lellow

I can drink cold drinks now in maintenance. So it's not forever. Or you can try sipping?...

Thanks I'm really pleased with how it's all turned out. My body lift surgeon, my BA surgeon and my tattooist are all geniuses in their own rights!

I'm glad that my story 'spoke' to some of you. Three girls at my workplace have been banded in the last 6 months and I repeated what I considered to be my change of mindset so many times to them that I thought perhaps I should write it all down! I wondered even if I wrote it if it would make sense. I'm glad it did!

Ok, I had to wait til the server migration was complete before I gave posting the pic anther go. Let me know if you still can't see it!

Miine was not exactly the same situation but I'll tell you my story nonetheless. My husband met me when I weighed a lot. My weight ballooned while we were married but he always seemed perfectly content with that. Then in 2005, he and I did IVF to have our son and our sex life started to suffer from that time. Things took a huge turn for the worse when I got lapbanded in 2008 and started to lose weight. It was also about this time that my career took off and for the first time, I started earning more than my husband. My new job required me to be quite assertive (project manager) so not only was I becoming more confident professionally but with the weight loss, more confident emotionally and physically. The dynamics of our relationship changed so much the cracks in our marriage started becoming gaping chasms. He constantly found fault with me, he seemed to have little patience for me. I began to doubt that he loved me - he wouldn't even touch me - and we drifted apart more and more. I eventually left him 6 months ago. We barely spoke for 5 of those 6 months. I dated, learnt to love the person I am now and enjoyed my single life. I had no intention of reconciling, even though I never stopped loving him, and I went about making a new life for myself. Then a month ago, I told him about my breast augmentation (something he was always dead against) and that he needed to look after our son while I was recovering. He then asked me why I didn't get it done sooner, while we were together, and I told him it was because he was so against it. That opened his eyes, I believe, as to how much I had been compromising my happiness to be with him. From that day, he starting calling me again. I was honest with him. I told him that I was dating other men, I told him about the travelling I had done, told him about the new tattoos (lol) and I was brutally honest about how damaging I thought our relationship was to me. He admitted that seeing me change made him insecure, and his way of dealing with it was to try (knowingly or unknowlngly) to manipluate me into behaving a certain way. But the bigger fool him, coz now I had left, and living the life of a confident, free, financially secure person, he actually found me more attractive than ever. 3 weeks ago, he asked me out on a date (he was sooo scared I'd say no!) and that night, we decided to give our marriage another go. He admits that he needed me to walk away, for him to appreciate me. He doesn't live with me yet, we're dating and taking it slow, but he cannot keep his hands off me (and yes, he LOVES the new breasts!!). He admits that the changes in me were difficult for him to take up close, but watching me from afar, he realises that the person I am is what he desires more than anything. I'm not saying this is my happy ending. There is a long way to go. But I stopped the vicious cycle that our marriage seemed to be on and the rut we couldn't seem to get out of by leaving (and at the time, it was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do). And now, thanks to the stars aligning, we're attempting a fresh start. Don't sell yourself short. You are worth his respect and his love. If he won't give it to you, you need to find a way to either fix it (and he must want to too) or you need to find some self-preservation and take yourself out of such a damaging situation. It's not easy and I feel for you so much. But know that you're worth more than the way you're being treated right now.

Variations of a lb can happen at anytime. You retain Water, you bloat and you gain a lb. If you'd gained 4 lbs I would say you might have just cause to be worried. Don't be discouraged by a one lb gain. Unless you keep gaining. Good luck for your surgery!

Hot chocolate made with skim milk.

food is still my friend. But instead of lots of high calorie foods, cakes, chocolates etc, my love of food has changed to high quality meats, luscious fruits like mango, lovely risottos and spicy curries. I can't eat much of those things, but I savour every bite. Don't mourn the loss of a friend, that friend will still be there, but in a different form. I still love food, I just don't have to eat a lot of it to appreciate it.

When I'm properly restricted, I didn't notice I was hungry either. I would sometimes get home and find myself shaking and then realise I hadn't eaten all day. I didn't get that straight out mind you, only after about 6 or 7 fills. But my band isn't that tight anymore and I do experience hunger now. Like Jachut, I don't want to change that because I'm maintaining easily and don't want to lose anymore.

I had a full body lift and got a tattoo like SueHam mentioned. No one looks at my scars much anymore lol. I had loads of loose skin. Even without the tattoo, the scar was preferable. And I'm Asian so they were quite dark and noticeable. I am about 18 months post body lift surgery and about 3 weeks post breast augmentation. Here's a pic of my belly taken two days ago...

No one I meet nowadays knows I'm banded unless I tell them. I eat like a small, kinda picky eater. No one bats an eyelid lol. And I still love eating good food - I go to good restaurants and make great dinners all the time. I figure that when you're only eating a little bit, why waste that space on anything less than great food?? I think my appreciation of good food has actually increased! :blushing:

I'm 5'4" and my Dr set my goal weight at 154lbs. I got to that goal in 7 months, then stopped trying to lose and lost another 20lbs anyway over the next 12 months. I am now steady at 123-125lbs and that's pretty much where my body wants to be, I reckon.

