green

I was baptised and confirmed Anglican even though my father was a Jewish atheist and my mother was ambivalent about her belief at the time when we were small. It was however the 1950s and everyone was supposed to have a faith and so we were baptised in the Anglican church. My mother even attended church and made many half-hearted attempts to drag us along but we preferred to sit around the kitchen table with our father on a Sunday morning. As for confirmation, well, I was sent off to a boarding school run by Anglo-Catholic nuns when I was 10 and I briefly became very devout. It was during that period that I became confirmed. Later I drifted into Agnosticism and from there into outright disbelief. My mother remained a spiritual woman though she was certainly far from being a Christian at the time of her death. I believe that she felt that because so much of humanity had spent their time fervently searching for God and had, as a result, set up such an array of belief systems, that this must mean that there is Something Greater than Us out there. She did not, however, believe that one single religion had it right. She didn't see how one single religion could be the right one.

I actually watched this guy do this act on television and almost fell on the floor I was laughing so hard. I am really pleased that you posted this here. Big thanks, eh!

My brother, who is a doctor, my family doc and my shrink were all against me getting this operation. Now they are completely cool with it. I did get grief from the specialist who did my colonoscopy; she was one of those who felt that dieting and exercise are the solution to fat! Silly woman!!

Green listens to jazz, blues, classical and some ethnic music. That's the only music she likes.

P.S. Doddie, I was done by Dr. Yau, too. Congratulations, eh, from another Canuck.

I don't understand the logic behind this idea that by choosing to be banded one is "taking the easy way out," and yet I hear this all the time. The issue of weight is a complex one and hinges on much more than the simple fact of over-eating. Most of us have tried dieting and have failed many, many times. Many if not most of us have bought herbal remedies and over the counter diet pills in order to lose weight and none of that crap has worked, either. This is because weight is a complex issue. Having the lap band installed in order to lose weight, and thus to feel both psychologically and physically better and also save your health is certainly not taking the easy way out! It is simply employing a medical technique in order to assist in attacking a problem which is both physical and psychological in its make-up. The statement that this is 'taking the easy way out' is devoid of all logic in my opinion.

I liked the fact that this surgery was relatively non-invasive and that the band itself is adjustible to the point of being reversible. This means that if I ever find myself in the position of requiring the use of my entire stomach I can get a defill. Furthermore, I had this surgery done recently, at the advanced age of 57 in fact, and found it to be wonderfully easy to recover from.

I have chosen to be fairly open about it just as I chose to be fairly open about the fact that I suffer from depression and was off work because of this. I view both my weight issues and my problems with depression as being problems which have strong genetic links and which are, therefore, medical issues, not signs that I am a bad or weak person. The truth is that depression is a problem for my family. Another truth is that some of us Greens are fat. This is a matter of bad genetic luck as much as anything else. Fortunately for me, I live in an era where modern medical technology has developed some techniques for dealing with these problems and I am happy that I am able to profit from this knowledge. This is why I say that I am fairly open about telling people but I sure won't tell people who I feel won't understand and who will be malicious towards me. I figure that the objective of telling people is to share useful information, not to humiliate oneself.

Please do not give up hope, Denise. I know that you are having a slow go of it. You must talk to your doc and see a nutritionist, I think. The nutritionist can go over your calorie intake. The doctor should know about the difficulties you are having in order to see whether these are due to some other, hidden medical issue. I know that there are women who post on this site who have discovered - post banding - that they suffer from PCOS. This condition severely hampers weight loss. The reason I suggest that you have a nutritionist review your diet is so that when you do see your doctors they can't simply choose to ignore your problem, not because I think that you are doing anything wrong, by the way. It is just that you do want to have all your ducks in a row when it comes to dealing with the medical establishment.

Yah, what is magina???

I would like to know how that study collected their statistics regarding overweight dykes. I do know that urban women tend to be slimmer than women who live in the suburbs, smaller cities or in rural areas up here in Canada and I believe that these stats also apply south of the border. The reason for this is that urban women tend to walk more and drive less thanks to the good mass transit systems and the problems with clogged up roads and actually finding parking once you have arrived. In addition to this there are also cultural expectations and a woman is under more pressure to be slim and attractively dressed. I live in the core of a large city and I have always had lots of gay friends, both men and women. The majority of my gay girlfriends are slim to normal in size; maybe a third of them have been chunky but none of them have fallen into the category of obese. I had drifted into this category before being banded and had still found myself being considered attractive by gay women. This only proves that women often tend to be less lookist than men. Perhaps this is a matter of hardwiring.....

