Wheetsin

I read things like that and the first thought that comes to mind is, "Wow, smart people just really don't get it!"

Right, I agree. As I read your statement it was "I can do things better because I am overweight". I was still a little confused when I read "...than many of the thinner biologists" because that's still making better = weight. But I think I get it. As I said earlier I haven't been to the sites referenced, but my prior understanding of the size acceptance movement was more geared toward social acceptance than individual acceptance. More "don't discriminate against me" than "I'm still a good person." But that's what is great about it. Two people, two perspectives.

Yep, I had myself convinced of that too. PBing was one of the reasons it took me 5 years to get my band. I was going to be the model bandster, be so smart about what and how I ate that PBing wouldn't even be an issue for me because I would do it all perfectly. Then I PBed 3 days post-op. Went through some of the worst pain I could remember in recent history. Thought, "Well, that lesson learned! That certainly won't happen again!" I was so naive. Lots of people want me to describe life as a bandster to them. It just can't be done. The things we feel can't have parallels drawn to them, you just have to feel them before you can understand. People want to know what being tight feels like, and there's no way to accurately describe it. It's like trying to describe the taste of a fruit when no other fruits taste anything like it. To me, being tight doesn't hurt at all... what hurts me is the pain before a PB. And that's the only pain I feel. But -- Oh sweet mercy. When you go into an unknown like this, there's only so much preparation you can do. The most important, above and beyond what to buy, what to expect, etc. is to be confident in your decision that this is the right answer for you. Everything else will just "be", but that's the one thing you can't really change.

I can't open the link, our web censor is blocking it. What do the labels warn of?

Just out of curiosity, what does being overweight enable you to do better than a person who is not overweight?

Couple of thoughts, I'll probably go off topic (ya think?!), but I'll try to pull it back as well. Diet and exercise will work for the people for whom losing the weight is more powerful than the drivers for keeping the weight on. This population isn't very large, and is generally on the younger side. A majority of obese people who are able to lose their weight through diet and exercise walk away from their weight having been "lucky" enough to shift the mental crutch they need from food to something else, so that while they no longer having an over-eating disorder, they have some other type of eating disorder, or have hopped their addiction over to exercise (usually accompanied by an eating disorder), or smoking, or... It's very difficult, very very difficult, to simply just up & change your behaviors without making some kind of substitution. Any of the people here still fighting "head hunger" can vouch for that. An example - a lady in my building went from a size 24 to a size 6 in one year without exercise. She is in her 6th year of maintaining the loss and it appears she will be one of the few to have long term success. How does she do it? T & Th she doesn't eat anything. M, W, F she will only eat is her weight on those mornings is within a certain range of about 6 lbs. Once a week, generally on Monday (since Tuesday is a no eating day) she will gorge on whatever she wants. This works for her to maintain her weight, but it's certainly not something most people would consider "normal" behavior. As for fat acceptance, I'm a bit on the fence about it. As someone who wasn't fat their entire life, or even a majority of my life, I've witnessed first-hand the difference, socially, between the two states. And they're like night and day. I'm not familiar with the sites referenced here, but I think a lot of it would have to do with "how far" they're trying to get. Is it wrong to make a POS buy a second seat? As someone who has flown at a normal size, next to a morbidly obese person, and had them taking up part of my seat, etc. - I can say probably not. In and of itself, anyway. It becomes a problem when one POS has to buy another seat and the other doesn't, because that boils it down to some arbitrary decision. I think if people want to "accept" their weight, and are educated around the potential consequences, that's fine. But I've yet to meet the "fat and proud of it" person who truly, truly felt that way. I've had people ask me if I got banded out of desperation - out of a sense that I wouldn't be able to overcome it any other way. To me, banding wasn't giving up. What would have been giving up would be if I'd sat there and tried to become "ok" with my size, and resigned to the fact that I would die that way. As for actually using the term "people of size" - kind of. I've heard/seen people referred to as "POS" by airlines. Not that long ago I was at a ticketing counter and heard one clerk lean over to the other and say "he needs to be ticketed as a POS", referring to a very large gentleman who had just walked in the airport and was heading to her counter. Can we compare obesity to skin color - I would say no, and then I would say only on the highest, most fundamental level of "difference". As someone who does not currently give credit to the "genetic link" of obesity, you're born into an ethnicity but you eat yourself into obesity. Yes, there are expections, and there are absolutely people out there who are obese due to legitiamte medical reasons, but they're not a majority, and for the sake of cohesive conversation (aka not having to recognize and explain the exceptions) I am looking at the majority right now. For that majority, they can't do much about the color of their skin, hair, eyes, etc. But at some point in time there's something they or someone else could have done to help with the obesity. Who in that majority just "woke up" one day and found themselves fat? Doesn't happen that way. Obesity is a process they contributed to. The same isn't true for people with straight hair, or brown eyes, or olive complexions.