I had surgery to remove my excess skin after an 80lb weight loss. Why? Coz I couldn't live with it. Some can and some can't. No one will force you to have plastic surgery. it's a very personal choice. There's a member here - Jachut - she's older than me (not by much though) and her skin bounced back much better than mine ever did. I had an 'overhang' after my 2nd child that never went away, and I had him at 22. I exercised, I toned, I did all that. My skin was shot in my stomach area completely. It was never going to bounce back. But my thighs and arms did, so I didn't get surgery on those areas. I recently had breast augmentation. Again, it's something I wanted. Simple as that. I lived with empty sacks for 18 months after I got to goal, then decided I didn't want empty sacks anymore. Was it more about vanity than health? Oh hell yeah. But if you get to goal and don't want anything else but having got to goal, why, that's an excellent outcome no matter how you look at it!

When I got some restriction, this happened to me too. I was usually tummy-growling hungry when I ate, but when I actually did eat, I'd eat only a little, be unable to eat anymore, but not feel that 'oh I'm so full' satisfied feeling. But if I waited 15 - 30 mins, the food started moving through the band and I'd stop feeling hungry. And that's what I started looking to, stopping the feeling of hunger as opposed to the feeling of being satisfied. Because I think part of the way I used to eat, feeling 'satisfied' took a helluva lot of food. And if you're getting hungry within 2 hours of eating, you're just not at your sweet spot yet. That's all. But ask yourself too, when you say you're hungry again, are you really hungry or are you looking to obtain that satisfied feeling again? I don't even know if I'm making sense to anyone, but I get what you're saying and I'm trying to explain that with the band, there needs to be some change in mindset as to how much we need to actually eat as opposed to how much we want to eat. Please feel free to PM me if I'm not making sense (I feel like I'm not! lol) but I struggled with this too and changing my mindset helped me cope with it heaps.

Most days I know I'm thin now. I have stopped picking up the bigger sizes of clothes when I go shopping only to find them swimming on me when I get to the fitting room. I can usually tell now just buy looking at something if it's going to fit. But even at the size I am now (a US size 2 - 4), I have days when I feel like the fat girl in the room. But those days are getting fewer and fewer. I remember refusing to go shopping in Singapore a month ago because I was absolutely convinced nothing would fit, because from previous experience, nothing ever did, and the humiliation of it stayed with me. It took me ages to feel comfortable in a swimsuit because all I saw were the lumps and bumps, and not what other people saw. But Mimi is right in that what really worked for me is seeing myself in pictures. I used to have 2 photos in FB prior to my weight loss and in the last year, that's swelled to over 500. It's helped me train my mind as to how I REALLY look as opposed to how I think I look. I guess the mindset that we carried for so many years will just take time to shift.

She's entitled to her opinion, and that's all it is - an opinion. The proof is in the pudding as far as I'm concerned, so the opinions of people like her mean absolute jack to me.

I am 5'4" and was 215lbs when I was banded and all I heard from everyone except my husband was how I didn't look big enough to be having surgery. It seemed almost like people were either insinuating that I was vain or lazy for wanting a lapband. But now those same people see pictures of me pre-surgery and almost ALL of them say that they didn't realise in hindsight that I was that big. Funny what people get used to. Now I'm 125lbs, those pictures make them realise how much weight I actually had to lose. And they also now realise how much work I put in to lose that weight. Vain and/or lazy? Yeah, right! Don't look at yourself from other people's eyes. That's my advice to you.

I had my first consult with my plastic surgeon today and am now booked in for a Torso Lift on the 2nd of April. I will need to get completely unfilled one week prior to the surgery, and while I'm recovering in hospital, my bariatric surgeon will visit and refill me. I can commence walking as soon as I'm home from my week-long stay in hospital, and work up to my regular exercise regime over the following 4-6 weeks. I'm being ring-barked, plus having skin removed from my upper tummy, my stomache muscles knitted together and lipo on my mons area to remove any fatty deposits that have remained there. My surgeon says he usually asks weight loss patients to wait until their weight stabilises, but in my case, my loose skin, he believes, has more to do with my previous pregnancies, which has been exacerbated by the weight loss, so he's happy to do it now. So the countdown begins!

Hahaha I sooo get that now! I find they get in the way when I pick up my son, when I'm laying down and trying to watch TV, and they collect a lot of crumbs from the food I eat lol!! BUT I love them. They're symetrical, the scars are long but soooo thin and fading nicely even just 2 and a half weeks in, and the swelling has gone down to the extent that they actually are starting to look pretty natural. I took a pic this morning of them and they look like they've always been mine! The best part is that my poor empty saggy breasts are now perky and because I got tear-drop shaped implants, the nipples are high again! I have the boobs of a 20yo lol. Still a little sore sometimes on my right side, but that's probably coz I'm right handed so use the muscles on that side more (I'm guessing). Have started massage now too (thanks for the tip Mimi) and am using the silicone gel my surgeon got me to get religiously. And it's sooooo good to be able to sleep on my side again! So fed up with sleeping on my back! Only complaints (and they're itty bitty complaints) is having to wear 'the' bra for another 4 weeks - it's so hard to dress around! - and not being able to exercise for 4 more weeks, which is crazy coz I don't exercise formally much anymore, but not being able to go dancing or run after my son or go to Zumba classes is really cramping my style! But it'll be worth it, I'm sure! Oh and the other bit of news is that I reconciled with my hubby recently, who I split with 6 months ago, and he is LOVING the new 'enhanced' me lol!! He can't keep his hands off me and the new 'girls'!