Put re-heated steak on the list of this that Mistress Band will punish me if I try and eat. Worst stuck episode yet, but it is cleared and instead of steak, I had a protein shake for dinner.
eating on Vacation that is.
Away from my home, my scale and my kitchen for a week visiting family in Northern California. An Easter brunch that my sister-in-law served that centered around a ham, chicken and lasagna, side dished, appetizers and deserts from Hell. But the real villain were the chips and candy at my Sister's house. The good news is that I am only up .75 of a pound for the week, and after I flush all the excess sodium out of my system, my weight will probably be a wash. I just kept B-52 and others on the forum in mind who weren't counting calories, and tried to listen to my band, watched my bite sizes and speed. I had one stuck incident that caught me totally by surprise, but other than that eating was no problem.
Glad to be back home though, although I would like the rain to stop so I can get on my bike, Catfish is getting ahead of me, and that just won't do!
I went for my 5th fill this morning, so today is liquids and tomorrow is mushies.
Normal for me is to pick up a quart of milk and a quart of OJ to supplement my shakes and get me through the day because I am so freaking hungry. Just got out of spin class and sat down at my desk and opened a shake and started reading the forum. Pretty soon half my shake was gone and I picked it up for another sip, and Mistress Band said "Sorry Bud, but you are done". Now, she didn't say it in a mean way, she didn't bring out the spiked heels, I just looked at the shake and thought to myself, ewwww! (And I love my shakes).
Interesting...
I hate baggy clothes, and wearing my size 40 jeans made me feel sloppy. I am currently wearing 38"comfortably, but I decided to try on 36" when I went shopping. Here are the results:
Now this is uncharted territory, but I am more than happy to keep on exploring. Going where Terry has never gone before. Band, warp 9!
I was shaving this morning and my wife came in and weighed herself, curious I asked how much? Her answer was 122.5 (she is 5' 5"), and that around Thanksgiving she noticed that her back was hurting so she dropped 5 pounds and had been holding steady ever since. You know how my wife dropped 5 pounds and then holds her weight steady? She simply eats less. Not a diet, not skipping meals, not exercising, she eats less of the things that she eats every day. If she wants a beer or a cocktail, she will skip dessert.
This is how normal people interact with food. I am not normal, I am a mutant when it comes to food. The band is my tool to help me pass for normal person
Now, this is an obvious generalization, so please bear with me.
There are two types of people on this forum, Moms and Dads...And it has nothing to do with gender.
Moms are the empaths, sympathizing with the hurts and bruises of the people here, taking into account their feelings when they give their advice. Patting them on the back as they are bent over the toilet puking their guts out because they tried to test their band.
Dads are the authoritarians, telling people who ate a cheeseburger and fries on the way home from post-op "WTF did you do that for, are you stupid?" and "I was able to work my band, what the hell is wrong with you"?
The friction I see on the site comes many times from the Moms and Dads fighting over the best way to help the kids, when in reality, both types of advice and help are necessary for the people who come here. We need to stop beating each other up, and start realizing that we NEED both types of people. So, in the words of that great wise man Rodney King, "Why can't we all just get along"?
BTW, as I said at the start this is a generalization and the reality is not quite so clear, I personally relate more to the "Dads" on the board, but my heart also weeps for those who are struggling getting the band to work for them, especially when it has been so easy for me.
Very little riding this week, but in my travels I ran across a Perl Izumi Outlet store (High end biking clothes) and look what I found on the clearance racks. Now, I like bright but this was a bit much even for me. Two things convinced me: 1. 200.00 off list price. 2. Wolf whistles from my wife and and the fact that I had to promise I wouldn't just wear it for biking. :wub:
is that it makes me hungry, and not just on the day that I exercise. Ate more calories than I intended at lunch, and I am at least a couple hundred in the red tonight. So my current fix is a large glass of crystal light and a small bowl of pickled cucumbers and onions. Thank God I am married, I think I find my sweetie and give her a big kiss
BTW if you interested in the recipe
Slice a large cucumber ( I prefer the english variety so I don't have to peel it)
Thin slices of onion, I prefer red (bermuda) onions, but all I had in the fridge was a yellow
Toss of a couple of tablespoons of sugar (or artificial sweetener if you use it)
pour enough red wine vinegar (I grew up with cider vinegar, but I prefer the red wine) to get everything wet.
