onikenbai

Sorry, no actual swinging in this one! :thumbup: As we are all pretty much obsessed with food, does anybody else find themselves obsessed with not eating food while on their pre-op diets? When I was in high school I went days without eating and walked a minimum of 4-5km a day. It was the only way I could keep my weight below 140lbs and I was just a little obsessed with keeping food out of my mouth. (Yes, I told the clinic people this) After high school I got out of that pattern, got sick, and subsequently packed on huge weight. Part of the weight gain is my fault and part of it is a combination of the drugs and unfortunate genetics. Since I'm having so much trouble with the Protein Shakes, I've had to abandon them in favour of a veg and Protein diet and I was told "to go hardcore" on it. It was like a kick to my subconscious and I feel exactly like I'm in high school again. I'm reliving those days when I enjoyed being hungry and right back in that pattern like I never left it. So far for the week my biggest eating day was 900 calories. Yesterday was my best at 450. I went to bed hungry and happy. I was supposed to get down to 294lbs for surgery and, at the rate I'm going, I'll likely blow by that as I've got two more weeks of pre-op diet and only 5 more pounds to lose. Am I a freak here or is this common... the swing from compulsive overeating to compulsive undereating? Do we always need something to obsess over?

I'm allergic to them. They contain both milk and soy.

I would say wait to have surgery if you're planning on losing another 80lbs. That way you can tackle any problems of extra skin at the same time. You don' t want to have pretty boobs for a few months and then have them look deflated after that do you?

So here it is... pre-op diet day 7 and it has not gone well thus far. Turns out that I am missing an enzyme in my stomach which digests protein. My mother has known this since I was a week old but strangely, didn't think to share it with me any of the hundred times I was explaining the high protein pre-op diet. I have always steered away from the high protein foods thinking it a food preference, but the truth is I've not been paying attention to the fact those foods have made me hideously ill, and now I know why. So all the planning and effort of hunting out a non-soy, non-dairy, no sweetener shake was apparently a waste of time and money. On the up side, at least I have a friend who needs the non-everything shakes and tolerates them better than I. My cat also seemed quite interested in them so maybe I'll let him have a go. So now I'm learning 100001 ways to grill an eggplant as I'm confined to veggies and the tiniest bit of meat for the whole three weeks. Well, at less than 1000 calories a day, I am losing weight... my attention span rivals a gnat and I'm probably right unpleasant to work with when I'm out in the field burning calories sloshing through mud, but my whole office has been warned to stay far, far away from me lest they risk dismemberment with a traffic cone, and they haven't run screaming yet so I'm probably good for another few days. I do wonder what I did to piss off Karma because she made me work next door to the Nestle plant on day 2 of my diet, then further tried my patience by forcing me to leave the happy smells of chocolaty goodness and plopping me in a restaurant where I had to sit and watch everybody else around me enjoy their yummy thai for an hour before sending me back into the chocolate cloud and raining on me all afternoon. I think she owes me one.

So here it is... pre-op diet day 7 and it has not gone well thus far. Turns out that I am missing an enzyme in my stomach which digests protein. My mother has known this since I was a week old but strangely, didn't think to share it with me any of the hundred times I was explaining the high protein pre-op diet. I have always steered away from the high protein foods thinking it a food preference, but the truth is I've not been paying attention to the fact those foods have made me hideously ill, and now I know why. So all the planning and effort of hunting out a non-soy, non-dairy, no sweetener shake was apparently a waste of time and money. On the up side, at least I have a friend who needs the non-everything shakes and tolerates them better than I. My cat also seemed quite interested in them so maybe I'll let him have a go. So now I'm learning 100001 ways to grill an eggplant as I'm confined to veggies and the tiniest bit of meat for the whole three weeks. Well, at less than 1000 calories a day, I am losing weight... my attention span rivals a gnat and I'm probably right unpleasant to work with when I'm out in the field burning calories sloshing through mud, but my whole office has been warned to stay far, far away from me lest they risk dismemberment with a traffic cone, and they haven't run screaming yet so I'm probably good for another few days. I do wonder what I did to piss off Karma because she made me work next door to the Nestle plant on day 2 of my diet, then further tried my patience by forcing me to leave the happy smells of chocolaty goodness and plopping me in a restaurant where I had to sit and watch everybody else around me enjoy their yummy thai for an hour before sending me back into the chocolate cloud and raining on me all afternoon. I think she owes me one.

Actual physiological differences have been documented in people with fibro. If you do a brain scan and apply a small amount of pressure to the fibro body, the pain centres light up like a christmas tree on the scan, much more than a good dose of pain should do to a regular body. So it does exist as a brain amplification of a seemingly small signal. They just can't figure out why. Whether it is caused by an illness, a chemical in our food or an environmental factor, that is still to be determined. I personally got sick years before the great shift to artificial sweeteners so I wouldn't blame them entirely. Plus my great grandmother had a confirmed diagnosis (under the old name polymyalgia rhumatica) more than 50 years ago, which would go against the "chemicals of modern day are evil" theory. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I don't think it's going to be a simple one.

If you have been working out that much, you may be putting on muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat so it would make sense your scale isn't changing. Pay attention to how your clothes fit as that may be a better indicator of progress.

I was going to go out and have a last meal with my brother, but then he cancelled. My last meal consisted of a few slices of bread because that's all there was in the house. How disappointing.

I'm convinced there's heroin in those biscuits. Nothing else could be that addictive.

