Fenton

Oh no! Make it the coolest summer on record, so I can keep up walking without feeling miserable in the heat!

Jeez! I was peeing like a FOUNTAIN after surgery! Naah, just kidding. A little dehydrated with small urine volumes in the early days...

CHOICE! Good news, Rick! I guess you wore the bastids down in the end...!

Happy Mothers' Day to all you Shamrocks who have reproduced! I had to eat out quite a few times this week, so my loss was slower than normal - I think - I haven't yet done my end-of-week weigh-in. But I'm canceling my scheduled fill visit for tomorrow; still OK without a fill. And I'm about to get up and do yoga - the time has come! Hang in there, everyone!

Gosh, that's FANTASTIC! Nice work! I'm down 37 lbs since getting banded on March 6. I've not been eating vary carefully - I'm satisfied by my rate of weight loss. And for me, because it's going to be such a long process because of my high start weight, I'm happy to take it easy at first.

Mediummike - great story! And Loprofyl - watch those church ladies!

Marbobz - sorry to hear you're having problems. What the heck is "nutcracker syndrome"? It doesn't sound good. I think there are better forums to post in about this, though - this is the Men's Room, but the traffic is a lot higher in the areas where both male and female bandsters participate, since far more chicks than dudes have bands. AND, I think, far more banded chicks than banded dudes are likely to talk freely about their experiences. There is a forum just for complications of bands somewhere around here... Good luck with the issue, either way.

Congrats on getting the nod from those tight-fisted insurance bastids! (No offense to any insurance types out here, but, you know what I mean!) The best advice is to try a bunch of them and see what you like; keep a close eye on Protein, calorie and fat content. For the liquid diet, at my place they recommended 6 cans day of the low carb SlimFast Optima. It was manageable, but for the liquids post-op, I used a vanilla SFO, added a banana, Protein powder and some Peanut Butter and blended - v. delicious! That was originally recommended to me as a chocolate-based shake, but I don't like the SFO chocolate flavours...

My Bodybugg arrived yesterday; I'm going to install Parallels and Windows on my iMac today so that I can get going with this. I remember reading that some of youse guys were working the Mac/Bugg combination: any tips for somone just starting out on this? Do the Mac and the Bugg play well together when you're running a Windows OS virtually? Thanks! F.

Hmmm. That powdered peanut butter, though it flies in the face of every known precept of gourmet living, sounds v. useful. I only use peanut butter in my PB & banana Slimfast Optima shakes, so having it reduced to a flavoring element would be fine, really. I guess.

Yeah, walking is key! Key to getting rid of gas pain, key to losing weight, key to getting places when your car is in the shop...

Oh, great! Now I have this mental image of the sainted Helen Keller challenging kids to pull her finger!!!

Cathy, we got your back... You look after him, but let us know how you're doing. And MsBoss - what happened? Were you disrupted by antsy students? GIVE US A SIGN THAT YOU'RE OK!!! I teach medical students, and when I do that, I always show up with a megaphone and bullwhip, with the holster of my side-arm unsnapped...

As far as BM's go, some people go too much, other people grind to a halt. Give it some time, you'll be fine - indeed, you'll find that you're going less frequently, maybe every other day, some people every three days...

I don't think I've ever felt as well in my life as I did when I was on Atkins. At my place, they recommend SlimFast Optima, the low carb one, which is about $2 a can around NYC, particularly if you buy in six-packs. They recommended 6 cans a day, so, that's $84 a week. I did it for two weeks pre-op (to shrink that fatty liver right down, which makes surgery easier), and then for about a week and a bit post-op. I supplemented with premade clear Isopure Zero Carb drinks (20 ounces, 40 grams of protein).

God, Cathy, how absolutely HORRIBLE. Just hang in there - you're in all of our thoughts.

It's impossible to keep a low calorie intake and good exercise schedule (and that walking is GREAT exercise!) and not burn fat. But one thing that might be going on is that you're eating more than you think. Are you journaling your intake, recording everything you eat and drink, totaling the calories and protein? I think that'd be a great first step.

Nice to have you back, Jennifer - congratulations on your progress! And Christine, I'm happy you're still with us, and now Restriction-enhanced!

I have to say that I learned a real lesson today. I had a celebratory dinner with a friend, and thought I'd order like normal people do at a fancy restaurant. We had a slightly extended three course meal - an appetizer of soft shell crab, then we split a lobster entree, then we split a steak entree, then we had dessert; the pastry chef sent out an extra dessert, which we kind of pushed around with our forks and didn't really consume much of. So, in the end, I had the equivalent of an appetizer, a large entree and a dessert. We started at 7PM, dinner finished at 10PM. It's now 1:30AM and I'm too stuffed to sleep. I can't eat that much any more. And now I know that... Oh well.

Sure! You notice that your port incision is bigger than the others? That's because that's where they slide the band and the port in, while the other just have thin tubes for, like, inflating the belly during surgery and whatnot. They use one incision for the port and the band itself, so obviously they're going to have to reach in and stretch things around a bit, and force the port into its final position. The end result? Bruising. Mine cleared up after a couple of weeks. So, yeah, completely normal! Congrats on the band, and welcome to the group!

Congratulations, CP! I didn't have problems peeing, other than smaller volumes because I was taking less liquid in. Are you keeping up your intake? It's hard at first.

Scrappy! Nice to hear you're still with us! Congrats on your fantastic success!

Is it just me, or have we not heard from a few bandsters for a while. Christine? Scrappy? I worry that when people fall silent, they are dead. At least, dead to the band... I'm probably just being neurotic, but even if it's not going well, chime in and say so, so we can give you encouragement, and, like, support and whatnot... And if it is going well, don't hide your light under a bushel!

Special K - thanks for the cartoons - always nice to have a quick grin on this board. Although I have to say, I grin quite a lot while reading this - we have a pretty funny bunch! I wonder if that's just a random thing, or if fat people learn to use humor as a defensive weapon. Yay on yr dog, Lisa! That's great news! I had an NSV yesterday: I'm now wearing pants that are 6" smaller in the waist than the ones I was wearing for my initial weigh-in in January. On the minus side, my hips are sore - I think it's the joints rather than the muscles, although I feel it in the muscles. I'm going to take it easy on walking for the next couple of days. Last night, I had a nice indulgence, something I'd been looking forward to for the last few days: I had Soup for dinner, then went out to the Dessert Truck (a mobile high-end dessert truck that magically appears every night from six to midnight a half mile from my house) and had a chocolate bread pudding. I ate it in the park in the light rain, and then I got up and walked for an hour by way of penance/exercise.

Ghost! What a pain in the ass! (Can we say that? Perhaps I should have typed @$$?) You seem very rational, which is completely appropriate - you'll be absolutely fine. Because of the position of the pituitary gland (behind and between the eyes, just above the top of the nose), it's the easiest type of tumor for the surgeons to reach - a nose job would be a far more unpleasant surgery to have! You probably will have to have replacement hormone therapy, but it shouldn't be too bad at all; and don't worry about your thyroid: your endocrinologist will keep up on it, particularly if you keep up on him or her! Because you have only a small amount of visual field problems, it's likely that the tumor is still pretty small, but it's big enough that they feel that you'll be better off with it out than in. And since you've been having the hormonal problem for a couple of years, and it's STILL pretty small, you know that the tumor is growing very slowly. So, you'll be fine, and you're right that your major concern should be that you don't have to delay your trip to Vegas!