Would something frozen help satisfy your craving? Hard frozen icees or protein ince cream can definitely be crunchy.

That's interesting Carlene. If we pay with card, we always line out the tip field. I don't know if that makes any difference or not. But I want to know more, because we eat out frequently. When you sign, you're also including a total amount. So if you've written "$30" and signed for "$30", how do they get more money? Is it still valid if someone writes over those amounts?

I specifically request no lidocaine. To me, fills don't really hurt, but the lidocaine shot hurts like a b****. If the lidocaine is at a 10, then the fill itself is a 1 or 2.

My Visa debit card is my right hand gal. On the back I've written "SEE ID". It never ceases to amaze me when people flip it over, read that, and hand it right back w/o asking for ID. And worse - when someone does ask for ID, they're so timid - like they expect it will make me mad. Carlene, that's great advice. Here's something else to watch out for. This isn't one of those "tell all your friends" email mass hysterias, this actually happened to me. We bought something at a store that will go unnamed. In retrospect we could remember making the purchase, but not thinking twice about it. Anyway - what happened was that the clerk swiped the card, and the transaction didn't go through. So he swiped the card at another reader and it went through just fine, end of story. Haha. I'm really bad about following up with our account, I know more is coming in than going out, so I just don't pay any attention. We use online banking and every few weeks I'll scan the transactions just to make sure everything looks OK, taht refunds were credited, etc. Well I go to scan, and see a lot of unexplained transactions, and by "a lot of unexplained" I mean over $4k worth of porn subscriptions. Sites for pedophilia, beastiality, snuff, etc. So I call our bank, and they launch an investigation. Ends up, I guess this isn't all that uncommon (from what the bank told us) that people get jobs as store clerks to have access to customers/credit/debit cards. They bring in their own "bogus" scanners that do nothing other than record the information from the swiped card. So the customer goes to buy something, they swipe it once into their recorder, "Oops, doesn't look like that transaction went through" (they've just captured all of your information), "let's try it again on this reader, that one might be broken" (on the actual store scanner that will go through). Our bank was awesome and they credit the money back, no questions asked, but I know there are people out there with online banking who are worse about checking it than me. One lesson learned we took away from this is that we now limit the amt of money we keep in checking. On payday X amount is automatically transferred into savings (we've always done that), X amout is automatically transferred into what we call "liquid savings" - savings for purchases, taxes, vacations, whatever... not real savings, just a way to store up money we know we will spend eventually), and X is automatically transferred into investments, and the rest goes into our checking. Now I keep a max of 4k in checking unless I know I'm going to make a big purchase. I'll check every few weeks and if we're over that, I'll transfer to one of the other accounts. I talk to my friends who keep 100% of their cash assets in their primary checking account, and I share my story with them, and usually they change their ways. We had ewnough to cover the fraudulent purchases, but if we hadn't, all of our bills are done on autopay, and that means everything from our cable bill to our mortgage could have bounced. That means lots of penalties, fees, and the potential for credit impact.

njmom, I will say that I would never advise someone who's uncertain to just go ahead and do it. To me, it's best to go in comitted and certain it's right for you. That doesn't mean you aren't scared, or aren't uncertain of what it will be like, but just absolutely secure in your decision that this is the right answer. LB is reversible, but removal requires another surgery and, if you're self-pay (and there's a good chance even if you aren't), more expense. So it's probably not popular feedback, but I would say that if you're still uncertaina nd doubting, you probably shouldn't have the surgery. YET. Just give it some more time. More thought.

Just because...

I want the NO LITTLE PENISES shirt.

Last I checked, there was never a death related directly to the lap-band. Fat is going to kill you before the band does.

I see this all the time in the online world. "Here's my .02 cents..." (please value your opinion a LITTLE more than that!) That person is much more relaxed than I am. Kudos to him. Does this make you think at all of the times you go somewhere and the cash register is broken, so the people have to pull out a calculator to make the change from a $10 for your $9.37 purchase?