So I wrote before about my problems with the Protein shakes and that they are mostly based on soy or milk, both of which I am allergic to, but now I have a new wrench thrown into the works. I did find myself some vegan protein powders without soy or milk and I gave it a whirl. Things were not good. Pain, nausea and many trips to the bathroom. Maybe I should have delved into this a little deeper before now, but I thought I would be fine with the no soy no milk thing, but I called up my mother today to inquire about my diet as a baby because I had serious eating troubles then too. So now she tells me that it was discovered that I was missing a digestive enzyme in my body completely, and I puked my guts out as a baby because I couldn't physically digest the protein in my food! I've explained the whole "high protein, low carb" diet to her many times and NOW she decides to say something! Woman, you've had 34 years to tell me about my biological inability to digest protein and you didn't think to mention this while I was speaking for weeks about a high protein diet?! :seeya: Until now I've always kind of steered myself away from the protein-rich foods and now I know why. I don't know which of the enzymes I'm missing and neither does my mother. Is there a broad spectrum digestive enzyme product that I could take or am I going to have to go to the doctor and be tested to find out exactly what enzyme I need?

I have a high risk of serious injury at work so good to know. I'll be updating my medic alert file anyway after surgery.

If you really want to have lapband on your tag, the Medic Alert team will help you with the wording. It's part of the service. You speak to them on the phone and give an explanation of what you want your tag to say and then they will compose the message with the appropriate medical terminology on it.

If you have a proper Medic Alert (because I know in the US there is more than one company), you can put instructions to call the data centre before administering invasive procedures. That way you can update your health data more often without having to buy new bracelets. Plus you can put a whole lot more detail in the file as to who to call and what can and cannot be done. I've had many bracelets over the years now and they get expensive it you have to keep replacing. It's free to update your online data as many times as you want. I personally won't be putting LapBand on my bracelet because I have too many nosy people who attack me to try to figure out what's wrong with me. I don't really feel that the whole world needs to know. NG tubes are most often put in for feeding purposes. In the case of dire emergency, the last thing they are going to do is feed you. By the time they get around to feeding you, it is likely that somebody will have arrived at the hospital to claim you and to provide information.

I was on trazadone for a bit and it did nothing for me. Part of the whole fibro problem is that every single person is a freakish entity... what works for one person is useless for another. At least if we had cancer there would be a general consensus of what drug to take. Fibro is a free for all and that's what makes it so hard to treat. Some days, I swear, my drugs are actually tic tacs painted a god awful orange colour for all the good they do.

So far all the Canadian places which say they carry Isopure don't list it in their product listings on their websites. Ugh. I'm probably going to have to go to each one to find out they don't really carry it. Been there, done that before. Edit: Shopper's actually carries Isopure Plus. It's $15.49+tx for a 6 pack of 237mL bottles. OUCH!

I don't officially start my pre-op diet until next week, but I thought I'd test fly the shakes before I have to depend on them entirely just in case things didn't work out. Being allergic to soy and milk, I've managed to scrounge around and find shakes that have neither so yay me. I was expecting to spend three weeks puking my guts out because of allergies. So I tried Vega's chocolate shake last night. Other than the fact it tastes nothing like chocolate, which I can deal with, all it took was a few mouthfuls before I knew something wasn't good. The shake didn't sit well with my tummy at all, and if I have to take these for three weeks and it continues like this, I'm going to have the cleanest digestive system in the history of medicine :thumbdown:. I do field work so I spend hours at a time far away from bathroom facilities. This could be a problem! Did anybody else have this same problem? Were you able to get your body used to the shake if you introduced it gradually, or was is pretty much a no-go no matter what you did? I'm already on a no dairy, no soy, gluten-free, no artificial sweetner shake, so there isn't much chance of getting a more inert product.

Isopure is, unfortunately, whey based. That brings me right back to my original problem of a milk allergy. Plus, it's damn near impossible to get in Canada. We have different laws surrounding food and drugs than the US and it causes a lot of things that are available in the US not to be available here... although I'm thinking I didn't miss much by missing out on the olestra debacle. Does the US still use that stuff or was the anal leakage just a little too much for the average citizen? My doctor knows about my allergies and we were hoping that the Vega shakes would get around those.

Yeah, the one I tried is a pea and hemp protein.

I'm starting my pre-op diet next week and I'm doing all my pre- and post-op shopping now so that I'm not tempted while in the grocery store. In looking for foods I'll be able to eat, I'm noticing that there's a LOT of sodium in all of them, even the low sodium versions. Other than the Protein shakes and Jello, can any of you recommend post-op foods that are lower in sodium? I don't fancy blowing up like a balloon from the Water weight, not to mention that it's really not healthy. A can of Campbell's Soup has half the daily recommended intake, and if that's all I'm going to be eating for a while, I'm going to blow my sodium limit awfully fast!

I was also completely underwhelmed by the pre-surgery meetings. I learned more in 20 minutes online than I did in four appointments.

Chopsticks are also a good option, especially if you don't use them often. They force you into eating only small pieces and they tend to slow you down. Plus, they're very trendy and you can look way cool.

Speak to your pharmacist about it. Brand name and equivalent generics are not always identical. The pharmacist may be able to accommodate your needs by giving you a smaller version. Also, sometimes the 50mg pill is smaller than the 100mg pill and you can ask your pharmacist to give you double the number of 50s and you take two at a time.

100% cranberry juice is also excellent for the prevention of kidney stones. If you do get small stones, the doctor will often blast them with sonically and send you home with instructions of drinking cranberry juice to get them out of the system. Be warned though.... pure cranberry juice can be mouth puckering :tt1:

Tie him in a bag and beat him with a bat.... then let him out and tell him to clean the house. :tt1:

You get a better stretch if you bend over with relatively straight legs for a minute and then bend your knees a bit while still bent over to get maximum extension. Be prepared for crunching sounds (or at least my back does). I don't know if it gets worse because of stress, although stress certainly doesn't help it any. I like to quote Indiana Jones "It ain't the age, it's the mileage".