MacMadame

Okay, back from the gym. I did a 1:05 spin class geared to road cyclists. Then I sat in the jacuzzi and finished my Protein drink. Then I swam some laps for 20 min. (I'm guessing it was about half a mile). Then I ran for 35 min. The first part of that was recalibrating my Nike+ and warming-up and the last part was a cool-down. In between I ran 2 miles at "tempo" pace. Which was 5.5 for the first 1.5 miles and 5.9 for the last .5. I've NEVER run that fast before so I was very happy.

I calibrated my Nike+ again with my new shoes today. It's supposed to be more accurate. I guess we'll see.

I don't believe this. liquid goes right through the band. What gets people in trouble is cheating on the liquid diet by eating solid food. This does lead to throwing up sometimes, but a lot of times nothing happens outwardly, but inwardly the stomach doesn't heal around the band properly and down the road you get slippage or other problems.

I think you are expending effort to hold yourself up and balance the bike. I don't know how much, but more than sitting.

18 mi. bike ride with hill repeats. Then I joined a gym so tomorrow I'm going to do a spin class and swim laps in the pool.

I just got new running shoes and they are Nike so I can put my sensor in my sole! I'm psyched.

The surgeons' office doesn't do a payment plan, per se. They hook you up with a medical loan company. At least most of the time it works like that. They want their money up front. The hospital and anesthesiologist, too. Alternately, you can also borrow from your 401k via a loan or use your savings or credit cards. Some people refinance their homes. Of course, with the economy the way it is, less people can do that these days. Another way is through a HSA, if your company offers such a think. I paid for part of my surgery that way. I said I was going to put in 5000 that year in Aug (the max allowed) and then in Sept, I got a check for the whole $5000 even though I hadn't put that much in yet. It's like an interest free loan. Though, if I left the company, I'd have to pay the remainder back on my last day.

I was pretty sure Tara wouldn't win. The way they determine the winner is screwing IMO and favors those who start heavier. Let's put it this way, if I had 100 lb. to lose and you had 150, then I could lose all 100 lb. and you could lose less than that and you'd still beat me.

But you said it was ALL technique and size doesn't matter. If someone is lurking who is contemplating a surgeon uses a 48 f, I don't want them thinking "oh, it doesn't matter, as long as he has good technique." It most certainly does matter once you get past a certain size.

But most surgeons find the their sleeve patients lose as much as their RnY patients. RnY isn't a sleeve plus malabsorption -- it's a very different surgery in many ways so you are comparing apples and oranges. My surgeon has done 1600 of them over an 8 year period. He has plenty of numbers -- at least enough to satisfy me. :wink2: Yep. Sometimes I say "I regret I didn't do this 20 years ago" but the reality is that bariatric surgery was nowhere near where it is now back then and the cost-benefit analysis would have not made sense to me back then.

Most bike frames have a weight rating. It's pretty high. They aren't soda cans. :thumbup: I think most of them can hold at least 300 lb.

What does being well-liked have to do with being a good lapband patient? :thumbup: I completely disagree with this. We all know that diets don't work. They don't work because they don't provide hunger control so eventually you can't stick to them any more. I'm really dismayed that people who have had WLS and are failed dieters would pass judgement on another person's inability to keep off the pounds after a diet. We have ALL been through the same thing... when you are losing, you are motivated. But when you get to goal or plateau, the motivation to constantly deprive yourself lessens and your ability to force yourself not to eat when you are very hunger also lessens. And the weight starts coming back on... We don't know what Kirstie's motivation was. Yes, she was paid, but that doesn't mean she wasn't motivated by other considerations such as health and wanting her life back.

