riley4183

Dudettes! I was down 1.8 lbs. overnight!!!! Jeez I guess thats the good thing about not losing for 3 weeks, when you DO lose you LOSE!! Thank God I believed you guys and upped my calories/downed my excercise to break the starvation cycle. It TOTALLY worked! I have gone back to 3 miles walk + jog in the early AMs and 4-5 miles walking & power-walking the rest of the day, and I am alredy burning ketones again! Note NEARLY as hungry tho, where I was eating 1100 - 1200 regularily suddently I am happy with 800-900.

193.2 - yay! I was suprised. I have been bouncing between 195 and 198 for 3 weeks. Happy Friday everyone!

Im not leaving till saturday pm or sunday am so i will type with yall tomorrow!!

Apparently, Candra! Well I can tell you that of my 3 children, the one who I was PERFECT with while pregnant - did not even drink soda, let alone coffee or alcohol, I swam every day, ate only organic foods etc - that was the sickly kid, asmthma allergies type 1 diabetes dyslexia BUCCO ear infections, 2 sets of tubes, hearing loss tonsillitis adnoids had to be removed - good God! The first one i smoked and drank (but not very much drinking) and she was and is fine! The last one I just didn't worry about - he was post-vascectomy so i did not even know for 4 months - and he onnly has asshole-itis. Anybody want a 17 year old? Cheap!

Oh yeah Tina, that's what I was like! It affected me for almost half the time - almost 2 weeks (usually about 10 days) before my period. . . then I would SUDDENLY get all better, and Aunt Flo would knock about 4 hours later! It was MISERY I finally went on progesterone to counter it, that worked pretty well but led to - guess what! - weight gain!! But yeah we all have a buttload of estrogen floating around in our systems right now because we are burning fat and that is where estrogen is stored . . . . but I think mine must be winding down, because I have less chin hair now! LOL!!!

Oh Kellie called and left me a voice mail today, she says no room for me at the 23rd fill - so if anyone is not going let me know! - and no openings until August unless I can be "down there at 9:30 tomorrow morning! but she did not say "where" so id dont know if richmond or pinole or ??, so I left HER a message that said that and try to call me again . . is anyone going to the first august group fill???

Oh my gosh, what FUN! Enjoy, enjoy all the FUN stuff that the NEW YOU CAN DO!!! I love it!! Tina, yes you are weird, LOL but we love you!!! When I started getting near 40 - like you will be soon! - I started feeling like morning sickness before my period every month. I still do a little bit now, and its from the hormones that is why it feels like preggers. It is better than it was, I used to be SICK sick sick with it. Yeah, add heat to that and - wretch!

Sheena you are coming to the sonoma coast this weekend?!?! Are you going to hike? Or just hang in Bodega? Above Bodega there's a great trail , Bill Kortum trail from like wrights beach (a little south of there actually to like seal rock - it's a GREAT trail, 5.5 miles round trip and beautiful! Check it out if you get a chance! I am hiking it on Monday while camping :-)

Echo that - no pain unless eating too fast/not chewing enough/not paying attention. Ever. I am tighter in the AM and do not want to eat solids until 10 am or so - but I didn't before banding, either. Not being able to eat solids would be red zone, not green. Best thing about green zone = no obsessing about food - its mealtime again before you even think about it. My green is fleeting though - I keep losing it as I lose weight, and have to get a little fill to get green again. But when its good, its AWESOME! Good luck on your journey! Riley

Hi all! I weigh on Fridays too so I will be joining you . . . in a few hours!! I don't expect a loss this week - I'm about to go in for another fill, and I tend to gain a bit back before a fill - but weigh and report I will! What's the "spreadsheet?" Riley

Hi Pam, and amen sister! As long as we plod ahead with our friends we are doin' great :-) Got to head into a nasty public hearing now; 2 of the coworkers here are out with shingles (!) and 1 of them has a nasty public hearing item on the agenda today, his supervisor did not want to do it so I have to

Totally, Jes! I am not a big sweets eater either. And whn I talk to the class I do say that if they either have a problem with sweets or are diabetic, they should consider RNY. But most of my RNY friends do NOT have dumping syndrome after the first year or so - much to their dissappointment! I do have 1 friend who is 11 years out (pre-laproscopic era) from gastric bypass, and she will STILL dump on too much sweets OR too much fat. She loves it! She has also had to have 2 additional surgeries for obstructed bowels as a result of her earlier gastric bypass. . . but that was a LONG time ago, it is not the modern RNY procedure. She says she would still do it all over again in a heartbeat, even if she had needed 10 more surgeries. She was well over 400 lbs, so if she had done nothing 11 years ago she probably would not be here now! I am grateful every day that she had the strength and the courage to do the surgery back then, or I would not have her around today. She had to stay almost a month in the hospital back then, with all kinds of drains and etc. - the times they have a changed!!

