MacMadame

I had mine out in '89. Open! They do it lap these days and it's not that big a deal. Plus no more gallbladder attacks!

So I'm still without my receiver and I had to leave work early to pick up my bike so no final "Couch to 5K" workout. I think I'm going to consider myself graduated though. I ran on Mon & Tues and my "New to the Sport" workout tomorrow is going to include some running so that's my 3 runs a week. I've decided that in the gym I will work on increasing the amount of time I run until I can run the full 4 miles and let my other workouts (track, NTTS) work on my speed. I signed up for a 5k race on March 15th. It's part on Irish festival for St. Patrick's Day.

Hey, my food scale is a Saltar! I have a Tanita that measures weight and body fat for up to 3 people. The weight part is very accurate ... always within .5 a lb. of my doctor's scale ... but the body fat is always high compared to everyone else's scale. But it's ancient -- at least 15 years old -- so I bet the newer ones are better.

From what I've read, exercise is correlated with success for all the surgeries. I think it gives people an edge. With the sleeve, the main complications are in the beginning and some are quite serious. You can get a leak along your staple line and sometimes they are hard to heal. You can get a stricture where you can't get anything down and have to be dilated to expand out your opening. You can get a twist in your stomach and there are different treatments for that. The other thing is that sometimes people have trouble with stomach acid. Sometimes the stomach makes too much acid at first. So most docs put us on a PPI right away as a precaution. But I didn't really have too much trouble with that. Another annoying complication is nausea. Again, this is more of a "just in the beginning" thing and it's much less common than the stomach acid. After that, the main thing is that you should be taking Calcium supplements because calcium is not as well absorbed in a low-acid environment. Some people also need to supplement with B12 or Iron, but again, that is rare. The base supplements are similar to lap-band base supplements, in fact. And that's about it. Once you get past the leak danger, and as long as you aren't one of the ones dealing with nausea, you are pretty much home-free.

Well I did say "really good" and "$100". I think the cheaper ones can be okay, but the ones I'm looking at that get the rave reviews are all at least $100. Which is why I don't have one. :frown:

The whole thing should have been handled in PM, IMO.

I believe you get a toaster.

I started out wanting a band but I didn't know about the sleeve. I ended up changing my mind because of stories like yours and also because of the slippage stats and long-term complication stats. With the sleeve, they remove the portion of your stomach that makes ghrelin so you lose your appetite. I had a VORACIOUS appetite beforehand. After the surgery, it was like a switch had been flipped in my brain. However, I'm not going to say I *never* get hungry. I get head hunger like everyone else. I also get a feeling that feels like hunger if I drink too fast. Which I sometimes do. I also get a kind of weak and empty feeling if I go about 4-5 hours without eating. So I've been dealing with these feelings and will continue to deal with them probably for the rest of my life. But without the appetite, it is much easier to deal with head hunger and fake hunger, much easier than it was pre-surgery. I can look at a piece of cake in the lunch room and think "I WANT THAT" but all I have to do is go back to my desk and get busy and I completely forget about it. Pre-op, it would stay in my mind, tempting me, for quite some time. Sometimes I'd be able to resist, but sometimes I'd go back and have a piece. Or I'd have a piece right there, the first time. I know people with bands who report similar experiences to mine so I know it can happen with a band. But you have to have proper restriction and the ghrelin is still there and, for some people, that negates the hunger control that proper restriction provides.

:frown: Me too. On both points!

They aren't as accurate as a Heart Rate Monitor and you can get a really good HRM for about $100, way cheaper than a BodyBug. I don't like 24 Fitness either. Luckily we have a free gym at work. No spin classes or pool but most of the classes at 24 Fitness were not at convenient times anyway.