Tomato wedges are good, but didn't have any
Put in as sealed container shake real good to mix things up and put it in the fridge and turn it every once in a while, the longer the better.
Nutritional information? Haven't a clue.
My body has a rule, when ever I have a cheat day, my body uses that as the new minimum for food intake.
Had a couple of slices of pizza last night, starving this morning even though I have eaten my normal breakfast
My wife and I have been quite open with our two daughters (9 and 12) about my lap band. Before surgery we walked them through what would happen, how it would affect my life and more than that why I was doing it. So as I have had to adjust to my new lifestyle, my daughters and wife have adjusted with me. But I didn't realize the extent of that adjustment until I heard these words come out of my 9 year old's mouth "Mom, you are chewing too fast, you need to slow down!" The look of shock on my wife's face was priceless
I am not mocking or belittling the concerns and issues that some are facing as the ACA takes effect, but I want people to understand that there are two sides to the story. Healthcare has long been broken in our country, and while the ACA is by no means perfect, it is a start. Let's move forward and make it even better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/us/amid-the-uproar-over-the-health-law-voices-of-quiet-optimism-and-relief.html?pagewanted=2&ref=politics&pagewanted=all&_r=0
I went to my LB support group last and the subject was Plateaus and and one of the comments is that sometimes a plateau will turn into an avalanche of weight gain. Now there is absolutely no logic in the world to the thought process that say "I'm not loosing, so I will gain weight instead", yet, I totally, totally have done that, as have many of the others on this forum.
It is similar to the logic that we use that says, "I failed at one meal, so I might as well blow the whole day and eat like a pig". That is like saying, I made a mistake in my checkbook and I am 10.00 overdrawn, so I am might as well go out and buy a new TV!
I walked away from the support group with reminded that much of what we are doing in our journey revolves around our mind, rather than around our stomach....Now if only there was a band for our brain
BTW, I met a nice lady there who recognized me from the forums, but forgot to ask her user name.
I ran across a post about using baby silverware or chopsticks to help get the proper speed and bite size for bandsters. So I decided to try it out. This morning's breakfast consists of 2 scrambled eggs, 1 cup of spinach and 1 Tyson reduced fat sausage patty. I cut the spinach and sausage to the proper size, dumped that and the eggs into a microwavable container, and when I got to work this morning microwaved it for a couple of minutes. I am now sitting at my desk with the chopsticks I bought off of Amazon, eating breakfast, and it is working well. The chopsticks slow me down and force me to take small bites and I don't feel nearly as silly as I would with a baby fork or spoon. That and the sticks are much easier to clean.
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I'll have a strong cup of decaf and play a video game instead.
I Corinthians 10:13 ESV
13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it
I have seen a common theme in the posts of new banders, and it is "I don't know if I can do this, what if I fail?" This where the I draw solace from the stories of our veterans, successful or not. I know that I am not going into uncharted territory, that someone has been there before me, faced the same issues as I will and they were successful, and if they were successful, I can be as well. It is also one of the reasons that I answer the posts that I do, not because I have all the answers (or really, any of them), but it is just to let people know that they aren't alone, that yes it sucks right now, but there is an end to it and they need to focus on their goal, they too can reach the other side.
Oh, and the verse also speaks to the care and control that God exercises in our lives, but that is a topic for a different blog
Made Sourdough Waffles for the family this morning, they were so light and smelled so good that I knew with enough butter and syrup they would be a slider food for sure. two small bites later and NOPE. Fed the sewage system and will have a shake before Church.
For now anyhow, had my second appointment were we decided that I didn't need a fill. Steady weight loss (Of course not as fast as I would like), 3-4 hours of satiety (Depending on if I stay away from simple carbs and focus on protein). Can pretty much eat anything, but have to be careful and have had a few stuck episodes in the last month when I wasn't.
