LittleBill

Do you know how to make a hormone? Don't pay her.

I'm a guy. I don't have hormones.

I don't think I'd have the stomach to watch it. Oh, wait... I suspect if my doc offered it, I'd watch it, but not before mealtime.

Thank you. I bought the stuff thinking it might be a good deal for those mornings when I need to run out the door. I wasn't even thinking about the caffeine when I came in from the cold. I was just thinking of something hot to drink.

Every day is a new chance to start over, and you only have to make it through that one day. Don't dwell on the past, but look to the future one day at a time, and work it from there. You already know what you have to do, because you've already done it. If you let the past, and what might be in the future weigh you down, it will crush you. So take it one day at a time, and make each day a small victory. You don't have to win the war all at once.

I've had a couple of friends ask about it, but no one has taken the plunge yet. I'm still new enough at this that they are probably waiting to see if I crash and burn or if it really works. But they are paying attention.

You are asking good questions. The slippery slope is within us. We just have to be careful what we put on it.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Beer. Do you know why beer goes through you even faster than water? Because it doesn't have to stop to change color!

I've run the range of nothing in one week, to a high of 18 lbs down my first week after surgery. Most weeks are somewhere in between. Good for you for putting the scale away.

The key phrase is "How I interpreted it". That was your first mistake. The second is assuming everyone who posted in response to you read every single OTHER response first. My initial response to you was not a lecture. This one is. If your skin is this thin, you ain't gonna do well on the interweb. I was corrected for the exact same thing you were just last week, by a different poster. Instead of getting all bent out of shape, I wrote "thank you". It did not demean me at all to be corrected. In fact, it improved my perspective, and will prevent me from making similar errors in the future. That is important to me. Maybe it isn't for you. And if you don't like what I have written, or anyone else has written, there is an ignore button.

I know virtually nothing about you or anybody else on this forum here. But I do know about forum interactions, having been on various ones for 20 years now, as a participant and as a moderator. The written word is woefully inadequate to convey the full meaning of a person's communication. It is always helpful to ask for clarification, and to assume the best rather than the worst, until proven otherwise. It will not harm you at all to do that, and it might very well help. Take out the "root" and I will be right there with you - on rare occasion, of course.

I told people who I thought would understand and be supportive. Some of those are friends, family, and even casual acquaintances. The rest of the world has no need to know. Some of those are friends, family, and even casual acquaintances. (do you see what i did there?) People who are negative don't get time with me to express their negativity. Life is too short to waste on people who bring me down.

I've been putting more salt on my food. I rarely used it before, except for a little when cooking. But, my blood pressure went from normal before surgery to low afterward, so I am adding more salt to my diet as well as getting into political discussions whenever possible to keep it up to a normal level.

I love rabbit too. Way back in the dim recesses of time, the night before Easter 1982, I was introduced to the people who would be my mother and father in law. They took the future Mrs. LittleBill and me out to a fancy restaurant for dinner, and I was told to order whatever I wanted. They had rabbit on the menu, and being a good ole redneck boy myself, I ordered it, not having had it for a while. They were horrified. Not only was it the night before Easter, they had a pet rabbit at home. Suffice to say, I did not make a good impression on them. But we survived that incident, and have been married almost 33 years now. It was a '99, but is long gone. The deer was still alive, so I put two slugs in its head with a .357 snubbie. The game warden accused me of speed beefing. I asked him how far away from a deer I could be and still hit it twice in the head with a 2 1/2" barrel - at night. He let it go. I haven't had rabbit since I lost my hare.

The last person to get a deer in our family was when Mrs. LittleBill took one out with the Suburban. We took what was left of it to the butcher, and got a whopping 20 lbs of usable meat. It is too scary to hunt around here anymore, but I do love venison.

You ought to try bear if you haven't already. I could bearly get it down it was so greasy. But since I was a guest in the home of some friends, I just had to grin and bear it.

Thank you. My biggest issue is old age creeping up on me. As the weight comes off, you will feel better and your joints should do better just from a lighter load. For example, my feet used to kill me by the end of the day, and I spend a lot of time standing or walking. Now, they never bother me. And the only real thing that has changed is they aren't carrying so much load on them.

I guess if you are on phone or a tablet they may not display. They do on one of these old fashioned computers, on a side bar to the left of each post. I started out at 481. I made it to 414 in just about four months preceding surgery, and am currently at 370, two months out from surgery. The past two weeks have been kind of slow, but I suspect things will pick up again in due time.

Permit me to be redundant here. Walk it off, as the coach always said. I had my surgery sometime around 4:00 PM on a Tuesday. On Wednesday morning (I am a morning person) I was up by 0500 and walking. I put in almost a mile by the time they kicked me out right after lunch. I had virtually no pain at all, and I attribute a lot of that to getting up and getting moving right away. And if you look at my stats, I am one of the largest of the large around here.

They are fun to watch, as long as they aren't costing me money (or sleep). Our dog Jester goes insane when he sees one. I almost hurt myself laughing the one time he fell down the stairs trying to run, bark, and look up in the air at one all at the same time. They are, and very tasty protein at that.

I'll tell you what else these little so and so's do. We have a second floor porch on one side of the house with a steel roof over it. It just so happens to be on the same wall our bed is, and there is a window there besides. In spring and summer, the squirrels that live INSIDE the roof of that porch come out to play. Early - Every. Single. Morning. So earlier than I would like, I am awakened to the sound of tiny claws scrabbling on a slanted steel roof. And there is no way to get to them easily. My squirrel removal tool, while accurate and deadly at long distances, is not suitable for either pointing out the window or back at the house.

I can kill one to eat with no compunction at all. But I feel awful if I run over one. Thank you. It is a hobby, and you are not the first to say so. Maybe I will be a writer one of these days.

Oh no! It's too late! Don't worry about it. The best person to answer that question is you, and probably not until after you've had it for a while. If the band works for you, then it was the best procedure. If it doesn't work, and for the right reasons (i.e. you are doing everything you are supposed to) it can always be revised to a sleeve. But if it were me, I would not start out worrying I went the wrong route. Give it time.

I haven't watched regular TV in about 20 years. I will watch Netflix, and catch an old series there sometimes, but commercial TV is was too offensive and vacuous for me. I would rather read a book. There are no commercials in books, although a lot of the characters are eating better than I do.