MacMadame

I thought only left-wing crazies complained about mercury. :cheers2:

Plus incest is illegal. :cheers2: Seriously, parents can be so weird sometime. I'm not sure why they think this stuff is motivating, but I think they do. My mom would say things to me when I was growing up like "You'd be such a pretty girl if you'd only stop biting your fingernails." As if feeling bad about myself was going to get me to stop. They made similar comments about my weight. And what gets me is that I wasn't actually overweight at the time -- at least not according to those BMI calculators.

I've been off the To Go packets for two days (because I keep forgetting to bring more into work) and I still have heartburn. So I guess that's not it either.

Me too. I didn't think you were. I thought maybe you were thinking I was getting down on you. :embaressed_smile:

Okay. NOW I know what thread you guys are talking about. I can get off the short bus now! I hate it when people play with smilies just to play with smiles. :eek:

Well I bought a new tire once, drove home about 2 miles, parked, and when I came out the next day, the tire was flat. Sorry, but I blame the tire company. I'm pretty sure they didn't install it correctly -- especially since there was no visible puncture. And yes, even though it was over 15 years ago, I'm still made about it! :embaressed_smile:

Yep, that's where it is. It shares land with the CA School for the Deaf. There aren't a lot of students there though. Around 70-80. The School for the Deaf is much bigger, over 200. It's been here as long as I've lived in Fremont. I didn't realize it hadn't always been here. Interesting.

I'm blogging. Scrapbooking is one of those things I think I'll do but never get around to. :embaressed_smile:

Ohmigod, is THAT my problem? I've been having heartburn like crazy lately. Sometimes Zantac works for it and sometimes it doesn't. I thought it was related to my Water intake but since my water almost always has Crystal Light in it... though I was out of it today and still have some heartburn, so maybe not.

It might make you feel better to know that I didn't find out I was pregnant until around 4.5 months the last time. During that time I: 1) was on Jenny Craig and getting only 1200 cal. per day 2) drank like a fish for a week when I was on vacation 3) took provera (a hormone) to kick-start my period and my kid turned out fine! :wink2: Also, I was still overweight so my doctor told me to keep my weight gain down and not gain as much as a thin person would during my pregnancy. I didn't count calories at all. I counted RDAs. I had a list of what I had to get in each day -- so many servings of Calcium, so many of Vitamin A veggies, so much of Vitamin C foods, etc. So many servings of Protein, etc. If I got that in, I was happy and didn't worry about how many calories it was. My baby was born 9 lb. 1 oz., too so it's not like she was deprived.

So now I'm in a weird state. I started logging everything I ate and drinking more Water. As a result of that, I've lost 4 lb! I'm in a bit of a panic since I haven't had my initial consult and weigh in with my surgeon and I'm getting perilously close to being under 40 BMI. Between getting measured an inch taller the last two times I was at the doctors and losing 4 lb., I'm down to 41.3 and my appointment is still 1 month out! Last night before I went to bed, I had an extra bowl of Cereal with milk just because. I was going to start working out or maybe take a yoga class because I can tell I'm not exercising as much as I did when I was ice skating regularly but now I'm afraid to. How crazy is that?!

I've been trying to eat slower and chew more in preparation for getting the band. Prior to this, I've been REALLY into spicy foods. Well, I've found when you take time to actually CHEW your food, it's got TONS more flavor then when you gulp it down. You don't NEED to put a ton of spice on it to give it flavor. I'm a bit in shock, actually. :wink2:

My kids all know. I like to be really upfront with them. My grandmom was rather secretive about things -- had breast cancer and didnt' tell us until months after the mascetomy, for example -- and my mom has always been a bit squirrelly about health issue -- told me she had an underactive thyroid when she was taking diet pills and then later couldn't remember having said that when I asked about her thyroid condition -- and I think that these sorts of things have impacted my relationship with them, especially with my grandmother. I don't want to put my kids in that position. So I've told them I'm thinking about it and dd and I watched a Lap band surgery together. (She's into blood and guts and science and thought it was cool.) I plan to bring her to a support group meeting at some point, too. I plan to bring dh because he's really going to have to change his cooking and grocery shopping style once I get the band. No more "Pasta and gravy" with no veggies two nights a week for us!

It would be nice to feel wonderful and healthy again. :wink2: But it will be irriating to know that some stupid chart will say I'm still overweight when I'm as healthy as a horse. Just to be clear: I think it's great that you've gotten to be tiny person. You seem very happy and healthy. I, OTOH, think that running a marathon must be on the things they make you do when you get to one of those Circles of Hell. :wink2: I am more of a yoga, ice skating, ballroom dancing kind of gal and I look forward to being at a weight where I can start doing those things again without so much discomfort and lack of progress.

My PCP suggested WLS before I could bring it up. So I don't think the letter is going to be a problem. But I worry it won't be in the right formate or include all the right details for the ins. company. Because I'm a worry wart like that. There was supposed to be a sample PCP letter in my packet from the surgeon but it wasn't there. Anyone have a link to a sample letter online that I can print out?