It is kind of a bittersweet place to be, the green zone is this magical fairy land that is held out to us from the time we are banded, and yet here I am. I still wrestle with eating too fast, I still am plagued by head hunger, I still have to exercise, I still have weight to lose, I still get plateaued.
WAIT A MINUTE, YOU MEAN I STILL HAVE TO WORK AT MY WEIGHT LOSS, I THOUGHT THE BAND WAS MAGIC!!! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!
Moved to solid foods on Friday, not only have Mistress Band and I not been on the best of terms since then, my weight loss stopped.
This is why when we talk about calories in versus calories out, we always need to look at the big picture rather than the daily total. Once my body gets used to what I am feeding it, the loss will start up again. Until then I just need to concentrate on making sure that I am eating what and how much I am supposed to, getting my water and exercise in.
On the plus side, I had my first spin class yesterday and survived.
And no, I am not talking about the size of my butt!
Just looking at my ticker and based on my surgeon's first goal for me, I am over have way there, but as many veterans have warned me weight loss has slowed, but is still on a downward trend. It would be nice to extrapolate based on what I have lost so far as to how long it will take me to meet that goal, but WLS doesn't work that way.
My spin classes have been giving me great cardio, and building my leg muscles but they have also been playing havoc with the scale. As my body retains water to deal with the micro tears that encourage new muscle growth, the scale stays the same (or climbs) for days on end, then one morning I will get up and have dropped 3-4 pounds from one night to the next. But if I am logging my food, and exercise I can pretty much ignore this by knowing what is real.
Next step is adding in strength training, since I don't want a lot of upper body mass, low weights and lots of repetition will tone my upper body without making me look like the Hulk.
I remember during my undergrad studies in Psychology reading a paper that talked about people who were addicted to gambling and a peculiar memory trait that only allowed them to remember the times that they won. This caused them to constantly misjudge the odds when placing a bet, because the were overly optimistic about their chances.
I think that we who are fat have a similar trait, but in reverse. We only remember the times that we have failed in our journey to be fit, and so when there is temptation, when there are rough spots we err by forgetting all the scale victories, all the nsvs, all the times that we beat temptation and made a right choice and we only remember the times when we failed. So we believe that failure is inevitable and give in.
Today has been a hard day for me, I am experiencing a bit of bandster hell, combined with a generous portion of head hunger and emotional eating and the only thing I can think about is why bother, I am just going to fail anyhow. No, I haven't given in to those voices, but I have had one NSV after another this last week, I am within 4 pounds being at the lowest weight I have been at since I was a freshman in high school, and yet my failures are the memories parade before me today.
One of the things that the people of the Old Testament did when God did something spectacular in their lives was they built a marker, a pile of stones to remind them of the victory that had happened in that place. I think I need to start building some markers in my life so that I can concentrate on the victories, and not the defeats.
The company that I work for provides insurance through one of the top 5 insurance companies in the nation, our employee count is under a thousand and we are provided with an online registration portal. So far registration has been pushed back twice for web site issues, and when it finally come online today, it crashed after a couple of hours.Maybe the Obamacare website isn't so bad after all.
I packed my normal breakfast of a Protein shake and a some steel cut oats, and drank my shake when I got to my desk. a couple of hours later I was hungry again and pulled my oatmeal out. Then Mistress Band spoke, "I'm not eating that stuff, get me some more protein!" So down to the cafeteria for a couple for eggs and hash browns, threw 3/4 of the hash browns away, and Mistress Band is now one happy camper.
When I woke up this morning, I was feeling pretty lethargic, I knew I had been doing a lot of physical labor on 1300 calories a day with the constant snow fall here, but I thought I had been allowing for that. My body disagreed, and a real part of my journey is learning to listen to my band and my body.
Food for thought.
Went for a fill appointment this morning, talked over my hunger levels and loss history over he last month and the nurse suggested a .2 tweak, bringing me up to 4.9. So, liquids today, and mushies tomorrow. And I don't have to go back for a month.
I just got back from vacation at Yellowstone and like many banders I was tighter while at the higher altitude, and discovered that I felt better. So since I had a LB fill appointment this morning, I had them tweak my band with a .25 cc fill. But back to liquids for today and soft for tomorrow.
