're going to DIY (these are also a matter of preference): The blue tape isn't as non-sticky as they make it out to be. Tack it into your shirt or carpet before putting it on the wall. Edging kits (that claim they can make trim work happen without tape) aren't all they're cracked up to be. Don't bother with one of the flat pads for painting walls. They're ok for edging, but DH bought the big one "made for walls" when we painted his bathroom, and it's a mess. (previous mention of a repaint). If you have popcorn ceilings, scrape them. Ok seriously - if you do have them, consider renting a sprayer. Popcorn ceilings are not fun to paint. The popcorn pulls off as it gets moist, while at the same time you can rarely get decent coverage without also making it moist. This equals a few passes to get it right, then having to wait until it's dry to get what you missed (which will be a lot). If you go over it one too many times, it will begin to pull off leaving big white/bare spots (yes, even with the slit sponge rollers made for popcorn).

I usually take 3 sets up pictures. One is a "pre-op" outfit, so I can see how much looser it is. Two is a pre-op/tight current outift. These are the ones I post. Three is completely naked. Actually doesn't bother me for him to take the pics because I like to be naked and walk around naked all the time. But it bothers the $^#% out of me to see how I had let myself get.