MacMadame

You're welcome. :woot:

You should do a search ... there are about 10 threads on the Realize band and you'll get more info than you ever wanted to know!

Yes, but the comparisons are often negative... as in Sally has lost 60 lb. in 3 months, why haven't you? I think that's worth complaining about. :woot:

I was going to post something about my toes but I grossed myself out. :woot:

I think part of the problem is that the surgeon's office does tell them most of what they are asking about... but that's the key, they "tell". Most people can't take it all in and latch onto a few items and forget the rest. My GP's office always sends me home with tons of written material that repeats what the doctor told me. Some bariatric programs do that too and they repeat info and have lots of classes too. I think that all helps. Of course, some programs are better than others and I get the impression that some programs really don't tell patients this stuff and that's a shame.

I hate that comment... it's dumb. Boys don't really knock down anyone's door, for starters. I've found that if you want boys to be all over you, you have to give out a certain vibe. It really has little to do with weight or looks. But the problem is that the kind of boys who are all over you when you put out that vibe are the kind a sensible person wouldn't want! Sometimes our society gives out a message that being thin solves all of life's problems. Well boy-girl problems are more complex than that! Yes, it will be easier for people to see the "real" you if you aren't overweight, but that won't solve every problem. I also got "you're going to look great in a bikini" when I last lost lots of weight. Um, no. I knew I'd have batwing arms and a poochy tummy, stretch marks and also a surgery scar right down my middle. It made me feel bad when they said that at first, but eventually I just translated it into "you'll be so happy when you lose the weight" since I figured that's what they really meant. :woot:

It used to be that you had to be a size 12 to be a plus size model. At least that was the standard about 10 years ago when a relative of mine was doing it. Yet you just said PS here I come. :thumbup: I think what happens is that our images of what is normal get distorted. Then, we may not actually try to achieve those images -- since our brain knows they are often fake, what with airbrushing, camera angles and such -- but the images work on a subconscious level and cause us to enter into disordered thinking which can lead to disordered behavior which often just makes it worse because it sabotages our efforts to be healthy. I think it's really important to understand how the media works and to be constantly on guard so that we are in control and not them. Otherwise, we can get into a situation like a lot of my thin friends where no matter how thin they are or how good they look, they beat themselves up because it's not good enough. I can see this happening now with my 9 year old and it's pretty depressing and I feel pretty powerless against it. I talk to her and show her realistic images and talk some more, but I'm just a voice crying in the wilderness and I'm afraid I'm not being heard.

With really young kids, their concept of time is not like ours and I think it's best to wait until right before the surgery and then keep it really simple. My kids are 9 and 16 and the 16 year old doesn't really care about anything but his own life right now, but is supportive -- he's attitude is that if I want it, then he should want it for me. My 9 year old did freak out a bit about it. She said I'm not fat (ha!) and I think she's just afraid of change. So we went through the Before and After pictures on this site and that was reassuring to her. She could see that I wasn't going to turn into Twiggie or not look anything like myself. The big convincer for her was when I said I needed the operation to make sure I was around for a long time.

But calling someone a dumb ass is also against the rules.... which is probably why you haven't seen people be that harsh. :cry_smile:

"Plenty of water" isn't "exactly 64 oz". Everyone's water needs are different and they vary throughout the day and the week. The idea that everyone needs to drink 8 - 8 oz glasses of water a day -- and that it MUST be water, other liquids don't count -- is just crazy. Personally, I feel good with about 40-50 oz. of Fluid. Any more than that and I'm peeing every 2 seconds and feel kind of bloated and my stomach gets that "Thanksgiving" feeling where you know you put too much in it.

As long as we're bitching... a new pet peeve -- people who have fallen for the "you must drink 64 oz. of water" myth. :party: It bugs because there is no study that supports the recommendation and several that show that everyone's water needs are different and that many don't need that much.

And (some) atheists take insults that are specifically directed towards atheists personally because they are emotionally invested in the topic. See the nice parallelism there. :party: It's what they call white people. It's supposed to just be "slang" and not a racial slur, but they only used it when the white person in question had something "lessor" about them. So really it mean "silly/nerdy/weird/stupid white person". Hence why it annoyed me. Not that it has anything to do with atheism... but it does speak to intent and I think that relates to what we are discussing now. Which is how we are discussing the topic... how meta. :smile: My approach here, by the way, is that this is the Rants and Raves section and not a support section. Therefore, I don't have to spend hours crafting my messages so that they say exactly what I mean and don't accidentally offend anyone. If people can't take it, they can get out of the kitchen. No one needs this section of the site to help them with their bands. That's not to say that I would deliberately be a bitch about my POV, but it does mean that I might not temper my sarcasm. It depends on what you think God is. You are presenting him like a Being and some people believe that. Others think he's just a Force -- like Gravity -- in which case all the Omnipotent and All-Knowing stuff goes out the window and prayer is just about manipulating the force.

I also doubt you have a basis to sue. But I think the woman needs some sort of disciplinary action at work. Someone who would do that really shouldn't be working in a doctor's office. Not to mention, if she did it to you, she's probably done it to others.

My experiences in the past with losing weight when co-workers know you are doing something have lead me to not tell them about this. It isn't that they weren't supportive. It's that they were in my business when I didn't need them to be. Like if I was in the kitchen having a snack, they'd say "should you be eating that?" And they were asking me how much weight I'd lost all the time to the point where it got annoying. Then when I got near my goal weight, I started to get the "now don't lose too much weight" comments. It was FREAKING ANNOYING after a while. This time, I'm not going to talk about it so much and hopefully that cause people to keep all their comments to themselves.

Why are those the only two choices? You are really overinterpreting what I said. There is nothing in what I said that can be boiled down into "the day I grew up, I stopped believing in God". I describe a gradual process with a series of revelations that cummulated in not believing. What age I was when each happens isn't relevant -- though if it makes you feel better, I still believed in God when I was 25. :thumbup: Also, you need to stop interpreting everything said about not believing in God as being a slam on Christianity. Marx said "religion is the opiate of the masses". Is that a slam against Christianity? No, it's a slam against all religions.

My band is called The MacMadames. Oh wait, we aren't talking about playing Rock Band? :thumbup:

But she didn't dis all Christians. She dissed people who believe that Adam lived at the time of the dinosaurs. So, really, she only dissed you. I don't know about her, but I do not respect anyone who can't reason logically and who believes things that are clearly contradicted by reason and science. It really doesn't matter what religion they have or if they have any at all. I don't think ignorance is worthy of respect. I don't think willful blindness to reality is worthy of respect. It requires a combination of those things to believe in a Young Earth. Hence, that belief is not worthy of respect. Note that I didn't say that believing in God wasn't worthy of respect. It's possible to believe in God and still be a rational person who understands science and accepts it. Of course, those with faulty reasoning and/or willful blindness may have other areas of their lives where I might be able to respect them. Maybe they are good parents or really good at their hobbies. Maybe they have done a fantastic job of being banded. But we aren't talking about those things right now. How can you continue to insist that you feel the insults more personally because you are a Christian when people are telling you that they feel them deeply too? You are telling other people what they feel. That is incredibly rude. Your thoughts on this particular subject remind me of a conversation I had when I lived in Hawaii and so was a minority. Japanese Woman: You don't mind being called Haole, do you? Me: Actually I do. Japanese Woman: Oh no, you don't. We don't mean anything by it. You can't mind. This is what you are doing... we couldn't possibly feel it more than you because your beliefs are more important is pretty much what you are saying. But how dare we say we don't think your beliefs are logical. That's insulting! Of course, everyone has faith. Every belief system requires a leap of faith at the beginning, an acceptance of a certain premise that can't be proven. You can't prove that the world will always obey the laws of physics that we have worked out, just like you can't prove there is a God. Whether or not the belief system is logical depends on whether or not those things that are the first premise are things that we know not to be true and/or whether or not the premises and conclusions that follow afterwards are logical. But that first premise -- in my case that the world obeys certain natural laws and always will -- is always something that can't be proven. I do actually think you are taking things said in this thread more personally than some. But it has nothing to do with being a Christian because some of the people you are taking it more personally than are Christians. This has nothing to do with people insulting your God either. I've seen atheist do the exact same thing -- take things personally. It's just your own personal style. You need to own it instead of trying to claim it's somehow more justified than when non-Christians do it.

It depends on your insurance. Some just want you to have been "overweight" for 5 years. Some want you to have been "obese" for 5 years. Some want you to be "morbidly obese" for 5 years (which I think is ridiculous). Of course, some only require 2 years or no years of history, but it sounds like yours isn't one of those.

Bless your heart.

When I was younger, I was full of wonder and a lot of the world seemed magical. Surely that couldn't have happened without a creator?! But as I grew up, I began to learn more about how the world works and realized that I was just being naive. My wonder came from lack of knowledge. Which is not to say I don't have wonder any more, but it's a different kind and not one that leads me to "feel" the presence of a Higher Power. Then I decided that even if there is a God, you have to do good for goodness sake and not because you want to please him or because you fear him. Also, whether is a God or not, I see no convincing evidence that there is an afterlife. I think when you die, you die. Once I realized it didn't matter if there was a God or not because believing had no impact on my behavior, I began to see the world more clearly and realize that the very idea of a Creator is flawed. It was all based on feelings and not on logic. If you can't get a system without a creator, then you can't have a Creator without a Creator. There can be final Creator --it's like looking at yourself in a mirror with a mirror behind you -- each mirror reflects the image in the mirror into infinity. All people's beliefs define their lives. How could a person's beliefs not define them? For many people, insulting their beliefs is saying they are stupid. Calling people stupid is an insult and it's not an impersonal one. Hence, they take that personally. To me this whole "when you insult Christianity you insult my very core but when I insult atheism, it's no big deal because it's not personal" discussion reminds me of the previous "you can't be moral because you don't believe in God" discussion. It's equally annoying and misguided.

If you can switch from one group plan to another, that is awesome. Group plans can't deny you (with certain limited exceptions). I thought you were talking about buying private insurance. That's a whole 'nother ball of wax! UHC does not require 5 years of morbid obesity according to their Bariatric Surgery Medical Bulletin. Have you considered an appeal?

I know change is possible because I used to believe in God... then I grew up. :tongue2:

Speaking of things that doctors do that annoy me when I read about it here.... What is the deal suddenly with all these people whose doctors tell them to eat solid food as soon as possible? When I was in my intensive research phase, I constantly saw recommendations that would have you at the mushy stage at the 4-6 week period. Not one of the doctors who made my short list recommends doing it any fast. But now I see all these posts where people are completely skipping the mushy phase and are on solid food as early as the 1st week and it's their doctor's recommendation! Did some new research I'm not aware of come out saying that eating food early doesn't cause slippage or erosion or are these doctors just pandering and selling their clients up the river when it comes to the long-term life of the band?

Not from what I've read. With humans you have both the issue of consent -- which is why when adults have sex with children it's always called rape even if the adult gets the child to say yes and there isn't physical force. You don't get that with animals. Plus there is the purpose of the behavior. Fighting with another dog over who is going to be alpha dog is a lot different than raping a woman to get a cheap thrill. Or if it's a male animal and they are going after a female in heat, the purpose really is to procreate. I don't know any human rapists who do it in order to get a baby. So first of all, many types of animals are pack animals and they have a wide spectrum of behavior. You've got the dog/wolf packs, the prides of lions, the schools of fish and the whatever of whales or dolphins. Yes, they are all traveling in packs and there is some similarity, but there are often way more differences. Humans share more DNA with chimpanzese so if you are going to compare them to a pack animal, that would make more sense than to dogs. Second, animals aren't going around raping and killing each other all the time. Most of the time this is considered very aberrant behavior and very rare. The most common killing of the same species is about who gets to be Alpha animal in the pack. The young'uns challenge the alpha periodically and when the pack leader gets old and feeble, one of the stronger young ones kills him. This is actually good for the pack in the long run. There is stability as long as the leader is strong and when he's not, he gets killed and the pack isn't handicapped by him. Another type of intra-species killing is when one pack goes after another. Sometimes this is about survival but sometimes it's maladaptive behavior that really does hurt the species. But Darwin-ism doesn't say that all animals always act in order to preserve either their own life or their species. It say that behavior that helps with survival is rewarded and behavior that doesn't help get punished so that bad behavior is less likely to happen (the individual or species doesn't survive) and good behavior is more likely to happen (the individual or species procreates and makes more of the fitter version). I think you've proven you are overly sensitive. There is no way that telling people they are an idiot is not personal and many people take it personally when you ridicule their beliefs. To convince yourself that somehow it's worse when people ridicule your beliefs than other's beliefs is being too sensitive by definition no matter how you try to rationalize it.

I've been trying to find this on the UCH web site for over a month and I finally put the right keywords into the search!! (or maybe they just finally got it on the web site) This will tell you what WLS they cover or don't cover and why, what some of the criteria is for being approved, and lots of other info that might be helpful. I haven't found a direct link, but if you go to https://www.unitedhealthcareonline.com/ and type "bariatric" into the Search box, you'll get a link called "Bariatric Surgery" and clicking on it will bring you to the page. The text is too big to paste here so if you can't find the link the way I describe, PM me and I'll email you the text.