Got too busy to eat the bulk of my Breakfast (lentils & vegie sausage) so will have to save it for tomorrow! BreakfastStrawberriesLunchSpring Mix - Baby BlendsSpinach - RawEgg, Whole - Cooked, Hard-boiledEdamame - Frozen Vegetables Premium BaggedParmesan, Grated CheeseTotal Calories Consumed349

OK going to add my 3 cents work re: lap-band vs. RNY. I am the sole lap-band speaker at our 14-week bariatric surgery class here at the Santa Rosa Kaiser, so I know of what I speak! By the time I get to the class to speak - about week 6 - the folks have already had several successful RNY speakers come in, plus they have gone through the info class that you have to take first. In that class, they repeatedly call RNY the "gold standard" of bariatric surgery. But they do not bother to explain that "gold standard" does NOT mean that it is the best - it means that it is the baseline for statistical comparison. So when I ask how many people have already made up theri minds to have surgery, all the hands go up. When I ask those who already know for sure that they are going to have RNY to leave their hands up, there are only 3 or 4 that go down - the ones that will still consider lap-band. I do not beat up on either surgery - heck, SSF is doing gastric sleeve now too, so I guess I should say that I don't beat up an ANY of the surgeries - but I do ask that they consider more than just how fast they will lose weight. I tell them that this journey is about SO much more than which surgery you chose, which doctor you chose, and how fast you lose your weight. It is about the rest of your life!! You need to consider more than the immediate future. Do you want to NEVER be able to eat wedding cake - or birthday cake - again? Never be able to have a couple of glasses of wine without dumping toxins straight into your bloodstream? Because you CAN have the best of both worlds - good weight loss - MORE than 60% of excess weight with the new AP that we all have - good health - AND the ability to live life to the fullest without a lifelong malabsorptive component. My personal reasons for insisting on lap-band are: 1) Vegetarian 2) Did not want to never be able to drink or eat sweets again 3) No malabsorptive component - no re-routing God's system 4) ALL of the health professionals that I know who have had WLS chose lap-band. VERY telling. That said - it is a choice, and the choice is going to be different for every one of us. How blessed and fortunate are we that Kaiser allowes us to have these choices! I just wish they would get me into thatclass sooner so they would not all be so sure thay wanted RNY before they even heard about the lap-band. That was my second lecture this morning! I'm on a roll too Candra, LOL!!

Have a great time Nicole! You & Mike drive safe now you hear??

Candra you are TOTALLY busting me up this morning! I think you should come post on here when you are "cranky" more often, LOL! LMAO.

Tina I am SO happy to not be eating carcass again, but I am seriously considering fish . . . it does not give me the same sense of wrong that meat does . . I mean, we can catch & kill fish with the tools that God gave us, not have to rely on meat/killing farms and such . . seems much more natural to me (eating carcass from an animal that I could not have wrestled to the ground and killed on my own has always seemed wrong to me . . as has drinking the milk of another species - but hey, I love cheese so what a hypocrit!) . . . I raised my kids on a beef ranch, BTW, so it's not like I got brainwashed into this, LOL. Yet on the other hand, I am highly allergic to shellfish (iodine actually, as you guys know from my bad surgery & fill experiences with Kaiser and their damned betadine!) so my fish choices are really limited. It's just that salmon, halibut, tilapia, and cod (only ones I have tried) have REALLY worked well with my band - 2 oz. and I am satisfied for 4 hours. Tuna does NOT seems to work for me - but it works for Pam! Maybe other things will work that well when I get another fill, too . . .dunno. What do you think about fish, Tina? You don't eat any at all do you?

YAY TAMRA!!! So SOON! Well unless Kaiser Richmond has REALLY changed their program, you will definately weigh in @ orientation! Just to be safe tho, you could go to your local Kaiser and ask them to weigh you and get it in your chart . . your doc can email Richmond that was your official weight on that day - and they will accept that.