This is an interesting and terribly, terribly sad story. I belong to an atheist website, one which has made the examination of the Bible its particular mandate, and there are some serious academics who are members along with gadflies such as myself. The membership of this site is large and some of the active members do choose to tell their stories of how they came about to become atheists. And some of these stories do include experiences of being exposed, either they themselves directly or members of their immediate families, to abuse - usually psychological, but occasionally physical/sexual - dealt out in the name of God and a perceived belief system, a belief system which is claimed by the abuser(s) to be both benign and, moreover, good for us! And then there are those atheists who live and work in the Bible Belt who have told the other members of this site that they dare not mention their disbelief in public because their businesses will suffer, their children will be ostracized and their homes might be vandalised. What we as atheists believe we believe with the same sureness and passion as you theists believe. We believe that there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of a God, let alone the Judeo-Christian-Islamic construct. We see no reason why the Christian version of God should carry more weight than the Muslim version or any other varient on theist belief. Moreover we see that there has been and continues to be a lot of justification for human suffering and death carried out in the name of this human idea or fantasy of God. The horrors of 9/11 were carried out in God's name. The horrors of the Holy Crusades were carried out in God's name. Slaughters of perceived infidels were carried out in God's name. The practice of slavery in America was justified at the time by certain passages of the Bible. Fundamentalist Christians have vilified Catholics, fellow Christians, citing God's name! The barbarities which have taken place in Northern Ireland were conducted in God's name. There are of course many more examples which one can site. While there is a basic code of human morality embedded, I believe, in the teachings of all religions, these can be easily perverted or twisted in order to excuse vicious behaviour. I believe that this was the point which Marjon was attempting to make when he posted this website. His point was about hypocrisy - and hypocrisy is all the more frightening when it is blind to itself, is it not? One is safer with a cynic than with a fanatic.

From everything I have heard about weight loss via the band, this is a procedure which is expected to take two years. The weight loss during the first six months is the most dramatic, then the process continues but much more slowly. This second phase will be a frustrating experience because we are used to a considerably more rapid weight loss. As for my experience with the band, I rarely have the experience of feeling full on only one half cupful of food. I do envy those lapbanders who do. Neverthess, I am eating far less than I used to and I am able to leave uneaten food on my plate. This is very good! I have also noticed that the band has become part of my body and thus is now moody and capricious. Sometimes I can eat and sometimes I get a golfball or PB. It is a very weird experience, that's for sure, but the result is that I find that I am paying more attention to my body and in particular my digestive tract. I have lost quite a bit of personal lard since I had the band installed last September. I went from 200 lbs to 170 lbs at my last weigh-in which was in late February, the time of my last fill. I may have lost a little more since then but I don't really know: I don't own a scale. Still, I do have more weight to lose and I can't bring myself to hand over my big clothes to charity; I am afraid that I am going to boomerang back up there and am going to need them again. And it was very hard for me to find fat grrl clothes that I actually liked in the first place!

Far out! (So I can stop killin' them chickens now?)

I don't know whether I am right or not but I believe the point of Marjon's initial post was to point out that hypocrisy comes in some fairly bizarre forms. If I hadn't actually visited this site I would have thought that it was a parody of a Christian site set up by clever sh!! disturbers but it is the real thing. The message which Marjon was sending his fellow rant & ravers had nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the site itself; it had everything to do with the issue of hypocrisy - that people can and will promote unsavory actions employing arguments found in the Bible itself. I have noted that a number of you are so violently repelled by the introduction of this material onto the Rant & Rave discussion site that I have become concerned for a couple of reasons. One of them is this: until fairly recently child abuse was considered so shameful that those children who were being abused and those adults who had been abused as children were unable to speak out about this. These were individuals who suffered in silence and believed that they themselves were dirty and complicit in their own abuse in some fashion. It has only been over the last 25, maybe 30 years, that this very dirty secret has become openly aired in public. One of the most touching and most horrifying pieces of testimony which I have ever heard came from a man who had been deemed as a trouble-maker when he was a kid and was thus sent to a boarding school run by priests. He was sexually abused and when he tried to tell his parents about it way back in the 1950s they became enraged; they regarded him as a nasty, dirty, little boy who was telling tales against the church fathers. The second reason why I am concerned by your howls to have this thread removed is that I do believe in freedom of speech. The site which Marjon has posted is not explicitly pornographic although it is both unsavory and disturbing. Would it not be better to discuss such issues as hypocrisy and, as Carlene has suggested, the increasing sexualization of young children in advertising, etc?