I disagree. If I was self-pay, I would seriously consider Mexico. There are a few doctors there who are more experienced and have a better reputation than any one I could find in my area. But Haucuz isn't one of them. :biggrin:

I don't know where you are reading these things. Not only do you not have to have a re-operation in 5-7 years for the band, but there are people in one study who had their bands twelve years! There are also people who have had a problem with slippage or erosion and many of them were able to heal up and get a new band in as months, not years. There are others who decided to do a revision for RNY or another WLS and were quite able to. OTOH, if you decide RNY is not for you, you can't have it undone and get a band. Also, most of the complications of bypass are due to the malabsorption issues, not the co-morbidities. Maybe it was the mortality rate that is related to co-morbidities? RNY is often done on people with really high BMIs and serious co-morbidities and any surgery is more dangerous for them because of that. OTOH, it's not accurate to say that only they have a higher risk of dying than lap band patients. It's a more involved surgery -- organs are cut -- and it takes longer. Both of those things increase the mortality rate over an less invasive surgery that takes less time. There definitely good reasons to get RNY but don't do it based on bad information.

I know I have a small frame. It's very obvious when you look at how narrow my shoulders are compared to everything else and how small my wrists and head are. Also the two c-sections for having narrow hips and big babies were a bit of a clue. Based on that, the weight charts say I ought to be at the bottom of a 100-130 lb range to be healthy and that goes against my own experience. I have been wonderfully healthy at 145, which is my current goal. I had low blood pressure, Iron of 14.7, cholesterol of 155 and my sugars and liver function and everything else a doctor can test all looked good. I could do any exercise I wanted to with no limitations (and did). I have been 100 lb. (in HS) and I had to worry about getting blown around in a strong wind (really happened to me, not an exaggeration) and about having a blood pressure so low that I couldn't give blood and also had fainting spells. I don't think there is anything healthy about fainting. Now I may get to 145 (my current goal) and find that the band lets me go a bit lower. I couldn't maintain 145 before because I was always hungry. But I assume that won't be an issue with the band. But even if it does, if I get close to a weight where my blood pressure drops below 90/55-ish, I'm going to run screaming to my doctor for an unfill. Chart or no chart.

Behavior Intervention is Behavior Modification, really. At least as far as a layman is concerned. It's about focusing on behaviors and changing them via positive and negative reinforcement. It's different from therapy that focuses on your emotions and motivations, because the focus is on the behavior and what positives and negatives that behavior brings you.

Which makes it fake because in a photo, the closer something is to the camera, the bigger it appears. Pushing her back like they are walking side-by-side is just like taking two different pictures, each with a different scale, and pasting them together. Just look at the picture and it's obvious. The shorter girl is supposed to be 5'3" and she's supposed to be 6'5". Well, she sure looks more than 1"2" taller than the shorter girl.

Even if they went by the charts, it would still be fairer to do % of excess weight vs. absolute pounds lost.

I, too, believe there are no bad foods, just bad choices. I think this bad food vs. good food mentality is a by-product of the diet industry's approach to losing weight where they try to teach nutrition as a series of catch phrases and where there are whole diets organized around demonizing one particular food group. Put foods into the Good and Bad buckets is what leads to the attitude that drinking Water with a candy bar is just silly because if you are going to eat a candy bar, you might as well drink soda -- even though a soda and a candy bar is more empty calories than a candy bar alone. Or it leads to not eating the candy bar but eating something else that isn't a particularly good choice either, but it's not a food you've decided is BAD so it seems like you've made a good choice, but you haven't.

My surgeon's practice recommends a yearly visit after the first two years. Obviously, if you need a fill, you need to come in sooner, but if you don't, then once a year is fine for a check-up.

I chose lap band because it's adjustable and reversable. With any WLS, there can be complications. If you have certain complications with gastric bypass, you can end up being sick for the rest of your life because it can't be undone. If you have complications with the lap band, you can -- as a last resort -- take it out. I like the adjustable aspect too. I am not interested in dropping rapid and extreme weight loss. I mainly want to control my hunger so that I have a chance at eating healthy with normal portion sizes. With gastric bypass, you get the pouch you get -- it may be perfect for you but it may be too big so you don't get as good hunger control or too small so that you have trouble maintaining your health. The lap band, otoh, will let me get fills and I get to pick how restricted I am. I plan to pick enough restriction to control my hunger but not so much that I can't eat most foods. That's the right answer for me. Someone else may want even less restriction or even more. We both get to choose what works for us. Finally, the mortality rate of bypass is too high for me. It's 1 in 200. I have young kids and I want to live to see them grow up. Sure, my weight will kill me eventually, but that's the key word -- eventually. I'm not going to do something today that increases my chance of dying today that much.

I think that if you eat healthy food and maintain an active lifestyle and aren't overeating, that whatever weight you are at is the right weight for you. Those charts and the medical pronouncements about what your risk factors are if you are in certain ranges are based on statistics. Statistics describe groups. They are not predicative for an individual. For example, if you are someone who lifts weights and has a lot of muscle, your BMI might say you are overweight. If your BMI says you are overweight, but your cholesterol is low, your resting pulse is low, your blood pressure is low, you have good levels on your sugars, minerals and hormones and your body fat % is under 20, then you are a healthy person and you are not at greater risk of bad health than someone whose BMI says they are normal weight, but their body fat % is over 25 and they have one or more of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low Calcium values, etc. I have a relative who is thin. But she eats horribly and never exercises. She eats mostly refined sugar, in fact, and is only thin because she eats two meals a day. Back when I was 145 -- overweight on the charts, but had a cholesterol level of 155, blood pressure of 90 over 55 and Iron levels of 14.7, etc. there was no way she was healthier than I was.