Sunwyse

Dr Fielding is actually the leading expert. He began his practice in Australia (he's Aussie) and then moved to the US to train doctors there, so you do indeed have the best. But he didn't save your life. YOU saved your life by deciding to do something. Way to go!!

OK thank you, answers my question.

Just came across this thread. Wondering how that follow up phone call went.

anniedub: I'm being banded on 29 October, so not long now. I had to wait til my 12 months was up with the insurance company first. Jack: You wouldn't know vegemite, unless you'd been to Koala Blue in LA (I think is where she opened it). Its a black, Vitamin B rich spread you put on toast. Most people who try it as adults think you spread it all over bread like Peanut Butter. Wrong. Its really, really salty. You only use a smidge - unless you are like me and like to have lots of it. It is an aquired taste, but here we start feeding it to bubs before they are 1. Cherry: I've only just heard about the idea of veg with avo. I'm allergic to avo so not going to try it, but to be honest, I can't imagine what the taste combo would be like. Thanks for letting me know I don't have to go without :thumbup: There are options and I'm sure I'm going to have fun exploring them. Sounds like you can have a dry bikky Ok, just not toast.

The dietitian told me to start the meal replacement diet 2 weeks before surgery and to replace all 3 meals with the shakes. I found this to be a bit too much of a shock, so I've started a few days before that with replacing breakfast and dinner and just eating a normal meal at lunch. A pre-diet diet if you will. I'm on day 2 of my pre-diet and the affects on my body are not as severe as they could've been. I'm not expecting any weight loss in these few days. What I am expecting is a sort of mini detox that I can deal with. So far its been sleep, sleep and more sleep. I'm supposed to start the full fledged diet while at work, (I work with small children), and the idea of detoxing and running to the toilet every 5 minutes while around needy children, didn't actually appeal to me. For all of next week I'm working with 2 year olds. Its a Sunday and my partner is preparing to do his usual Sunday run to the bakery and get fresh rolls for brunch. I will be sitting back and sipping on a cool diet milk shake. *sigh* It would be nice if he would support me in the next few weeks by not eating certain foods around me, but I can't ask him to change his eating habits because of a decision I've made about me. It would be nice if he thought of it himself though.

Height: 151cm Weight: 107.5 kilo Dress size: 22-24 AU Bust: 132cm Arm: 38.5cm Waist: 122cm Hips: 137.5cm Thighs: 71.5cm This is where I'm coming from. I have no idea where I'll end up.

Height: 151cm Weight: 107.5 kilo Dress size: 22-24 AU Bust: 132cm Arm: 38.5cm Waist: 122cm Hips: 137.5cm Thighs: 71.5cm This is where I'm coming from. I have no idea where I'll end up.

Use your own history as an example. I've had 5 procedures in my life, starting age 5, which required me to be under general. I have never had a problem with recovery. Never had an infection either. Of course there are risks, goes without say, but hey, I can walk outside my front door and get run over any day of the week. Far more chance of that happening when you look at odds 1 hour surgery once compared to leaving my house 365 days of the year? I also helped my partner to come to terms with my decision by pointing out all the health benefits and basically, how much happier I am going to be.

Yep. I have to follow the full optifast diet, replace 3 meals a day with shakes and have 1 cup of veg a day. Oh joy! I can do the diet and the taste doesn't bother me the way it does most people, but I work with little kids. Not gonna be fun the next few weeks, I can tell you!

Just for this one, I'd leave him at home. No matter how much he says he's all for it and with you, there could still be insecurities going on in his subconscious that he's not aware of. What is his fear? Is it losing you? He might be saying that he's concerned about the health risks, but underneath he may be concerned that you will be successful and then leave him and he'll 'lose you' that way. I totally agree he should join a support group, or take him to one of the into nights where they talk about the lap band and whats involved. Just don't take him to this visit. Go alone, you don't need him. After all you've made your decision and its between you and your doctor. My partner was dead against this to begin with. He kept finding all these statistics about failure rates and deaths on the internet. I did my research and showed him that was all really old stuff. That today, the procedure has been perfected and now its less than 1% chance of anything going wrong. As for death, no-one has died in Australia from this procedure in over 7 years as far as I can tell. It was through my own reseach and my determination that I was going ahead with or without him onboard that made him decide to support me. I never forced the issue, I simply made my decision and left him to come to terms with it. I made it very clear from the start that this was about me and my health and I would not be leaving him once I had lost all the weight. I made sure to discuss any of his concerns, but made it clear I was going ahead anyway. He is now fully supportive of me. He will be paying the gap and I will be paying him back later on. We are both confident that this will be successful and change both out lives for the better.

My dietitian said to get used to the liquids before or after food-not with, part of the whole new eating way. I tried, but it lasted a day. I couldn't do it because nothing else had changed. In a few days I begin the pre surgery diet and I've started a mini version already. I have to say, the act of making a physical change to my eating has helped me immensely to change the way I eat. Sort of makes it real I guess. As for dealing with emotional eating, I've worked on this for years. Now I don't emotionally eat, except occasionally when bored. I have found journalling my emotions very helpful. I will have a book with pages and pages of the same thing, written over and over again. I'll write it down several times a day and several days a week. Sometimes I go on and on about nothing but this one issue for a few weeks! At least it helps me get it out and deal with it. Something else that was really crucial was coming to terms with my right to have these feelings. I was born late 60s and grew up in the 70s. A lot of the messages then were that 'nice' girls didn't get angry or upset. Girls didn't stand up for themselves so it became easier to eat to stuff it all down. Anger was my biggy. There was a lot of abuse going on in my home at the time and the only control I had over it was what I put in my mouth, so naturally eating to shove feelings down became my coping mechanism. This is how you've coped and its worked for you, after all you still do it. Now you want to take it away, so you will need to come up with a new way to cope. You might want to take up things like punching your pillow, ripping up paper, having a rubber band around your wrist and snapping it, taking up clay as a hobby so you can thump the aggression out. It really depends on what emotion you are trying to shove down.

