Wheetsin

I don't know anything really about your relationship, but if I heard the same story from someone I knew better my first reaction would be that getting you to the point that you lose emotional control (doesn't matter what emotion... if it's expressed through tears, or yells... it's still emotion) is his way of seeking control in the relationship. It's not uncommon, that someone who maybe feels they don't have a lot of control, will see this as their way of getting some. That's why I say "wins". Each member of the relationship needs to win sometimes, and we all define "win" differently. For someone who feels like they're struggling for some control, a sign that they have some would be a "win". A sign, to them, might be that they can exert themselves in a way that impacts you emotionally. If he keeps on until he gets this signal ("win") from you, and then is willing to back down -- maybe that's the case. Maybe he feels he has "won" and can let go of the argument. It can also be a measure of security -- if he can see "proof" (via emotion) that you're still invested in the relationship, it might help his security (and hence he "wins" that way). It can also be a lot of other things, and I'm really just full of crap. :couch2: <insert lots of other advice that I'm not qualified to give regarding anger, relationships, what the anger means, where it really comes from, and how you can manage it>

Oops, ok - give me a minute or two and I will open up some space. :couch2:

My liquids had to be sugar free liquids. I only had to do it for two days so I didn't worry about a lot of variety. I ate/drank low sodium, fat free chicken broth, sugar free jello, sugar free popsicles, decaf iced tea.

My liquids had to be sugar free liquids. I only had to do it for two days so I didn't worry about a lot of variety. I ate/drank low sodium, fat free chicken broth, sugar free jello, sugar free popsicles, decaf iced tea and low sugar apple juice... and one small glass of watered down, low sugar grape juice.

That tends to happen when you grab a wild animal and wave it around. Crocodile Hunter or not. :heh:

So if I follow, you have restriction, but haven't lost weight for 2.5 weeks, so you now think you need to get overfilled because of that? Time to change your thinking! There's nothing wrong with not losing anything for 2.5 weeks. You ask what choice you have -- the choice you have is to be patient, and understand that the body cannot sustain constant loss. It needs time to "readjust" to what's going on, and while it is doing this, you're probably not going to lose any weight. You might even gain weight. Always remember that weight does not equal fat. Are fills dangerous? Well, not fills themselves, not usually anyway. But complications that can arise from too many fills and resulting overfill - you probably know the answer to that question. :couch2:

I didn't have any restrictions and took a shower the next day. It would be best to call your surgeon and ask her/his advice if you're in doubt.

So - no big deal. If it's not what you want just tell them nevermind and begin your search for a LB provider. :couch2:

I made chicken fajita tacos for dinner... dark meat chicken fried with a bit of olive oil, seasoning, etc. After I cook the meat I cut it up, and what I ate amounted to one of those 4 oz gladware containers loosely filled with cut up meat. So had that amount of meat, put half on a plate, put half on a low carb white corn taco shell with a bit of sour cream & cheese. After dinner I had 16 oz Protein drink made with 2% milk, 2.5 scoops (50gm protein) Protein powder, and flavored with 1/4 packet Butterfinger cocoa mix.

If you cry he "wins". :couch2:

I think my entire family over 40 has had skin cancer. For the most part their PCP just burns it off right there in the office. They put a bandaid over it for a while, have an ugly looking spot for a bit longer, and then it's as though nothing happened. My mother had melanoma, slightly different story there. In my experience with her, going to her doctor's appointments, etc. they never referred to the melanoma as "skin cancer". I asked why once, and they told me that when someone has "skin cancer" it's usually a (doctor's words) "dime a dozen abnormality in the skin, rarely requiring anything more than a zapping in my office. We don't want anyone associating melanoma with something so everyday." So -- FWIW. :couch2:

Oh my, a good friend of mine in college went through this, and we went through it with a cousin of mine too. One day my friend was over and took her shoes off and I told her to put them back on, or put them outside, because it was really bad. She didn't believe me, and then our dog came over, smelled her shoe, and started growling and baring its teeth at it. She believed me then! You know what? In both cases the main reason was because they were just standing in the shower, and not actually washing their feet. Both of them figured the soapy Water running down their feet was enough, not realizing that the soapy water can't get under their feet and wash things off. :couch2: With my young cousin, she too was re-wearing her socks. Eww. But in her own admission, "If they started to get crunchy, I could just put them in the dryer for a few minutes and they'd soften right back up." I mean - EWW. I think in both cases the good washing (antibacterial or exfoliating shower gel would be great) is what fixed the problem, but preventatively they both also, for a short time, (until they felt confident the washing was fixing the problem) put regular deodorant on the bottoms of their feet, sprinkled their shoes with baking soda, and kept things called "Stinky Pinkies" in their shoes overnight (I think they're just breathable papercloth bags with baking soda or charcoal or something in them). So get a good antibacterial or exfoliating shower gel, a fairly rough washcloth (these mesh things don't have enough abrasive qualities for good showering, our skin still needs something that can get the old skin off), or maybe even a pumice stone, and have her start washing the bottoms of her feet morning & night if you can, but definitely at least once a day (morning is best IMO, because then you're putting fresh feet into the shoes). BTW, I don't know if you can get the odor out of the new shoes. We never could with my girlfriend (umm - per her smelling them, not me!), but with shoes she bought from them on there was never a problem. Oh, and BTW again, even her flipflops were stinky, it's just that the stink has the opportunity to diffuse, and in tennis shoes it doesn't.

And I didn't use spellcheck either, obviously! Leila - you bring up a good point. I have an English degree (literature), but had to take several linguistics classes... history of the English language, the evolution of language, etc. At the time ebonics was brought up as a frequent example for discussion... is it GOOD because a group of people have collectively formed their own language variant, or is it BAD because it "butchers" an internationally recognized language foundation and makes "lazy English" okay in insitutions. That's just one very small example.

My husband is not a native Engish speaker, he learned it as a 2nd language via 10 years of King's English. Some of our words, like "up", really REALLY confuse him. One he has a lot of trouble with is "already", which he takes to mean "happened at least once before". I already read that book, so I have read it at least once... already. But when we're visiting my parents, and my mother tells him, "Hurry up already" he cannot figure out what she means... how can it be already when we haven't gone there before? Side note, he also has a problem with plurals. He doesn't always grasp that a word not ending in "s" can represent a plural state, e.g. "people". To him it's logical to say "people are" because "people" is a singular word (no "s"), but refers to more than one person, and plurals get "are". He is usually guilty of catachresis (or maybe it's catharsis... ha ha) in some form or another. Metaphors, idioms, etc. confuse the heck out of him, and he'll often recite them incorrectly. That's like the toaster calling the oven black! His English is quite good, and most people assume he's "American" unless it comes up in conversation, or they try to pronounce our last name! But sometimes his pronunciation gives him away. He confuses letter cobminations because the same ones in his language are pronounced very differently in ours. One example is "ch" which in his language is pronouced "sh", which "sh" is pronounced "ch", so you sit on a "shuh"-air, while you listen to "Chuh"er sing, eat something made by a "chuh"-ef. And if he comes across a word that he has not heard before, he guesses... and often misses... the Cheverolet cavalier (cuh-vAl-yer) or Cologate toothpaste (coe-loe-got-ay), or even a comb (which becomes "cawmb", with the same "aw" as in "lawn"). And I love every minute of it.

I don't eat or drink before a fill. For the same reason I wear the lightest weight clothes I have.

Yes I would.