I'm taking about 32 vs. 48, not 32 vs 34. There is plenty of clinical data that you need to remove enough stomach to have success. One study found you have to remove at least 500cc. No matter what your technique, you can't do that with a 48 f or larger because, no matter how tight you butt up against the boughie, you can't get past a certain point. To us lay people, a ml seems small, but at our support group meeting this week my surgeon told us "10 ml is huge" when it comes to weigh loss and regain. The 5 year data from LapSF shows a 20% difference in weight loss between when they used a 48 f and a 32 f. That's a BIG difference. Sure, someone can use a 32 f and make huge sleeves by not pushing up against the boughie tight enough. That's why you have to also look at the surgeon's track record. But you can't use a 48 f and make a tiny sleeve no matter how good your technique is.

How much Protein did your doctor tell you to get in each day? From what I've read, women on a very low calorie diet should get 70-90 g of protein a day in order to avoid as much loss of muscle mass as possible. If you do intense exercise, you need more. As for how to consume it, it's up to you. That concentrated stuff tends to taste awful so I wouldn't buy a lot of it until you are sure you can stomach it. You can take the approach of downing it all at once like medicine or you can put it in things to try to disguise it.

In the early days, the size of your stomach is determined by how swollen it is. That's individual.

That's a fantastic time. I can't run a 5k that fast!

Actually, it says I weigh 55 lb. more than I do. :thumbup:

16 miles your first time? That's amazing! I had a bike fit and now my hoo-ha goes numb. I have to go back. They told me to get a smaller seat, but I didn't want to change it out 4 days before a race. Apparently, my butt is smaller than I thought. Isn't that cool? You just need a frame that fits your height. The weight is really irrelevant to a good fit.

Eh, it's a little of both. The thing is, it takes a while to get good at sleeves. That TJ doc is very inexperienced, for example. But even surgeons with good technique find their patients have regain issues if the boughie gets big enough. Btw, I promised to ask my doc last night whether he was planning to switch to a 36f and he said NEVER! (Just like that. Made me laugh because it's so him.) So that patient must have misunderstood. Personally, I can't see there being a big difference between a 32 and a 34 (including getting to 34 by oversewing) and if one surgeon finds he gets better results with one than the other, well, we pick our surgeons for their results, right? I'm not going to question 2f if the results are there. OTOH, there are clearly surgeons who are *afraid* to use a small enough boughie. (You can tell this by their reasons for why they use bigger.) It takes skill to get down in the 30s because you are working on a very small stomach with a very long staple line and not all surgeons have the skill or the confidence. Personally, I would never go to a surgeon who used a 40 f or higher and, from what I've seen, they aren't getting the results that the surgeons who use 32-36 f are getting.

I liked the Isopure clear protein drinks in the early days. Eventually I couldn't stand them but they saved my life in the first month or so.

My daughter (who is also 10) went through a lot of that. I told her I was having surgery so I could live long enough to see her grow up and have kids of her own and that seemed to help.

Biked 20.88 miles in 90 minutes. I'm definitely getting faster!

I don't like Shot Blocks because it's like eating salty licorice. :smile: The rule of thumb is to consume 200 calories an hour when doing endurance sports. I find that hard to do with just drinks, but I can't eat anything and run and I find the gels do nothing for me anyway. It's like they go right through me. What works best for me is a sports drink with a 3:1 carb to Protein ratio (my body hates pure carbs), Protein Bars and bananas. As for weight gain, are you tracking all your food and exercise? I track everything and so I can always go back when I get an unexpected number on the scale and analyze what happened. Without that information, you are just shooting in the dark and relying on (notoriously unreliable) memory.

I was up early because I couldn't sleep but I did manage to go back to sleep later.

The Daily Plate way over-estimated the amount of calories I can eat. OTOH, I now use My Fitness Pal and it seems okay, but it says I should be losing about 1 lb. a week and I've been losing two. So it's going the other way, I think. I do think the calculators get more accurate the closer you are to goal. Also, for exercise, many people find when they are a beginner runner that the online calculators under-estimate their calorie burned but tend over-estimate calories burned from other exercise. My HRM monitor says I burn more running and less biking in the gym than the online calculators. But the swimming and biking outside are close. IOW, I find I can't rely on one source because each one is skewed in a different way!