Hiya, I'm the 29th as well, though being in Aus, that's probably the day before you. I so can't wait!! I'm really looking forward to getting through this stage and onto the next.

I work in child care and I'll be taking the 2 weeks off that we're supposed to be on liquids. I am NOT running around all day after children on water!! lol. As for the diet, I start officially on Wednesday (its getting so close), but I started a pre diet diet today. I'm supposed to go from eating whatever, whenever I want to 3 Meal Replacements and 1 cup of veg a day. u-hu. Not happening. Too much of a shock. So I've started today be replacing Breakfast and dinner with shakes and then I can eat whatever I like for lunch and at other times. Its more about the psychological readiness than anything else. I'm even more excited now than I was when I made this decision. Roll on 29th I say!!

Checked the link but nothing happened. Does the cook book have both imperial and metric measures?

Its important to follow your own surgeon's guidelines. My surgeon has told me to have 5 small meal breaks a day - 3 meals and 2 snacks, to keep blood sugar levels evan. My dietitian has told me to have liquid 10 minutes before food or wait 30 minutes after. Obviously, there are differing opinions out there.

Hi Karen, thanks so much for that. Its kind of a theory of mine about the hair growth sort of 'returning to normal' once the hormones do. I'm looking forward to checking it out on myself. I don't know much about hair thinning with PCOS. Mine is so thick its annoying. I can't have long hair because it gets too heavy and clumps together. My scalp can't breathe, it sweats and that can't evaporate, so its stays there and causes itching and an infection *sigh*. I have heard from people on here that about 5 months or so after the thinning starts, the hair sort of sorts itself out and there's regrowth. I'm assuming it has to do with a rebalance of hormons. Possibly the drop after sugery causes and over reaction and hair stops growing for a bit (to replace that falling out), but it calms down and starts to grow again. Anyway, just a theory.

I joined curves last year. It was Ok, but I got quickly bored with the circuit - same way all the time and the reverse on Tuesdays. I also realised there wasn't really anywhere to go with it. I love doing weight training and that's just out with curves. If it works for you, that's fantastic. I hope you get everything out of it you want.

Australia is bringing in new obesity testing for 3 year olds, trying to catch it before it becomes an health issue. I'm very much against this. I just don't see it as being that big a problem with 3 year olds. Some people take it too far and think any baby fat on a child is bad. I'd prefer they wait until the children attend primary school at 5 and then make it part of an ongoing healthy lifestyle education.

Coffee is allowed on optifast, I've checked. Its because we aren't doing the optifast for weight loss, but for liver shrinkage. Not too much of it though.

MacMadame, thank you so much for all those links! I will be checking out every one of them. Just last week, I had a sister ask me why I let myself get this big. Yeah right, I let myself because I wanted to be short of breath, have aching knees and ankles, feel unsteady on my feet, like they are going to 'give' at any moment, have trouble finding half decent clothes and then grow in and out of the ones I do find, be the butt of jokes, have 4 year olds at my work lecture me on being fat from eating too much junk food, be inflexible and unfit.... the list goes on. You don't have to justify yourself to anyone. You know why you are getting the band. I told the psychologist my reasons for wanting surgery. I want to be fit and healthy and I want to be sexy!!! Its no crime to want to be drop dead gorgeous to other people. That's as good a reason as any in my book. The health will go right along with it anyway. I do tell everyone I'm having surgery. I've had nothing but support. I changed to a new job 2 weeks ago and everyone there knows cause I told them. They ask me how its going and when it is and what I have to do to prepare. They aren't being nosy, just interested. I've not been lectured once by anyone, not even family. Apart from the knowitall sister that is, but hey, she's younger than me, she's supposed to think she knows it all! lol You have support here. We know from first hand experience the struggle it is to try to lose weight and not be able to, or to get it off and not be able to keep it off. At the end of the day, your body, nobody's business what you do with it!

What I don't get is, I've done the diet and put on, diet and put on merry-go-round. Why on earth would I want to make someone else have to suffer that ride when I already KNOW it doesn't work?

WOW! $500 for 3 weeks? We pay around $50 for a pack of 21 shakes here (Australia), so 3 weeks would be just under $150 - that is if you have to have all 3 meals replaced (I do). Sorry to hear it costs so much there.

That has nothing to do with genes, its simply habit. They eat their way and of course, introduce their children to their way of eating. Patterns can be broken though.

If you go to ozband : ozband - oz support group for wls its a yahoo group for people all over Aus who will be/are being/ have been banded. There are also individual groups for each capital city. You don't need a yahoo email account now, just sign up with your own email account and you'll be fine. I will be in Melby over xmas for a week catching up with family (born and bred, now living in Brissy). Happy to get together for a coffee with people while I'm there.

Thanks for this info. Another thing I will be adding to my list of things to have before op, so I'm armed just in case I need them after.