All IMO... You're not really dieting with the band. Well, you are, and you aren't. Your food intake post-op compared to pre-op is "dieting", because you will eat much, much less. But a diet involves elimination of something, whether it's a particular type of food, or even eliminating the large quantity of food. This can lead to a host of things that trigger gaining the weight right back. With the band, you don't feel deprived. You're eating what you want, and you're full - and you're losing weight. A lot of surgeons will advocate a low fat or low carb diet. This is to maximize your weightloss, as well as a step toward building healthy eating habits. I debated this a LOT before my surgery. "What if one more diet..." "What if I tried THIS diet I haven't tried yet..." "What if I have this surgery, and that one last diet would have been all I needed to lose the weight?" But here's what I decided: I can lose the weight. Without the band. I've done it a few different times. What I cannot do is maintain the loss. Never once was I able to maintain. I was always either "losing" or "gaining". All or nothing, you know? And as my surgery drew closer, when I started to sencond guess myself, doubt that I was making the right decision, etc. I would just remind myself - it's not about getting the weight off, it's about KEEPING the weight off. This band will help me do that. ...and no more doubts. I try to workout a few times a week, a combination of cardio (treadmill or swimming) and weights. To be honest, I'm not great about it. During the late spring/early summer time I went about 2 months without a single workout because with my regular job, and running my own business, and being in graduate school, and... there just wasn't time. It is important, and I know that, but if something has to slip off my plate exercise is the first thing (And because while I love swimming, I truly do hate working out. I don't get the "high" that keeps people going, I get hot and sweaty and sticky and sore and it sucks.) I know that losing weight will help me with this, from both physical and mental perspectives, and I have no doubt that I will be more apt to exercise regularly at a closer-to-normal weight (I was an avid exerciser before I got fat... didn't enjoy it anymore back then, but knew it was good for me so I did it with gusto). And not all overeating is emotional eating. I'm a behavioral eater. When I'm emotional I actually reject food because I want to focus in on the issue and get it resolved, and at that point food is in the way. So the band has been fantastic for me... I'm actually having quite opposite problems now (no appetite at all, virtual disinterest in food). I think emotional eaters have it harder, because behaviors are easy to break, we do it everyday, but when you're removing an emotional crutch, you have to be really careful what you replace it with. Do find out whether your issues are emotional or behavioral, because your approach to weightloss & likfe with the band will be different accordingly. It's really hard to estimate how much the band contributed. That's trying to quntify something that's really not quantifiable. I wish I could say, "40% of the weight I've lost would not have been lost if I didn't have the band", but I can't assign it a value like that. I can tell you that even though I'd lost the weight before, and lost it as quickly, I've never had the hope of it staying off... I've always had an emotional fight going on over whether or not I can really keep up this diet forever... So maybe I could have lost the same amount of weight, and maybe not, but who cares? I love my band, because I know that if my willpower ever falters, and I have every reason to believe it will, my band is there to back me up.

I've always been told that if something goes wrong, chanes are it goes wrong during take off or landing. I'll sleep through the rest of the flight, or read, watch a movie, whatever - but I do pay attention to the noises & feelings during take-off. Not nervous, not scared, just aware. I flew to Belize once (the airline rhymes with "Paca"), and it was one of my 4 bad experiences. I don't know if it's different now, but at the time the airport was a single tiny building made of cinder blocks, in a cleared area of the forest. The runway was a single strip of tarmac surrounded by maybe 50 feet of dirt on either side, then full forest. The entire flight was questionable, but as we landed we watched the wings clipping large branches, first on one side, then the other. Right before we touched down the pilot made a sudden pull up and we were flung back into our seats. Circled, clipped more branches, sudden pull up again. Made a really hot landing on the third try. About two years ago returning from Las Vegas was a weather-related incident. We hit the worst turbulence I've ever experienced, and I've hit lots of turbulence that made me think the plane couldn't possibly take much more. We were constantly lurching and dropping fast enough for several seconds of that "drop" feeling in your gut. We would literally be suspended out of our seats - thank goodness seatbelts work. drinks were toppling over, etc. We were also banking hard enough that the book the guy behind me was reading toppled into the seats across from him. I remember looking over at a stewardess... she shrugged her shoulders, made a praying sign with her hands, and smiled faintly. Shortly after that the pilot came on and told us we were making an emeregency ascent to try and get out of the turbulence, because if we couldn't get out of it we were looking at a potentially serious situation. And of course, of all the flights, this is the one where the guy next to me was a first-time flyer who sat down, started ordering gin, and screeched like a schoolgorl during take off. THAT makes for a fun flight! Another time was trying to land in Stockholm. Arlanda International(Stockholm airport) was covered with fog so thick they couldn't see well enough to land, so we went into a holding pattern. Stayed in a holding pattern for a LONG time. Keep in mind this is after 9 hours of non-stop flying out of O'Hare, so we're about 10 hours in the air now. The pilot comes on and says we still don't have enough visibility to land, running a little low on fuel, so we have to make an emergency fuel stop in Finland. It must have been more serious than they let on because when we landed at the airport in Helsinki there were already news crews, fire trucks, and ambulances lining the runway, and they already had a bunch of gurneys out and ready to go. Funny little note - Arlanda International. In Swedish, "Landa" is land, and "inte" is not/won't (approximately). Landa inte = "won't land".

Wow, I didn't realize how big his presence was. That's really cool. I guess like NZ has their "tiger man" or "lion guy" or whatever (don't know of him personally, but worked with someone who was related to him and spent time at his conservatory, then shared stories of how he had celebrity status there), OZ had the crocodile hunter.

I don't know if there's truth to this, but apparently while he was still alive he made the request that if he die doing something "natural" (for him), he wanted the video to be shared with his audience. From there we get the rumor that they will be airing the video taken of him getting hit and... expiring. I bet the TIVOs will be going crazy that night.

I used the zero carb. Learn from my mistakes. I'll summarize in IMO: If you can get "Double Dutch Chocolate", get it. It has the most decent flavor of all of them. DO NOT mix it with Water. The first time or two you'll be able to stand it, but soon afterward it will start to nauseate you. Mix it with your milk of choice. If you're concerned with carbs get Hood's "Carb Countdown" milk. If you're not, I would recommend 2%, it helps to mask the flavor a bit. Do invest in some sugar free flavorings, found in the coffee aisle of most grocery stores or your local coffee house. "DaVinci" makes some good ones. I can recommend the Kahlua and Hazlenut in particular. And do mix them into your Protein drink, it will help. If you are not worried about carbs from your powder, skip the Isopure and go with one called "Six Star". The protein counts are only like 1g different, and the Six Star tastes SOOO much better. I just had a recent RNY friend try it and she's hooked. In her words, "It tastes like a milkshae compared to that other crap!"

A couple points... My father spent 20 years military working on, and then chiefing a group that worked on, military aircraft (jets, and then anti-submarine helicopters). When he retired from the military he obtained his A&P license and started working for TWA as a mechanic supervisor until they started to take a nose dive & he was laid off. After TWA he worked for a brief period at AA until deciding that the civilian airline industry was too unstable to be a career, and pursued a different line of work. Point being - he spent the majority of his life building or fixing military & commercial airplanes, and never thinks twice about stepping on to one as a passenger. I fly relatively frequently, perhaps 20 times a year for work and another 5 - 10 for personal. In my lifetime I've probably flown 150 - 200 times. I've had four bad experiences: two were weather-related and two were seemingly pilot-related. I think there are a few things behind the uproar that plane issues elicit. One is that, for the most part, people feel helpless on a plane. While not necessarily in control of what happens to them in their car, people feel in control of it. On a plane there's no doubt that you are in the hands of the pilot, equipment, etc. Another thing is that when something goes wrong, it goes wrong on a large scale. Maybe two or three people die in a single car crash, but 185 die in a single plane crash. Sometimes no people die, sometimes just a few, but when it does happen it makes a much bigger ripple. Just remember - there's no reason to be scared of flying. It's the crashing that gets ya. Here's a twisted way of looking at it that I shared with my MIL (there are 9 non-stop hours of flying between us), that actually helped her. The odds of dying in a plane crash are so, so slim -- like slimmer than winning the lottery. I have no reason to think my chances are that GOOD. Now in 3 weeks when I take off to Chicago, never to be heard from again, you guys can quote this message as part of my eulogy. :heh:

I get a min of 60g protein MOST days. I honestly can't say all, but maybe 1 day eevery two weeks I won't. I've started looking at calories because my weightloss has really been stalling, for weeks at a time with only 2 or 3 lbs in between, and I'm wondering if that's why. Overall I have a high loss average, but I'm running about a pound a month lately... and I don't think it's a matter of not enough restriction.

Slightly off topic, but I'll get back on topic in a bit: Ok - OMG - was Nip/Tuck not awesome last night? That's I show I loved when it was first released, then got tired of and dropped during the whole "slasher" drama, and picked it back up around the middle of last season -- right around the time they got rid of Kimber (actually the episode where they find her all jacked up from the slasher was the first I saw when I tuned back in). I really don't watch that much TV... I TIVO some things and then watch them while I do homework. I'm also hooked on Prison Break, Eureka, the Dead Like Me reruns (VERY smart show), and 4400. Ok back to topic now... Yesterday I had the pepperoni chips late morning, but our 3:45 dinner was cancelled. So around 7:00 I ate 2 small slices (about 3 oz) tofu cooked in a homemade Thai marinade. Not nearly enough calories for a day. :eek:

Now imagine the original poster had deleted their original message. You can make it look like they said -- anything you want. The same holds true for PMs, emails -- anything digital. A good rule of thumb is, "If it's online, don't trust it." People like to forward emails, PMs, etc. to other people, but if you play it smart you really, really have to take all of it with a grain of salt because altering it is no more difficult than tapping the keys on your keyboard.