Tina yes, I am back to 100% vegetarian again now (ovo-lacto, although I can't tolerate milk - the lactose OR the whey - but I do love my cheese and eggs!) but I am considering pescatarianism because I find that fish works REALLY well with a lap-band - and it does not seem so much like carcass to me. I could NOT do this program vegan, that is for SURE. So for any vegetarians lurking out there who are considering weight-loss surgery, lap-band is the way to go for sure! You can do this. In the beginning I committed to eating meat for 1 year during my rapid weight loss - although I told Robin it was only gonna be meat in cans - canned tuna & chicken - and she was totally fine with that (I did not know she was vegetarian at the time!). So I started eating meat again in November 08 - talk about irregular, BOY did I have issues around re-introducing meat! - and ate it until I went and met with Robin for my 1st fill, she looks at my logs and I was getting 200% of the protein I needed. She said that the body stores extra protein as fat, same as it stores extra anything, and I could transition back to vegetarianism at any time! So I ended up eating meat for only 6-7 months. There is a bunch of vege stuff that I can't eat - I have a wheat sensitivity so I cannot tolerate seitan at ALL, and even the lightweight meat analogs have wheat in them so I have to limit the amount (veggie brugers, etc). And you necessarily get a LOT more carbs on a vegetarian diet than you do on a regular diet where you can restrict them more, so the weight loss IS slower . . but also healthier! Oh and I could not do it without tofu!! I love good-quality tofu, and the firm stuff works really well with the band, too. I now average about 80 grams of protein a day, more than I need. I do have a concern (which Robin shares) with the high amount of soy protein that I eat, since I am adopted I have no idea if I have a family hisotry of estrogen-related cancers (breast cancer, etc) and people who have that familyhisotry are advised to limit their soy. I have soy (milk, tofu, edamame) everysingle day, so that worries me a bit. BUT I remain convinced that a plant-based diet is much healthier for anyone, and heart disease is more of a threat for most folks than soy. That's my lecture for the day!

I have been so close to the 90 for so long - when I logged my weight on www.caloriecount.about.com this morning, I had lost a whopping .6 of a lb. over the last 18 days! I gained 4 back - seemingly overnight - then had to slowly lose that again - it did not come back off overnight!

Thanks Chris! I'm uber-proud, I have emailed and text'ed almost everyone I know! I can't WAIT to be 100 lbs. down, that will be REALLY major for me . . my mini-goal is to do it by the Santa Rosa Marathon, which is on August 30th. 10 lbs. in 6 weeks! Yikes! But I have met every goal that I have made for myself so far, and I WILL make this one, too! Thak goodness Dr. Baggs is cooperating & getting me in for another fill right away instead of waiting till the end of August, which is what e said on the 25th . . . anyways, I think that I have learned to do exactly what you are saying - keep it guessing! There is nothing like a moving scale (moving down, that is) to motivate us!

A smirnoff like the Ice kind, or straight vodka in diet cranberry (my personal favorite!)? Cause if you can stand the carbonation, go for it girl! I am so sick of flat beer! But I did drink a Guiness last weekend - I LOVE guiness - they are not carbonated, and it was SO GOOD but I got stuffed on it, LOL!

OK so you guys know how I have been hungry as heck lately, can't stop eating, begged for a fill, yadda yadda - well so for the last 3 days I have been eating over 1500 cals, and cut my excercise in half! Last night when we went to harry Potter, we went out for mexican first and I ATE chili rellano, the whole thing - deep fried cheesy yumminess! I could hardly fit it, but I ate it! And like 2 baskets of chips & salsa. What a pig! Then we got to the movies, my girlfriend got M&Ms and red vines, I ate liike 3 red vines and 1/2 the movie-sized bag of M&Ms! I am SO BAD - SO many CARBS!! Argh!! So this morning I got on the scale just to see how bad I had hurt myself, and . . I HAD LOST WEIGHT!!!! Not only have I now lost the 4 lbs that I had gained back, but I lost another 1/2 lb! So I don't know if my Aunt Flo will be here today and that's why, or if my body was TOTALLY in starvationmode and I switched that S*&t off by eating more and excercising less. WHO CARES??? 90 lbs. lost!!!

Hey Tina, all - Liz told me during my CM appt. that they will ALWAYS take care of us and do our fills at Richmond Kaiser, even if we lose our insurance! She said that all of the aftercare is included as part of the surgery! The onlky thiung she said that you would still have to pay for is the labs. Honest! So lap band fills are never a risk with Kaiser! Do we LOVE Kaiser, or WHAT!! Nicole - DON'T DRINK THE BEER! The carbonation will hurt! If you do want to drink one, pour it in a glass over ice from 4' up, and stir it up a bunch, till you have no more bubbles. Even then, it is too filling for me.

LOL, I was sleepin' grilfriend! I get up @ 5 to excercise :-) BevMo has bajabob's sugar-free, carb-free drink mixes.