For me there would be an aspect that hasn't come up yet, that being my lifestyle. Even though I'm having sucess with the band, and it really has been easy for me, relatively, it hasn't been without struggles. I'm very random but on a fundamental level I'm a creature of habit, and modifying my behaviors has taken work. If I was with a morbidly obese man, chances are it's also a man who doesn't eat right, doesn't exercise, etc. If I was around that 24/7, it would eventually have an effect. Either negatively directly toward me (altering back to undesirable behaviors), or a hard time accepting that person and their lifestlye (I could see myself becoming very critical). And I don't need that influence in my life.

Not to mention education, healthcare, environmental awareness, and on... and on... When I lived in Europe, I didn't mind paying the gas prices because I was getting SOOOO much for my money. The vast majority of what you're talking about is money. Steak dinners. Stock prices. Insurance. Above average housing. There's so much more to life.

Born and raised in San Diego, CA through my sophmore year of high school, moved to Missouri my junior year. I graduated from high school in 1993 having just turned 17.

Carlene, I can't speak at all to the timing or when what became not so big of a deal, but my mother was raised by a strong catholic family (perhaps devout is a better word) and was also educated in catholic schools. She's also left handed. And she recounts stories of being a young girl, in school, forced to write with her right hand - if I remember the stories accurately, something about left-handedness being a sign of the devil. Her hand was literally tied behind her back.

And I should add, just because I find this interesting, that while I find the west coast (where I was born and raised) to be much more liberal & tolerant in a general sense, it happened there as well as in the midwest. I did go to a catholic daycare/preschool/kindergarten. And did have my challenges there. Though the instances I've referred to are all within the public school system.

Normal school.

RIght, and that's where context comes in. I was talking specifically about negative experiences, so I'm going to be relating my comments to negative experiences. My parents are christians. I think they're fantastic people.

My mom has a long history of DVT and has been on coumadin for something like 12 years. Either her blod is clotting, or it's so thin that a papercut will bleed for hours, literally. If she bumps against something, she could end up with a bruise the size of a football, over something we'd never think twice about. She has been told that is she's ever in an accident, all she can really do is wait for the vitakin K injection (apparently that's how they treat it - I would have thought something more "medical") and hope it kicks in in time, and that she then isn't riddled with cloths from the healing process. Nice outlook, huh?

Hahaha, the first thing I can remember doing in the recovery room was reaching up to feel if the breathing tube was still in place. My admitting nurse told me that very frequently, they'll wait for the patient to remove the breathing tube, as a sign that they're coming around. That freaked me out like you wouldn't believe. So at first, before I could open my eyes, I was just trying to sense whether or not it was there. Couldn't feel it, but reasoned that my senses could be subdued by the anesthesia, so (since I felt stupid about it) I tried to sheepishly pull the covers up over my mouth so no one would see me reaching up to feel if there was a tube sticking out or not. Ok now you've got me going. Being of lesser religious virtues, I never equated my surgery date of March 1 with ash Wednesday. Never in a million years. So as I was waking up, half in and half out, I saw two nurses with "smudges" on their foreheads and was nearly irate. I don't remember the exact dialogue, but to one it was something about how her tattoo made her look like Charles Manson, and to the other it was something about how dare she work in a surgical recovery area and be so filthy, shame on her, she needed to go bathe so I didn't get an infection.

Then you are very, very lucky and should enjoy that luck every day. I believe fifth grade was the first time I received "detention" because I did not say "under god" when required to recite the pledge. Of course it only went downhill from there. Religion doesn't have to come up as a formal topic in order for people to know there are differences. And let's make sure my statement was read accurately, and not under a bias or misperception. My statement was that being "right", fitting in, and not being the outsider are things that yound people covet. And that believing in god is one of the ways this happens. When you're the only kid on the block who isn't going to VBS, it's that much harder to gain acceptance. When you're being punished and reprimanded for not reciting "under god" in class, it's that much harder to gain acceptance. When, right before christmas break, the teacher has you write al ist of things you're going to pray for, and all you can write is "I don't pray" - it's that much harder to gain acceptance. Because all of this makes you that much more different from your peers. This applies to all facets of life, one of which - for the vast majority of Americans - is their faith.