Misty - it's because they continue to eat white carbs. It's mostly white carbs that cause the stink. For some people, taking flagyl every day is enough. For others, they just avoid white carbs. Others eat white carbs when know they won't be around people who care. Like in the evenings at home alone. All surgeries have their pluses and minuses IMO and what is a minus for you, wouldn't be a minus for me or someone else. For me, the dumping of RnY and not being able to eat white carbs with DS are deal-breakers. It's not that I want to eat sugar and white carbs in great quantities all the time. It's that these kinds of conditions are too variable for me. My RnY friends talk about how they ate something one time and it was fine so they ate it again and this time they dumped. That kind of variability would drive me INSANE. Plus I got WLS to have a normal life. That means once in a while having something with sugar in it or once in a while having white carbs. They aren't every day foods for me, but once in while I have them and enjoy them and I want to keep doing that. OTOH, if my sleeve ends up not working for me, I could see myself getting switched. I'd ask for the smallest possible amount of switching that I could have and still maintain my weight, but I'd rather avoid white carbs forever than go back to being obese. Btw, I think that person who got fired could have sued for wrongful termination. They wouldn't have fired her if she had cancer and the treatment was making her smell. So why did they think it was okay to fire her for a side-effect of treating her obesity? It's discrimination.

I talk to the pre-banded. But not the assinine. :frown:

I agree with plain. You need to be sure you've researched all the surgeries and picked the one that makes sense to you based on your own assessment of the risks and benefits. LapBand does have the lowest average EWL of all the surgeries. At the same time, I know people who have lost over 200 lb. with a band. So how do you know if you will be one of the successes or the failures? You need to know *why* the band fails and see if those things are applicable to you. There are two restriction-only surgeries, btw. Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy (which I had) has a better average excess weight loss and less long-term complications. OTOH, it has more short-term complications. Plus it's only been around as a stand-alone procedure for about 7 years so there is not a lot of long-term data and it's hard to get insurance to pay for it. Maybe the sleeve isn't right for you, but it's important to know all your options so you don't have regrets later on, so I encourage you to check it out.

It will take a while before you see that on the scale though. It has something to do with how glycogen is stored in the muscles.

I'm losing a lot of hair too but nothing I do makes it stop. More protein, more supplements, more calories, etc. I think it just happens and I'm just resigned to it.

I still can't find my receiver for my Nike+. You can buy new sensors but you can't buy new receivers so I'm going to have to buy the whole kit over again. I'm very annoyed!

Stationary bike. 45 min. I've started adding in hill work. It's weird because the hills are so hard but overall I go more miles and my average heart rate is lower and my calories burned is lower. So, in some ways, it appears to not be as good a workout. But my METS where the same.

:ohmy: So is it all gone now?

Are you whack?! One Fish, Two Fish is clearly the key to the meaning of life!

They are hard to eat. Like with bread and Pasta, they expand in your stomach. So you have to be careful not to overeat. I don't like them enough to bother. :thumbup: But I like shrimp, which is also hard for me to chew well so for that I just put in the work and am extra careful. If I over-eat, I get a pressure in my chest and it's uncomfortable. It's not worth dealing with that for foods I don't really care for.

I thought what we see in each "weekly" episode was actually filmed over several days. But I did find an article on the web that said something about being there 3 months. It wasn't clear where they got that 3 months from though.

:crying: I lost my receiver for my Nike+ :biggrin:

I did the swim thing for 1 hour 15 min. I'm not sure how far I went. Did one 500, a 6 x 100 and a 400 and some other stuff. I lost track. We did a lot of drills and I learned how to do my hands properly and that helped me swivel my hips.

I thought they were there for 6 weeks, not months? I read that somewhere else but no where definitive.

It could be true. It kind of depends. At first, a lot of people aren't hungry as an aftermath of the surgery. But a lot of people also find that liquids aren't very filling and so they are somewhat hungry during this time. Sometimes it's head hunger and sometimes it's not. It shouldn't be anything like it is now though. I found chewing sugar free popsicles helped a lot. Also Jello. Both were "chewing" foods even though counting as liquids and the act of chewing helped. Once I got on mushies, I pretty much wasn't hungry unless I went for hours without eating -- like 5 hours or more -- or if I was experiencing something I was interpreting as hunger, but wasn't -- like stomach gurgling from drinking too fast. What's up is that you have the kind of program where they have a lot of arbitrary rules. :biggrin: Some programs have all these deadlines for when to eat things ... no tomatoes for X months, no OJ or acidic foods, no salad, don't eat certain kinds of meats. On my program, they say start out slow and be careful about having new foods but, once you are cleared for regular food, you can eat anything "as tolerated". So I eat all those things and have since about 7 weeks out. But I don't eat bread or Pasta because I don't tolerate them well. I prefer being able to try things on my own schedule but some people like having rules especially if it helps them avoid trouble.