Hey, this site is great!:biggrin1: Thanks, eh.:target:

Yah, it is a disturbing site. I believe that everyone is in agreement with you.

Omigawd! You were a groomzilla! I heard about them but I thought that they were an urban myth.:rolleyes

Right on, MsDad!:clap2: :clap2: :clap2: :clap2: :clap2:

Yah, I know a lot of gay women, too. Some of them are big women and some are not. What I have noticed is that women are often less lookist in their choice of romantic partner and this means that the older or over-weight gay woman is less likely to be left out in the cold than her straight sister when it comes to finding a partner.

...especially the inattention to the rules of spelling and grammar........:rolleyes

Up here in the north BBQ is done in a totally different fashion. You fire up the barbie, wait until the coals or the tiles become glowing hot and then you throw the Meat on top of this. The Meat can be lamb/pork chops, steak, hamburgers, wieners, hotdogs, pork tenderloin, chicken breasts and thighs, etc. The Meat is cooked very quickly and thus it has to be of a fairly high quality and perhaps marinated for awhile beforehand. When folks up here BBQ ribs they often boil them up first in order to get rid of some of the fat, and then they brush them with a BBQ sauce before putting them on the grill. As you can see, this is an entirely different approach to BBQ and until very recently this is what I thought everyone meant when they talked about BBQ! And I wondered what the fuss was about southern BBQ.... lol I also make my own BBQ marinade and it usually includes the following: sesame seed oil because it has a wonderful nutty, exotic taste; lemon juice, lots of fresh garlic, soya sauce, some kind of commercial hot sauce, dijon mustard, Balsamic vinegar. I like to junk up our meat with garlic and spicy during the preparation stage because I find that the Meat, once BBQued tends to leave a lot of the heat behind. It merely tastes good. We throw the marinade away once it has done its work. We usually use the marinade on defrosting chicken bits, beef and pork. The best lamb I have ever had has been soaked in fresh thyme, lemon juice and olive oil, and then studded with raw garlic before hitting the grill. The Meat was undercooked by many folk's standards - we are talking serious pink! - but the lamb was sublime. The cat who was in charge of this meal is an Italian (and a close friend of my cousin) who really knows his way around food. As for me, I love BBQ-ed steak but always have trouble with the men who are in charge of the grill. You see, they tend to want to overcook and I want my cow still mooing when I am sitting down to eat. This is more than a bit odd on my part because I normally adhere to a vegetable and *sob* carb rich diet! But when I do have it in mind to eat meat I want it really rare. I suspect that what we call BBQ up here is what you Southerners call Grill. Am I right? Long post, eh?

That's a very pretty dress and the shoes are a wonderful choice! I think you should certainly avoid too much bling. The cut of this dress will suit a woman who has curves. A flat-chested woman would not look good in it. Because the dress itself is visually quite complex and your shoes have some visual delicacy and detail, and yet at the same time your ensemble is in a subtle, barely-there colour, I would be inclined to say that pearls would look the best with this outfit and that you could in fact wear a pearl necklace - as long as it didn't interfere with the neckline of the dress! - and pearl earrings. If you chose this approach you would have to avoid wearing a bracelet. The reason that I suggest pearls is that pearls are also delicate in colour and thus will enhance the charm of your outfit and, too, their sheen will contrast nicely (instead of fighting for elbow room) with the diamente work on the bodice of the dress.

It sounds like everything is falling into place for you and that's a good thing. I am pleased that your whole family is on board about the band. :girl_hug: Good luck with your operation, grrl!

:faint: ROTFLMAO Thanks for sharing this, Carlene.:clap2: Your story kind of reminds me of my mother's operation. She was a very slender person when she was young yet she had given birth to 3 enormous babies while she was in her 30s. I was the lightest and I clocked in at 9 and a quarter lbs. Eventually when she was in her 70s she had to have her insides hoisted up, the bladder in particular. She said that the wonderful result of that operation was that for months afterward everytime she sneezed she had an orgasm!:girl_hug: